On Being a Language Pragmatist

The goal of language learning and language use for any missionary should be effective spiritual communication. The goal is not the language itself, but rather faith that comes by hearing. Because of this, language is the necessary tool, the vehicle by which a missionary is able to achieve effective communication.

Now, if you have been reading this blog for a while you will know that I think language itself is a stunning and wonderful thing – but that it’s also a limited thing. Humans in general are not usually awake to the wonder of language. And many missionaries don’t learn the local language nearly well enough because doing so can be such hard work. However, many missionaries also like to fight about language, elevating language learning and language usage choices to the level of dogma, seemingly believing that it will make or break a ministry or church planting movement if you don’t get it perfect.

But because we love language and yet are also very aware of its limitations, we are language pragmatists. This posture means we will happily use whatever language makes for the deepest understanding of the truth we are trying to communicate. In this posture of language pragmatism, I believe we have a precedent in God himself, who in the Bible happily switches from Hebrew to Aramaic to Greek and also throws in 80-some Persian loan words for good measure. In this, the God of the Bible is refreshingly contrasted with the deity of Islam who rigidly confines the language of heaven and prayer to one earthly tongue – 7th century Arabic – and demands that all his followers do the same now and in the life to come. As if the weight of eternity could possibly be borne by one human tongue alone.

Now, don’t get me wrong. This posture of language pragmatism doesn’t make us care less about language learning. It actually makes us more serious about our study of a given tongue. Again, when the goal is effective communication of God’s truth, then you can’t help but notice when the majority of the population isn’t being reached by the global, regional, or trade languages being used by most Christian efforts among your people group. These other tongues might be good for reaching a subset of the population who have second or third-language proficiency in them. But if they are ineffective in carrying gospel truth to those inner places of the heart and mind where true understanding takes place, then the language pragmatist will adjust accordingly and try to master the indigenous tongue. He’ll be bad at it for a good long while, but that same filter of effective communication will drive him forward until he reaches a higher and higher level in the local language – or whatever language he needs in order to fulfill his ministry.

Perhaps some stories will help illustrate what this looks like on the ground. During the beginning of our first term, our supervisors told us explicitly not to share the gospel in English. They were worried that if we got into this habit, we would lack the motivation to learn the local language well enough to be able to share in it effectively. And also, that our local friendships would stay forever fixed in the language they began in.

The problem was we were English teachers. So, while we were still speaking the local language like toddlers, some of our advanced students were reading English versions of Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984, and wanting to discuss it with us. When the doors opened for spiritual conversation with these advanced students, we felt conscience-bound to switch to English as often as necessary for the sake of clarity and understanding. Our supervisors, in their zeal for the local language, had fallen into a kind of rigidity that caused them to confuse the goal with the means.

In the long run, we found that our local friends were also language pragmatists. They were happy to switch to whichever language led to deeper understanding or relational connection. To this day, we still might bounce back and forth between advanced local language and advanced English as needed in a given conversation.

Consider another example. One of our sister people groups speaks their mother tongue at home and with one another, but is only able to read and write in the dominant regional language. This means that their Bible studies are always a bilingual affair. The Bible is read in the regional language but the discussion takes place in their oral mother tongue. Our colleagues who work among this people group have taken the wise (and pragmatic) approach of seeking to learn both languages.

Some language purists might object that the real goal should be to get these locals reading and writing their own language. And this may very well be an excellent long-term goal. We fully support increased literacy all around, especially when it comes to the language a person dreams in, prays desperate prayers in, and yells in when they stub their toe. But in the meantime, use the tools you have, and don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

While using those good tools, ask these two questions continually: 1) Is effective communication currently taking place? And 2) Would our communication of spiritual things be more effective were we to use a different language? These questions keep the missionary safe from the risk of assuming communication is actually taking place – an assumption that is all too easy when you’ve been told by others the ‘right’ language in which to do ministry.

But hold on, isn’t pragmatism bad when it comes to missions? Only sometimes. Only when we are being pragmatic about things the Bible would have us be principled about. Using ministry salaries to bribe people into becoming Christians is pragmatic in the wrong way. Using whichever language is best to communicate a concept such as atonement is being pragmatic in the best sense. When the Bible gives freedom to follow practical wisdom in a given area, then Christians should walk in that freedom – enjoy it, even – rather than creating their own little missiological laws to then be bound by.

The wonderful truth is that the Bible does not demand we use any given language in order to do God’s work. Instead, we are completely and utterly free to use any of them to effectively communicate the gospel. Each of the world’s 6,000-plus languages has a unique glory all its own, one that will shine forth in worship in this age as well as in the age to come. This means they each belong to us, the heirs of that resurrection. And we can grab any handful of them that we need to (as our limited brains allow) in order to preach the gospel, plant churches, and disciple the saints.

So, consider joining us in becoming pragmatists – language pragmatists, that is. It’s really quite freeing.

