Bzulu bziwiri na kumi na mawiri or 2012 or whatever...
There are parts of Bible translation we don't really think about... We just got an email asking about how we plan to write numbers. Do you spell them out or do you write the numerals? There is a "rule" in English where anything over ten you usually just use a numeral in a text. (Though I noticed this isn't followed in the English Bible I use.) There just aren't any norms for this in Nyungwe. There aren't lots of books written, so you can't just see what other people are doing. Besides, it is a bit more complicated than following rules. In many African languages the counting system is a little cumbersome. It takes a lot of long words to spell out a big number. It is common to hear English or Portuguese numbers spoken in the middle of a Nyungwe or Chewa conversation. It isn't that the numbers don't exist in the language, but they just use English or Portuguese numbers because they are easier or they are used to them. So this morning, we were t...