1. Introducing the Mɨship Orthography and Alphabets Chart/Progress on the Mɨship OBT so far.

A paper presented at MCCDA meeting on the 12th of June, 2025. By Rev. Caleb Katwal (Rtd). Coordinator Mɨship OBT.

The identity of any person is in the native language he or she speaks. This is because the cultural and traditional mores of any tribe are often preserved in their language. As a result, once the language is not spoken by a larger part of the tribe it gradually goes into extinction, consequently the people lose their identity.

There are many languages that are endangered and are threatened by extinction; and Mɨship language is one of them. There are many factors that can expose a language to extinction, among which areː

1. Breakdown of intergenerational transmission.

2. The dominance of some major languages e. g., Hausa and English.

3. Cultural, economic and political marginalization.

4 Government policy that adopts a single official language or lingua franca.

5. The tribe having a relatively small population with few fluent speakers.

6 Absence of a writing system and written documents in the language.

Mɨship language is clearly not immune to all the factors listed above because they are already threatening it.

One of the ways to counteract these threats is to have an orthography of the language. Therefore, since survival of any language depends on it having a writing system; it is in view of this that the NBTT Language Department has organized a series of workshops which the Mɨship Oral Bible Translation Team attended. The recent one wasː Practical Orthography Design. The two of us who attended it are here to share with you what we designed in collaboration with NBTT language Consultant and their Language Department staff as Mɨship orthography. A booklet on how to write the Mɨship language is already in progress. When published, it will enable us teach the language in our schools. It will also enable people to write literatures like Mɨship folktales and textbooks in Mɨship language for our schools. When it is published, the OBT team along with the officials of MCCDA will make a formal presentation of the booklet and the alphabets chart to the District Head – Long Mɨship.

Apart from informing you about Mɨship orthography, we are also here to inform you about the progress we have made on the Mɨship OBT. So far, we have translated the whole of the book of Luke, and we are now working on the books of Matthew, Mark and John. We have not been able to move faster, because since November last year after we had completed the translation of Luke, the work was stalled because upgrading the softwares we were using for the translation took a long time to impliment. It was on the 4th of June, that we continued with the work.

In view of the above, the MDA needs to be in the forefront in mobilizing human, material and fianancial resources to preserve the language. We cannot leave this task to NBTT and NGOs alone – especially the financial aspect. So far, they are only funding trainings and workshops on language development. As for the Mɨship OBT, the NBTT is supporting the translation Team with monthly stippens. We need to own the projects by mobilizing our people to support the work financially. Our community is far behind in this regard, compared to what other communities are doing based on our interacted with our colleagues doing the same work that we are doing.

Currently, the location we ar using for OBT is not convenient for us because of its lack of centrality to the community and the cost of transportion for the Translation Team. That is why we are requesting for a place in the Community Hall.

May God help us to work as a team in preserving our language. Amen.

Author: MCCDA