...work on... what?
I dunno!
Anyway, you know what I found last Saturday? Poking around once more at The Talking Bible blog led me to the Talking Bibles website which led me to Audio Scriptures. At Audio Scriptures, I can listen to the recordings of the Bible online for free! I might sound like some type of advertisement, but honestly, I love this website! As a linguistics major, I love languages, and so I love hearing the sounds that people make in different languages that speakers of English couldn't possibly try to pronounce--I just like hearing different things!
But let's not forget that these languages available for a little look-see (hear-listen?) at this website are more than just exotic sounds. Take Lingala for example. Heard of it? I've never heard of it. Not until I saw it on this website. So what do I do? I click on it to hear it. What do I hear? Something African.
"Something African."?! Pardon me, I'm Asian-American (Taiwanese to be exact!), so the only non-Western European languages my ears are familiar with are the East Asian ones. But still, I can't just write off a language that people think, feel, argue, forgive, honor, encourage in as "something African." So now what do I do?
What does any curious college kid do? Why, they look it up on Wikipedia! So what does Wikipedia say?
Lingala is a Bantu language spoken throughout the northwestern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Congo-Kinshasa) and a large part of the Republic of the Congo (Congo-Brazzaville), as well as to some degree in Angola and the Central African Republic. It has over 10 million speakers.Shnikies! Over ten million people speak this language, and I've never even heard of it! People in four countries speak this language, and I've never even heard of it! The official language of two countries, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Republic of the Congo (did you even know there were two Congos?), and I've never even heard of it! About eight million people live in New York City while more than twelve million people live in Tokyo. This many people, and we probably just write them off as "something African." That doesn't sound right.
And yet, the reason I only heard about this language and its "over 10 million speakers" is because I wanted to hear some exotic sounds. That in itself doesn't sound quite right either. So you know what I really like about Audio Scriptures? It acquaints me with a part of the world I was earlier ignorant of. It isn't right just listening to sounds, so I look up the language, then its speakers, then their countries... And now what? I can pray for them.
Joshua Project is a site I like to use for more detailed information. It's a website that compiles information about different people groups. So looking at the Joshua Project website, I learn that the Lingala of DRC are already primarily Christian. The church is already fairly widespread and established, so when I pray, I can praise God for this!
See? Isn't the internet good and fun? You should try it. And as I sign off--let me leave you with a view of a beautiful page of the Bible in Lingala...
--kowai-kawaii
