Solomon Islands information

Here is some information my trip leader gave us about languages in the Solomon Islands. Fascinating stuff:


"The Solomon Islands has 69 vernacular languages.  English is the 'official' language although very few speak English.  Solomons Pijin is the trade language that people use to communicate across languages.  95% of the people know Pijin.
The population of the Solomon Islands is 500,000.  The largest language group is about 35,000 speakers.  The smallest language group is 3 speakers.
There have been 16 New Testaments completed and 2 Full Bibles.  There are 16 New Testament translation projects currently going.  There are 11 Old Testament projects in progress.  There are 24 languages that need a project started.  We consider 11 of the Solomon languages non-vialbe meaning that we won't be pursuing a translation because the language is dying out.  That means that the number of speakers is very small and most of the speakers are elderly and are not teaching their children and grandchildren to speak the language."
We will NOT be learning all 67 languages when we are there! Our team has already recieved some online lessons in Solomon Islands Pigin, which is what we will attempt to use to communicate while we are there.


I wanted to post a picture of the Solomon Islands, but for some reason my computer is being really slow so right now, so just imagine a chain of islands located northeast of Austrailia. We will mostly be staying on an Island called Guadalcanal in the capitol city of Honiara. However, we will spend a week on a different Island called Malaita.


Here is our tentative schedule:


Sunday, June 17--meet my team in Dallas and begin our week of training


June 24-27--travel to Solomon Islands


June 29-30--attend a story telling workshop


Monday, July 2-Sat, July 7--go the the island of Malaita, where we will spend the week with host families fromt the Island. We will attend the Fesitival of Pacific Arts (FOPA), which involves participants from all over the South Pacific. Members who are on the 'arts' half of our team will put on a workshop there. The rest of us (the language half) may have opportunities to use what we have learned in our story telling workshop


July 9-13--attend FOPA activities back in Honiara


July 16-21--This is a free week for the 'arts' half of our team, as the FOPA events will be over. However, it will be a busy week for me. I will get to shadow a Scripture Use Specialist, which is a special Wycliffe position with the goal making translated portions of Scripture available to the people and helping them know how to use it. We will be doing a survey of a group of people who speak the Wala langauage. Wycliffe has recorded Scripture orally through the use of technology called Megavoice. We are following up on the use of Megavoice players. I may be able to shadow the Scripture Use Specialist in previous weeks as well.


Tuesday, July 24--Leave for Figi, where we will spend the week debriefing our experience.


July 31--arrive back in the States.


On the weekend we may have opportunities to do some touring and visiting beaches and will get to attend local churches on Sunday. I am excited to worship in a different culture!