Kinande Dictionary Fund - Project Description

The Kinande Dictionary Fund, which is being financially administered by the Endangered Language fund, seeks funds to publish, print and distribute the Kinande/English and Kinande/French dictionary prepared by Professor Ngessimo (Philip) Mutaka, University of Yaounde 1, and Kambale Kavutirwaki (deceased). This dictionary is currently published online on the website of the NSF-funded African Anaphora (Afranaph) Project of which Ken Safir is principal investigator. Although the Afranaph site is designed to initiate and facilitate linguistic research, we also want our studies to be fully accessible to those with a community stake in the knowledge we chronicle and explore. These include schools, hospitals, NGOs operating in the area and any other significant groups offering community services, for whom the online version is impractical, but who would certainly benefit from hard copies distributed for free. The current estimated cost of the project (printing in Uganda and distributed from there) is approximately $18,000. NSF does not provide funds for this purpose and it is not their mission.

We wish to note that we applied to a wide variety of agencies, foundations and institutions for these funds without success. Kinande has too many extant native speakers to meet the Endangered Language Fund threshhold, and a funding agency that supports indigenous dictionary projects in the Rift Valley of Africa rejected the proposal on the grounds that they are in fact limit their projects to portions of the valley in Kenya. In other words, this project has fallen between the cracks. Though we shall continue to seek funding from foundations, NGOs and institutions, we believe that it is time to jump-start the process and seek to raise the funds piecemeal, particularly since the total amount we seek does not seem hopelessly beyond what we can raise by personal solicitation, particularly if we can attract a donor or two willing to contribute matching funds. 

The dictionaries are an outstanding empirical and intellectual achievement (hence our scientific interest), and include an essay on Kinande grammar and an extensive appendix on the names and uses of medicinal plants. Although Nande number more than 600,000 first language speakers, the language and its people are under stress in ways the proposal will address. The project will executed and administered by Professor Mutaka, who has assembled a team in the Uganda/Congo Rift Valley area.

The current plan is for the dictionary to be printed in Uganda (Professor Mutaka has obtained estimates from two publishers in Kampala who estimate a cost of $6-7 per copy (there are currency fluctuations, so our estimate per unit cost should be higher, more like $8, in order to be sure the project is properly funded). We expect to produce between 800-1000 copies of each dictionary (the French/Kinande dictionary and the English/Kinande dictionary).

Donations can be made by logging on to Network for Good:

https://www.networkforgood.org/donate/MakeDonation2.aspx?ORGID2=061459207

which should open to the ELF page. Designate the purpose of your donation as Kinande Dictionary. Alternatively, avoid a Paypal fee and write a check to ELF (designating your donation for  Kinande Dictionary). To do this, fill out an ELF donation form (which also allow credit card donation), to be found at 

http://www.endangeredlanguagefund.org/how_form.html

Mail the donation form along with your contribution to 

    The Endangered Language Fund

    300 George Street, Suite 900

    New Haven, CT 06511

    Email: elf@endangeredlanguagefund.org

Donations can also be made by credit card over the phone to ELF , call (203) 865-6163, x265. Whatever method you choose be sure you stipulate that the money is for the Kinande Dictionary or else the money will not be credited to that purpose and it will not be spent for that purpose.

What follows is a more detailed proposal based on the one that Professor Mutaka prepared in an application to a funding agency.

Funding proposal for the Kinande dictionary

1. NAME AND ADDRESS OF PRIMARY RESEARCHER

Ngessimo M. Mutaka

Department of Linguistics 

University of Yaounde 1

P.O. Box 755 Yaounde, Cameroon

Email: pmutaka@yahoo.com

2. NAME WHERE LANGUAGE AND COUNTRY WHERE IT IS SPOKEN

Kinande (D42 in Guthrie’s classification) is spoken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Kinande is also spoken in Uganda under the name of Konzo (J41 in Guthrie’s classification)

3. duration of Project 

3 months, to be initiated when sufficient funds are raised

4. Total budget as of March, 2007

16,950 USD (including 1950 USD corresponding to 13% of overhead costs). Given the uncertainty of exchange rates and the uncertainties in local economies, we have set $18,000 as our funding goal.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PROJECT

a. Quick summary of the project and why is Kinande an endangered language?

Objective of this project:

This project is about the printing, publishing and dissemination of a Kinande dictionary that is already written. We seek funding because we want to get copies of this dictionary cheaply to the Nande and Konzo communities. The whole project will cost 16,950 dollars; we hope that whatever funding we might obtain from GBS will be communicated to other potential sponsors that would allow us to print the dictionary and make it accessible to the Nande and Konzo communities at an affordable price; most copies from the first printing will be donated for free to these communities.

Why is Kinande an endangered language and why would the dictionary help safeguard it?

Although the Nande speakers of eastern DRC are estimated at 903,000 inhabitants (Ethnologue), Kinande is an endangered language because of the following reasons:  

(a) As an aftermath of the idea of creating the so-called “évolués” class by the colonial masters, the Nande elites preferred teaching Swahili to their offspring instead of Kinande. (The term ‘évolués’ can be translated by “black African citizens who live like Europeans”). The Kinande language is thus mostly restricted to rural areas. With the rural exodus, many youths tend to speak Swahili; 

(b) It is virtually the case that the young generation living in cities does not speak the language. Some can understand it because their parents still speak it; 

(c) Special knowledge related to medicinal plants, phrasal expressions, names of trees, birds, etc. is now unknown by at least 95% of the Nande population. It is very urgent to safeguard this type of knowledge and make the population re-learn it.

