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Unique Languages of the World
- 2015/4/9
- Asia Project, コラム・読み物
Bible Printing: New Life Ministries’ “Life Work”
Ever heard of these before? Malayalam, Oromo, Pinyin…?
To date, thanks to the support and prayers of donors around the world, New Life Ministries has printed Bibles and Gospel literature in over 80 languages, totaling over 200 million copies!
Of those 80 languages, here is a sampling of just a few of them:
The Holy Bible in Malayalam
In the southwestern part of India, Malayalam is one of the local languages with a very unique character set.
・Area: Kerala State, Lakshadweep Islands, Pondicherry
・Number of Speakers of the Language: Around 38 Million
Source: Wikipedia
The Holy Bible in Oromo
In the region where Ethiopia borders Kenya, such groups as the Oromo and the Welge speak this interesting language. Although they also used Romanized characters nowadays, they still use the Ge’ez script as shown in the photo from their Bible (above).
・Area: Eastern Africa
・Number of Speakers of the Language: Around 26 Million
Source: Wikipedia
Mongolian Bible
The above is handwritten Mongolian, taken from a portion of the Book of Genesis. The text is written and read vertically from right to left.
・Area: East Asia
・Number of Speakers of the Language: Between 5 and 6 Million
Source: Wikipedia
The New Testament in Pinyin
In order to help with pronunciation of Chinese, this New Testament has Romanized wordings, called Pinyin, over the Chinese characters. This is also very helpful for people learning Chinese.
・Area: East Asia, Southeast Asia
・Number of Speakers of the Language: Over 1.3 Billion
Source: Wikipedia
What do you think? Interesting right?
For each of the projects that New Life Ministries does for these languages, we are working with fellow ministries for the printing. It is our great hope that we may be able to provide the needed Bibles for “every tribe and tongue” in their heart languages so they may come to know the Good News of Jesus. If you want to help support a Bible printing project with New Life Ministries, check the link below!
For more on the Asia Project, click here.
*This article was originally published in Japanese in the March 2015 edition of the Tsunagari.
