Linguistic Studies in Full Swing!

"You may be in the right school when your professor wrote the textbook for this subject" I told Alexis the other day.


Seriously, we are so tremendously blessed to be studying at Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics (GIAL) in Dallas. This is the world's center for Bible Translation Training. It's hard work when in a given week, we may be working with data from 10-20 languages---but we are learning the principles of language learning, which will be invaluable to our future as Bible Translators with #LBT.

Alexis Olson working on developing a grammar for Tok Pisin (a language used in PNG). This is a daily process in our homework and is good practice.

Here I am pictured with Paul Kroeger, the world's premier scholar for "Field Grammar". (He's teaching us how to make a dictionary and grammar from nothing) He wrote the textbook for the SIL class on Grammar.

Sarah Kozsan, our classmate, is putting liquefied charcoal on our professor Adam Huntley's tongue to show how a sound is made in the mouth. Tongue markings are visible on the roof of the mouth. This is called "Pallatography", and its used on the field when trying to document certain linguistic sounds. (Photo cred: Miranda Kay)

Here we are in Language and Society class, talking about "Multiplex Social Networks". We used strings to visualize how the different roles of society interact with each other. In this class, we talk about the socially appropriate ways to introduce change---such as Bibles and New Dictionaries.
It's a full course load, but we are enjoying it and thankful to God for this opportunity. Thank you to those who have supported us already in the Bible Translation mission that is soon to begin. Thank you Lutheran Bible Translators for your oversight in this training.

"this work had been accomplished with the help of our God." - Nehemiah 6:16