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l ô ô i o n a n e ô
By William J. Samarin*
I T is paradoxical, if not rather ironic, that missionaries, whose great task is to proclaim the gospel, are often tongue- tied on the field. They may find them selves among their people unable to express the message they came to give, even after spending many years in prep aration, traveling long distances to reach their destinations, and depriving themselves of great comforts. Zeal and spirituality have little to do with this problem. A missionary may love his people, faithfully serve them and sacrifice for them, yet be unable to speak clearly. He is definitely handi capped if he cannot preach in such a way as to be understood. Often I have heard missionaries confess that they learned to their embarrassment that they were not understood even though the people said, “ Oh, what a wonderful message! Look, he speaks our lan guage!” Obstacles in Learning a Language It is not necessarily because the mis sionaries are dull that they cannot al ways speak another language. Brilliant men and women are sometimes thus handicapped. Nor is it necessarily be cause of a lack of effort. Most mission aries do their best to acquire the new language. The reason, then, for this un fortunate predicament must be some thing easily overlooked by most people. The greatest handicap to learning a language is prejudice, which is found in many forms. For example, many people have the idea that the non Indo-Euro pean languages are simple and primi tive. Their ethnocentricity seems to blind them to the linguistic ' complexities of many of the culturally “primitive” peo ple. At an African field conference a missionary once reported respecting a certain language: “There appear to be no tenses or moods of the verb in use, the infinitive form having to do service for them all with much gesture and imagination thrown in.” (In all likeli hood the differences were marked by tonal contrasts.) Another prejudice is the conviction that a white man is unfit to learn the exotic languages. Mission aries have often recognized their failure and said, “ A white man could never really learn that language. He is not built for it.” The second handicap is simply a mat ter of ignorance. The missionary may be unaware of what occurs in the language. (Most of the languages in which mis sionaries work have never been ade quately described, i.e., have no gram mar.) He may not realize, for example, that a language may have voiceless as well as voiced nasal consonants. A mis
sionary once flunked her examinations in Burmese because she could not hear these differences as contrasted in the words “bird” and “two.” Such ignorance leaves the person spending a life-time in an unsuccessful attempt to simulate the sounds. In addition, he may not realize that a language can be without cases, gender, or even nouns and verbs. Such a language throws him into confusion. After many unsuccessful attempts to fathom its structure, he finally gives up in dismay. Overcoming the Difficulties These are real obstacles. Every reader who plans to serve as a missionary should be aware of their existence and try now to overcome them. He must be ready to meet the unex pected. His ears must be tuned to hear every possible thing that comes out of the mouth of man. He must realize that many languages are as complex, if not more so, than English. He must realize that the so-called “primitive” languages can express every human experience. He must be prepared to find very extensive vocabularies, not necessarily those equiv alent to ours. However, the missionary must not be so overcome by the realization of the complexity of a language that he feels that he cannot learn it. Every human being has the capacities to learn any language. There is no sound produced by man which can not be produced by some body else. The vocal organs (whose pri mary functions are eating and breath ing) are universally shared by men. The fact that anyone can learn a language is illustrated by the fact that an immi grant child quickly loses his mother- tongue and acquires the new one with great facility. Surely no race is endowed with certain abilities to speak a lan guage. Race has no relation whatever to language. If this were so, the American Negroes would still be speaking the African languages. It is suggested that some kind of lin guistic training be taken somewhere. Courses in phonetics (the study ofr sounds), morphology (the study of word- structure), and syntax (the study of sentence-structure) are of inestimable value. Such courses are now being of fered at seminaries, Bible institutes, Christian and secular colleges, in addi tion to Camp Wyeliffe. In short, a missionary need not find himself tongue-tied on the field if he prepares himself linguistically as well as spiritually. *Biola ’48, under appointment to Africa.
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