NTM

I sit down in a small classroom here at the Missionary Training Center. Our normally large class has been divided up into 7 smaller groups to keep these classes small. In front of me is a stack of "Far Side" comics that I thumb through in an attempt to relax myself. In walks our teacher. I haven’t met him before but too late class is starting. He reaches under his desk and pulls out a huge chart filled with letters and symbols. Some I recognize. Most I don’t. Without hesitation our teach reaches for a long pointer stick and point to something on the chart I’ve never seen before and says "this is a voiceless bilabial fricative". Phonetics class is now in session.

What is phonetics? You’d do well to ask such a question, as the definition was vague in my own mind up till a couple of days ago. Simply put studying phonetics is studying things related to the sounds used in languages. This includes learning how to make sounds used in language, and also learning how to write down the sounds that you hear.

You may be wondering why something like phonetics would be necessary for a missionary in traning. Allow me to explain why. It is probably obvious to you that we will not be teaching people the good news of Jesus in English. We will not even be teaching people in the language used as a national language for the country that they are in. We are going to share with people in what is called their "heart language". A wise man once described the heart language as the language the mothers use when speaking to their children. This is how we determine what language it is that they truly understand more than all the rest and think in predominately.

That being said there are sounds in other languages that we simply do not have in English no matter how you look at it. In thinking of a common example think of the spanish word "perro". That double r sound is called a trilled r, and that sound doesn’t really exist in English. Click here to hear how it sounds. Try mimicking.

Think about languages in Africa. The language of Swaziland is called SiSwati and they have sounds that sound like clicks. In fact they have 3 of them and each can change the meaning of the word. To hear some of those sounds click here. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to hear some of the clicking words. Now try to mimic. Now maybe you see the importance of studying sounds.

In phonetics we are currently trying to gain control of what we call our speech apparatus. You and I already have control of our speech apparatus subconsciously in order to make sounds in English. However, we want to be consciously in control of our speech apparatus so we can make non-English sounds.

Needless to say some days are harder than others. Some days you have soooo much fun, others you need some aspirin. But we would not be going through this unique class if it wasn’t for the 2,500 unreached people groups without access to the gospel. "How can they hear without a preacher…" Paul asked. And how can they understand that preacher unless he is speaking in a way that can be understood. Pray for us that we would be diligent to this training now, so that in a couple of years when we are needing to communicate the good news, we can be understand. Expanding the reach of the gospel is attainable!