The New Testament in Kaansa (GNAWBT)

Overview

The New Testament in Kaansa was translated through the work of Stuart and Cathie Showalter, American missionary linguists serving with the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL International), a sister organization to Wycliffe Bible Translators [1][2]. The Showalters moved to the village of Loropeni in southwestern Burkina Faso, where they spent over two decades learning the Kaansa language and developing a written form for it [2]. The Kaansa language proved especially challenging, with four tones, nine vowels grouped by tongue position, seven noun classes, four grammatical genders, and complex verb morphology [2]. The Showalters developed a Latin-script orthography using 29 letters (including extended characters) and three diacritics [1][2]. After approximately 23 years of work, the New Testament translation was completed and went to press, with the text copyrighted in 2018 by Wycliffe Bible Translators, Inc. [3]. A mobile app with synchronized audio and text, allowing readers to follow along sentence by sentence, is also available [3].

Language and People

Kaansa (ISO 639-3: gna) is spoken by approximately 6,000 people in Burkina Faso. [Glottolog: kaan1246]

Publishing and Organizations

Published by Wycliffe Bible Translators USA.

References