Quechua language breakthrough

My parents have known Dan and Diane Hintz for twenty years. They have served many years with Wycliffe Bible Translators in Peru and are currently in California pursuing a doctoral degree, but still make periodic trips to Peru to help advance the continuing work there. Being a Latin American missions enthusiast myself, I was very encouraged to read their most recent newsletter. Below is an exerpt from the letter that describe a breakthrough in understanding the Quechua language (it has multiple dialects). Imagine what a difference this understanding will make as the Bible continues to be translated and revised. Read and rejoice!

Dear praying friends,

Greetings from Huaraz, Peru! I’m glad to be here for the second time this summer. This trip coincides with the Old Testament translation workshop here in Huaraz. It’s been great to see my Wycliffe colleagues and the Quechua co-translators.

During the previous trip I was working on “aspect time reference”, that is, how Quechua grammar expresses the way events and situations unfold over time. I was really happy to apply this study of verbal aspect to the translation of Genesis, which is now in print.

On this current trip I’m focusing on the way elements of personal experience become marked as “shared knowledge” during the course of conversations. Quechua has a set of word-final suffixes that have puzzled me for years. I remember praying 10 years ago that God would help me to understand these suffixes. Then 2 years ago their meaning became clear when I presented a paper in a university class on linguistic anthropology.

There is nothing in European languages like these Quechua suffixes. It turns out that Quechua speakers use two different suffixes to indicate “personal knowledge” (one for high certainty and the other for low certainty). In addition, they use two other suffixes to express shared or “mutual knowledge”. Over time, this mutual knowledge can eventually lead to “general knowledge”. I was surprised to learn that the grammatical marking of personal versus mutual/shared knowledge hasn’t previously been described for any language.

This is an exciting discovery not only for linguistic researchers, but also for our Quechua Old Testament co-translators. Last week I taught how these suffixes work together to distinguish personal versus shared knowledge, and it was so fun to watch them catch on to this new concept and apply it to Scripture translation. We had a lively discussion on their experiences using these small, but crucial suffixes in the translations. Lunch that afternoon was filled with laughter as they created humorous plays on words using these “knowledge” suffixes, which are a little different in each of these Quechuan languages. I was so happy as this showed just how well they had understood.



In the picture above, Quechua friend Reida Valenzuela, whose family helped with the revision of Genesis, reads it to her nephew’s wife, Eva, holding her newborn baby. (In Quechua culture, the baby won’t be named until the “hair-cutting” ceremony in about a year.) It's a little hard to see the baby, but isn't it wonderful to know this little one will grow up hearing the Word of the Lord? In the picture below is a view from an Andean mountain trail, with a rainbow signifying God's promise and the hope we have in Him.