Was Mary A Polytheist?

Translating Mary's Magnificat (that is, her song of praise after learning she was so blessed to give birth to her Lord and Savior) actually went better than I thought. Sure, with it being located in the first chapter of Luke, it was the first time we encountered some pretty loaded Biblical concepts, but overall, we finished with the feeling that we had given justice to the original text. The review committee check over those verses went well, as did the consultant check last May. Everything was fine and dandy, that is, until another read through surfaced a very unfortunate possible reading which made Mary out to be a blatant polytheist! Come with me a bit into the Gmz language to show you exactly what went so terribly wrong!

 

Luke 1:46-47 read as follows "Maariyaam daka, 'Fahatsa alam dafarok'w s'ee-Misa ala-Etagirba. Gafic'a alam daaŋgahaiil kaMisa kacanaka, ka-etambidok'wa-ara' – which can be word-for-word translated as "Mary said, 'Soul of me it raises up name of God of the Lord. Spirit of me it rejoices to God a lot, to the one who saves me.' Looks ok with those glosses, but in the umpteenth read-through something occurred to me - "kacanaka" as it was written could either be an adverb meaning "a lot" modifying the verb "rejoice," or it could be an adjective meaning "many" modifying the noun "God." In other words, instead of, "My Spirit rejoices a lot in God," one could accurately read Mary to have said "my spirit rejoices in many gods." Ouch! Not exactly the message we want to communicate!

 

Now most of the time when there are ambiguous, dual readings like this, we must go back to the drawing board and find a different way of stating the correct meaning more clearly. That wasn't, however, the case here. Instead, I decided, once and for all, that we need to mark the Gmz language for tone.

 

You see, the Gmz language is tonal, in that saying the same word with high pitch and with low pitch can completely change its meaning. Faithful blog-readers may remember a very early linguistic blog which addressed the potentially embarrassing difference between the two meanings of t'isa (http://taw05.blogspot.com/2010/09/what-of-god.html). At that time, I hadn't yet discovered that these two meanings are actually differentiated by tone (yes, for those most interested, the "barking spiders" are accented by a HIGH tone – insert your own sound effects here).

 

So, the Gmz language has some important tone variation in it, but whenever I tried to write it down, it found it nearly impossible. Why? First of all, because the overwhelming majority of Gmz speakers don't realize that they are speaking in tones. Secondly, the tones have a complicated set of rules that can change in different grammatical contexts. And so, partially out of frustration, and partially out of needing to simplify the Gmz writing system and spelling rules, I tried my best for more than two years to write the Gmz language without with any marking of tone. Yet I couldn't let Mary rejoice in many gods.

 

In Gmz, there are two prepositions: High tone ká- meaning "to/for" and low tone ka- meaning "with/in/from." Most of the time, the context clearly limits whether an unmarked ka- should be high or low tone, but in Luke 1:47, daaŋgahaiil kaMisa kacanaka, is truly ambiguous. However, with the simple addition of an acute accent (or as one translator calls it, the vowel's 'hair') over the high tone preposition in káMisa and no accent on the low tone in kacanaka, the problem was solved. And Mary, the mother of our Lord has once again become a solid monotheist! Whew!

 

And so, striving for consistency and freedom from further ambiguity, last week, while I was in Addis Ababa for some meetings, I charged one of the translators to read through the entire draft of Luke's gospel placing "hair" on all the high tone ká- prepositions and leaving their low tone counterparts bald. No doubt, Mary's near-heresy wasn't the only theological disaster averted.

 

Time Together

How many husbands do you know that can kick back in a rocking chair after supper while his wife (who made supper from scratch) washes all the day's dishes by hand? Taking it a step further, how many of those stellar husbands can then make a comment like, "I really enjoy spending time with you like this," and not expect a well-deserved soap-sudded fist suddenly honing in on their position? Well, I may be in a category of my own, but that scene very accurately describes me multiple times every week, as I enjoy what I consider to be a very important part of Andrea's and my intentional habits in "time together".

 

Sometime shortly after moving out to Gesas in 2010, we became tired of silently tackling the piles of dirty dishes each evening after Micah was in bed. And so, having found a number of old paperbacks left behind by our predecessors, we decided to begin the tradition of reading out loud each evening as we one of us washed dishes. What once was a loathsome duty at the end of the day, soon became the anticipation of the next episode in our novel, or stimulating chapter in our book. Over the years, our reading genres have been all across the board – classic missionary biography, legal fiction, marriage and parenting, deep theology, missiology, a Shakespeare play, Christian allegory fiction, how-to books, and on and on. This past year, much of our dish washing reading time has been consumed reading Scripture as we have committed ourselves to a "read through the Bible in a year" program, following along a sermon series preached at one of our supporting churches in 2012.

