COMMUNICATION
I started reading Uncle Cam by James and Marti Hefley this past week. It’s the story of William Cameron Townsend, founder of Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Summer Institute of Linguistics. The first Indian tribe Cam worked with was the Cakchiquels in Guatemala. I was impressed with the following communication problem: He further discovered that the Cakchiquels had their own numerical system. “One person” meant twenty, “two people” meant forty, and so on. When he learned that this was because one person has ten fingers and ten toes, it made sense. He always felt a surge of satisfaction upon finding new evidence of Indian smartness. The Cakchiquels weren’t stupid. You just needed to understand them and their language. [Maybe this explains why the deacon and the pastor have trouble agreeing on the total count of the house at Sunday morning worship. They’re just using different numbering systems. JSH, ed.]
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