Post 64 / The Next Language
November 8, 2021
New Discoveries
I almost called this a new language but pulled myself up to realize the language had always been there. What was new was our awareness of it.
Most of the unrecorded languages in Mexico were well documented from SIL surveys or prior mission contacts. For the most part we are talking about a list of about 100 languages that already had language numbers and even ISO codes. They were languages that because of size or language use or proximity of related languages with translation projects these were not deemed necessary to have a New Testament.
In our systematic “fishing” trips we are finding notable exceptions. A married couple in a church here in Oaxaca let us know that they were familiar with our recordings but had never heard anything in their language. It was Zapoteco: San Francisco Yovego. We took a word list. We played the nearest recordings which were Zapoteco: Rincon and a couple of others. They could understand a lot of it but there were some words that were meaningless to them. They wanted something in their own language. As I am writing this Adriana is making up the final master of a recording that rehearses many of the valiant men of faith of the Old Testament culminating in the Story of Jesus. By tomorrow morning this will be uploaded and sitting in the studios of Australia being ingested and readied for 5fish.mobi . It will then be available worldwide and more significantly to the digital world of the Yovego.
Since starting on this project we have come to know that this language covers a number of villages and because it was unknown it was not on any lists of unreached languages. It did not have a language number nor an assigned ISO code. It looks to deserve a unique code of its own. Maybe even eventually a New Testament of its own. These kinds of discoveries are pretty rare in the world today. Much more exciting than a new salamander or such things as excite botanists.
We are hoping that we will be able to get a positive response from a nearby store owner who gave us a word list but also does not understand any of the Zapoteco recordings we have played for her. If not we may be dealing with another language that has been missed in the modern mission movement here in Mexico.
God Bless,
Larry DeVilbiss | Executive Director
Global Recordings Network USA
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