Due to the recent war in DRC, the Nande population has become aware of the importance of the mother tongue. To avoid being targeted by the local militias, one had to prove that he/she can speak Kinande. Those who did not speak Kinande in Butembo and its surroundings were associated to the foreign infiltrators. Because of this, Nande people now know that, to be identified as a true Nande native, one has to speak Kinande. The repatriation of this dictionary among the Nande and Konzo natives will thus serve three urgent needs: 

(a) to help the Nande and Konzo speakers re-learn their language and their culture so as to better appreciate the cultural heritage of their community; 

(b) to safeguard the language, notably, the cultural elements that are conveyed by the language and which are in danger of extinction ; this is the case of the knowledge of  medicinal plants and the phrasal expressions ; 

(c) to provide a reliable sketch of the Kinande grammar to the scientific community. 

b. Who will need the dictionary ?

the grassroots communities who are involved in the economic development of the country

the Konzo speakers of Uganda who have requested the English version of the dictionary because they plan to be using it in their primary schools.

 the Catholic schools,

the Protestant schools

the secondary school students who need to improve their French and/or their English

Government agencies, NGOs and hospitals who are non-speakers of Kinande and will need to communicate with members of the community.

all the active members of the Nande/Konzo communities who are aware of the necessity of expressing themselves correctly in a language (Kinande/Konzo, French, English) in order to fully participate to the re-building of the country. It is a tool that contributes to the capacity building of the populations by reinforcing their self-esteem (for example, in being proud of their culture and also of feeling comfortable while using English and French when expressing their views on current topics such as the fight against AIDS, the fight against endemic diseases, the intergenerational transmission of the Nande’s cultural values in a bid to prevent the events which are at the origin of the war that has deeply traumatized the Nande population, etc.)

c. Quantity and destination of copies that will be distributed:

d. Who will account for the use of the donated funds:

In Butembo : Father Kahumba Ambroise, rector of the theological seminary. He will be designated by Mgr. Sikuli Paluku Melchisedech to head the commission in charge of distributing the dictionaries to the grassroots communities. Alternatively, the Catholic bishop might ask the nuns of the “Petites Soeurs de la Présentation” to be in charge of the distribution of the dictionaries. During Mutaka’s short stay in Butembo when he collected the material on medicinal plants, a group of these religious nuns were present when the bishop received him and they showed their great enthusiasm in obtaining both versions of the dictionary. It is at that occasion that the necessity of making the dictionary available to the Nande community was discussed as it was found out that it would be useful not only to the schools but also to other development agencies working in the area such as NGOs, hospitals, and the grassroots communities who would be using it as a resource book for various literacy needs. The nuns’ enthusiasm has remained a great motivation for Prof. Mutaka, the dictionary compiler, to see to it that the Nande communities have access to the dictionary. We expect that a portion of dictionary copies will be donated free of charge and that another portion will be sold so that the benefits be used for the printing of further copies and their dissemination among the Nande community. The volume of dictionaries to be sold and the modalities to sell them are presented in Annex 2.

In Uganda: Stanley Baluku will be in charge of the distribution of the samples of the dictionary and he will identify individuals who will sell the dictionary. The collected money will also serve for re-printing the dictionary and selling it to the Konzo people.

e. Why is this dictionary important to linguistic science?

Originally, this dictionary was destined to be published by the Tervuren museum in Belgium. Prof. Yvonne Bastin and Prof. Claire Grégoire of the Tervuren museum as well as Prof. Larry Hyman of the University of California at Berkeley and Dr. Robert Hedinger of SIL/Yaounde have been closely associated to its elaboration. Prof. Ken Safir of Rutgers University convinced the dictionary compiler to allow him to publish it on the African Anaphora project website because of its scientific value for the linguistics community. This dictionary also contains features that are not usually found in dictionaries: e.g. the medicinal plants known to the Nande, treatment of certain diseases with the use of the medicinal plants, the phrasal expressions. The dictionary satisfies both the scientific linguistics community and the Nande/Konzo natives. Linguists will be motivated to read it because of the grammatical sketch of the Kinande grammar in the introduction as well as an analysis of the underlying forms of lexical root entries; the Nande and Konzo natives will find it practical for solving some of the daily problems they encounter, for example, how to treat poisoning that has become rampant in the area as an aftermath of the recent war in DRC, and to re-learn their own culture as elements of it are uniquely illustrated through some lexical entries.

BUDGET

Important Note: The committee in charge of producing the dictionary has estimated that it should be produced in Uganda and copies will then be carried to Butembo by road. The committee chose Uganda because there is no reliable printing shop in the area inhabited by the Nande. In addition, the committee thought that, if the dictionary is produced in Europe, it will be very expensive and that the Nande and Konzo speakers for whom this dictionary has been primarily written will not afford it. To give an idea on the price, Rüdiger Köppe in Germany sells Research Mate in African Linguistics (by Mutaka and Chumbow, eds.; 360 pages ) at 70 US dollars.

Annex 1 : Guess estimate of the cost per copy (cf. based on  figures obtained in Uganda in January 2003. Stanley Baluku is currently seeking updated figures from other printing shops in Uganda)

Paper: A-5 size

Document of 500 pages, 500 copies

Paper : about 250 reams (A4)  = 1.125.000 shillings

Plates: about 250 plates @ 5000 shillings = 1.250.000 shillings

Printing: 250 plates @ 3.000 shillings  = 750.000 shillings

Covers : =  50.000 shillings

Binding: = 500.000 shillings

Paper waste: =   45.000 shillings

Total: = 3.720.000 shillings

Cost per copy: around 7.500 shillings

Cost in U.S. dollars: between  $3.8 and $4.

With professional charges:  = $6.2

(The cost for producing 500 copies on an A-5 size format is:  6.2 U.S. dollars  per copy)

Here are the email addresses of the publisher:

Martin Mbonye, Administrative officer

email: mmbonye@yahoo.com or  nic_nak44@hotmail.com

Tel. +256 77 958042