 

Although our reading/washing tradition functions like a "date" for us, we learned this summer that we enjoy having a third wheel along for the ride. It was great having Maateyos join us for three months, not only in that his place in the washing rotation kept our hands dry more often, but it was fun to share the reading of this summer's books with him. We read a series of powerful fictional stories written to challenge cross-cultural workers with real issues we all face. We read an excellent missiology/personal spirituality book called Spirituality of the Road by David Bosch. And lastly, we enjoyed a brand new book from a South African author named Marc Secchia. This book, The Enchanted Castle (Shioni of Sheba), is a fictional fantasy set in an ancient Ethiopian kingdom. Apart from the story being well-written, with well-developed characters involved in some action-packed adventures, we particularly enjoy the Ethiopian cultural insights scattered throughout. Coffee ceremonies, navigating a society of respect, ethnic diversity, traditional folklore, specific animals native only to this region, and more…it's fun to see how the author wove into the story his knowledge of life here in Ethiopia. You see, Marc is one of our colleagues over here, keeping our organization's computers alive by day, at night his fingers tap away on the latest book he is drafting. Ever wanted to experience a bit of the culture we live in?  Well, here's your chance! Check it out at http://www.amazon.com/dp/1482348667. And if you like it, we can also recommend the second book in the series, The King's Horse. Andrea and I are in the midst of this second adventure in our evening dishwashing "time together".

Bbwi

I realize there is a fine line between enjoying and making fun of a child's first words, and I readily admit to more often than not falling on the jester's side, but hey, at least I can employ my linguistic training to do so with a level of sophisticated professionalism. I'm sure Grace will appreciate that.

As a linguist, of course, I have to get technical by first over-pondering questions such as "What is the definition of a word?" and "How many recognizable repetitions constitute its realization of having completed the process of standardization in the infant's conscience?" and, of course, "What level of phonological variation would be tolerated?" I'm sure all normal parents wrestle with these issues so I need not go further.

Well, I have officially identified Grace's first word, and as you will see, it is a beauty - "bbwi." The double /bb/ at the beginning of the word is what I am using to represent the bilabial trill. That's right. Grace, no doubt wanting to make her daddy proud, chose a very cool sound to begin her first word. Y'all with Spanish influence around you know about, and are likely frustrated by, alveolar trills, that is, the Spanish "rolled" /r/. Grace's trill is in that same category except instead of occurring inside the mouth, with the tongue slapping the roof of the mouth, she chose to bring her trill out in the open with the her two lips flapping in the wind. Yes, though we might better recognize it as a poor sound effect for a motorcycle engine, the voiced bilabial trill is an actual linguistic sound used in some languages to create words. Apparently, Grace feels that she is living in one of those languages.

But she didn't stop there! Her two lips bouncing out of control wasn't quite enough lip-action to communicate what she was aiming for, so she added a common linguistic feature known as labialization, that is the /w/ that transitions from the trilled consonant /bb/ and into the vowel which then carries the syllable nucleus. I suspect that this labialization is due to assimilation to the sounds she hears in the Gmz language all around us, as labialization is very common for them as well. As a budding linguist, she was obviously very quick to pick up on that. That's my girl!

Lastly, the vowel. I have transcribed it here as an /i/ (which makes the sound of /ee/ as in /bee/), but often this vowel tends to centralize in the vowel space into something more resembling a /ə/ (which makes the sound of /uh/ as in /well huh/). Centralization of vowels is yet another common feature of the Gmz language, over which much academic ink has already been spilled. I figure by the time Grace starts kindergarten she will have cracked its mystery and presented a paper or two on the topic at academic forums across Africa and Europe.

So what does bbwi mean? Well, assuming that I was able to get the video loaded onto this post, you can likely see for yourself how this magnificently designed word finds meaning in the language of Grace. Her pronunciation in this particular take isn't quite complete, but her actions pretty well show what she means by it! If the video doesn't load or if it isn't clear to you, then think about it. What concept, highly important to an 11 month-old, deserves such a triple labialized word? It's absolute brilliance!