Language Learning

Angie and I have been learning Turkish for 7 months now, and we will be learning for the rest of our lives. There are days where we think we're finally getting it and there are days when we think we will never learn. Lost in everyday language learning is learning the language to communicate the gospel. Recently I've been given some resources to help learn what we might term "spiritual language." Since I've began studying, I realized how important it is not just to learn what a word means from the dictionary, but I need to learn how the Turkish people view this word. It's not enough to know a words meaning you need to know the word and it's context within the culture. For example the word "gunah" is the word used for sin. In my studies I learned that most of the Turkish people view "gunah" as adultery and murder. I wanted to test this meaning out so I asked a couple of people. They immediately said "gunah" is stealing, cheating on your wife, murder, etc...Pretty much sin is all the really big things you do wrong. So I wouldn't want to just say, "See we're all sinners. I'm a sinner and you're a sinner." The person would look at me and say, "You may have done all these things, but I haven't." That wouldn't be a good starter for a conversation! So we can't just assume everyone comes from our background and automatically knows what we are talking about. This is a small example but a valuable lesson that I learned. Please pray for us. We must learn the language and learn it well. Our main job is to communicate with people. If we don't know the language well enough we can't communicate. Part of learning the language is learning the culture, which gives the language it's context.