Choosing a Standard

On a weekend visit to a province north of where we live, we stopped in a drugstore to pick up a few things we'd forgotten. We understood the local teenage-clerk behind the counter perfectly well--when she spoke to us. We didn't understand anything she said when she turned to chat with a friend in the store. What was the difference? She spoke standard Dutch to us and the local dialect with her friend. But who decided, way back when, which of the many local Dutch dialects would become the standard? Why the people in the nation's capital, over there on the west coast. (Even our image of typical Dutch costumes comes from the west--photo from 1993 OC Tulip Time.)

Typically those in power in a nation choose the standard. But what if your language isn't centered in one particular nation-state? What if, for instance, you are Romany? After all, it can be really handy to have a standard from speaking to spelling. I don't try to write down things the way my mother pronounced them (upper Midwest accent) and Keith doesn't try to write things down the way his mother pronounced them (TEXAN). No, we have a standard. It's imperfect (right?), but it's standard.*

The International Romani Union realized this. In 1990, they approved an international Romani alphabet to help unite Romani** around the world. 

The Romani Bible Translation Committee also decided to go for a translation into Standard Romani. You can read more about it or read more in that Standard on their website.

You can hear AND read that language in the recently completed Gospel of John. 

And you can pray for the translators, voices, technicians who are making this Standard Romani version of the Gospel available. (Feel free to pray in any version of any language you choose!)

*Our daughter spent a couple of months in second grade at a school in North Carolina. On a spelling test, she wrote down exactly what she heard her teacher say:  "fav." The word was "5". 

**Romani can refer to the language or to the group of people.