As linguists, it is a truism that our intellectual work depends on the communities of native speakers whose languages we study, but there is not always a simple practical way to give back for all we gain. Projects like this one and those supported by Endangered Language Fund generally provide this opportunity.

For me, this particular project is personal. I am sure you have many other causes that are important to you, but perhaps you will feel, as I do, that this one speaks more specifically to what we do. I hope you will be part of our effort to provide this needed benefit to the Kinande-speaking community.

Over the last several years, you probably know that I have been managing an NSF sponsored project to study the languages of Africa and part of that mandate is to report our work on the Afranaph project website.

An essential part of this project involves collaborating with native speaker linguists who provide detailed information about their language, and sometimes our common interests expand from there. I write to you today because one of my collaborators, Professor Philip Ngessimo Mutaka, has recently completed Kinande/English and Kinande/French dictionaries as part of a project that long predates the Afranaph project (indeed his collaborator on the dictionary, Kambale Kavutirwaki, is now deceased). The Kinande/French dictionary will soon be available at the website of the Royal Belgian Museum at Terveuren, who are the publishers of that version of the dictionary and own all rights to it, and the Kinande/English version of the dictionary is posted here at the Afranaph website, but these postings are mostly for the benefit of the scholarly community.

For the dictionaries to have practical use in the Kinande-speaking communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda, as well as for the Kinande-speaker diaspora (which has come in to being due to the ongoing tensions and unrest in the region), hard copies of these dictionaries are necessary. Once printed, these dictionaries would be distributed for free to schools, churches, hospitals, municipal government, NGOs operating in the region and others who serve the community and the (small) remainder would be sold to cover additional costs of printing and distribution. Afranaph is not involved in the printing or distribution of the Kinande/French dictionary, which we do not have the right to reproduce, but for the printing and distribution of the Kinande/English dictionary, money needs to be raised. I am asking you to make a contribution, via the Endangered language Fund (see below) to help us put this dictionary into the hands of those who will use them for very practical purposes.

I would like you to understand that Professor Mutaka and I, both together and separately, have appealed to or applied to a variety of agencies, foundations and institutions for these funds without success. Kinande has too many extant native speakers to meet the Endangered Language Fund threshold, and a funding agency that supports indigenous dictionary projects in the Rift Valley of Africa, for example, rejected the proposal on the grounds that they limit their projects to portions of the Rift Valley north and east of Uganda, not to the portion that divides the DRC and Uganda. In other words, this project has (literally!) 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 establish viability with our initial fundraising and thereby attract a donor or two willing to contribute matching funds.

No profit will accrue to any group or individual administering funds for the publication and distribution of the dictionary beyond costs for fees and services. I am constrained to say that I will not play any role in the printing and distribution myself and I will not be able to monitor how the money is spent, but I fully trust Professor Mutaka, who has worked with me and a number of others as a consulting linguist, to be the honest broker in this enterprise. The tax accounting that is required of the ELF will result in documents that provide information about expenditures and these will be available on request from ELF. Our fundraising goal is $10,000, and at this writing (11/2008), we have raised about 30% of the money.

Unless you tell me otherwise, we will treat all contributions as anonymous and only ELF will know that you have contributed (and me, if you tell me so). If you choose to make your contribution public and you contribute $100 or more, then your name will appear on a contributors page in the dictionary when the print version is published, but your name will not otherwise appear on our site or in our other solicitations.

Also on this page is a file that contains a more detailed description of the project including a budget and a plan for distribution. I will be happy to answer any questions that you may have about the project. You can reach me by return email or by telephone at 732 828-6422.

Donations can be made by logging on to Network for Good at this link, 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 this link.

Mail the donation form along with your contribution to:

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.

All the best, Ken