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A Mass of Perceptions, Clichés, Judgements, and Inspirations

But we can expect the language history of the world to be revealing in another way. A language community is not just a group marked out by its use of a particular language: it is an evolving communion in its own right, whose particular view of the world is informed by a common language tradition. A language brings with it a mass of perceptions, clichés, judgements, and inspirations. In some sense, then, when one language replaces another, a people’s view of the world must also be changing.

– Ostler, Empires of the Word, p.13

The languages we speak greatly affect our worldviews. This is humbling because we often cannot even see the ways our languages have influenced the way we think until we learn another language, another ‘lens’ for interpreting life with its own unique take on things.

I never knew that English was limiting me to one word for ‘uncle’ until I learned our Central Asian language, which uses different terms for an uncle on the mother’s side vs. an uncle on the father’s side. This distinction led to my friend Adam* recently asking my kids, who call him Uncle Adam in English, whether he was an uncle on my side or on my wife’s side. The unanimous vote among the offspring was that he was an uncle on my wife’s side, which my kids probably chose for reasons of their own. However, if they were from our Central Asian people group, they would know that this means that Adam would be less important when it came to legal and identity matters, yet because of that viewed as the more affectionate, relational type of uncle. Dad’s side is for the official stuff. Mom’s side for the relational.

Here, the local language reinforces the local worldview that there are major distinctions to be made between the father’s side of the family vs. the mother’s side. Were our locals to get so good at English that they eventually stop using their own language, this distinction in the culture may also eventually fade away.

Ostler is right. You can never change languages without also experiencing worldview change. This interplay is something worth keeping an eye out for.

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*Names changed for security

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Indigenous Church or International Church?

This video from the Great Commission Council seeks to clarify the difference between an indigenous church and an international church. For many contexts around the world, it shouldn’t be an either/or, but a both/and. Healthy international churches and indigenous churches can work together to see a city reached. The difference is that one ministers in the indigenous language and culture and the other ministers in a globally or regionally dominant language and culture (such as English).

It is of crucial importance that both kinds of assemblies aim to fulfill the New Testament’s vision for a local church. International churches need to watch out for how transience and a “lowest common denominator for the sake of unity” posture can keep them from becoming healthy churches that exhibit all twelve needed characteristics. Indigenous churches likewise need to watch out for how local culture will be a barrier to their growth into full maturity.

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The Past Careers of Languages

The past careers of languages are as diverse as the worlds that each language has created for its speakers. They have suffered very different fates: some (like Sanskrit or Aramaic) growing to have speaker populations distributed across vast tracts, but ultimately shrinking to insignificance; others (such as the languages of the Caucasus or Papua) twinkling steadily in inaccessible refuges; others still yielding up their speakers to quite different traditions (as in so many parts of North and South America, Africa and Australia). Some (such as Egyptian and Chinese) maintained their speakers and their traditions for thousands of years in a single territory, defying all invaders; others (such as Greek and Latin) spread by military invasion, but ultimately lost ground to new invaders.

Often enough, one tradition has piggybacked on another, ultimately supplanting it. One big language parasitises another, and in a ‘coup de main’ takes over the channels built up over generations. This is a common trick as empires succeed one another, in every time and continent: Persia’s Aramaic made good use of the networks established for Lydian in seventh-century Asia Minor; in the sixteenth century, Spanish usurped the languages of the Aztecs and Incas, using them to rule in Mexico and Peru; and in the early days of British India, English and Urdu gained access to power structures built in Persian. But the timescale on which these changing fortunes have been played out is astonishingly varied: a single decade may set the pattern for a thousand years to follow, as when Alexander took over the eastern Mediterranean from the Persians: or a particular trend may assert itself little by little, mile by mile, village by village, over thousands of years: just so did Chinese percolate in East Asia.

– Ostler, Empires of the Word, pp. 11-12

A few thoughts:

The Central Asian language we have learned is a mountain language, one of those “twinkling steadily in inaccessible refuges.” This is how it survived as successive larger and more powerful languages of empires washed over one another down on the plains. Never underestimate the power of mountains to preserve languages and cultures.
‘Coup de main’ means a surprise attack or a quick, forceful military action, “blow with the hand” in French. Had to look this up just now since Ostler didn’t provide a translation or footnote. It’s curious how many authors still assume their English readers don’t need the translations of French terms like this one. This is probably from our own language history where French was viewed as the language of the educated elite during the period of Middle English, a tradition that still leaves traces like this here and there.
It is remarkable and unpredictable how quickly a language’s fortunes can change in a given area. In our region, the past several decades have seen the “backward” language of the mountains and nomads become more dominant in our area than the three massive surrounding languages. This is largely because of accidents of American foreign policy in our people group’s favor. This surprising takeover has happened even while little pockets of the languages of ancient empires still barely manage to hold on among minorities. And all the while the internet and globalization mean that English is making massive inroads into each of these language communities. Thirty five years ago this picture would have seemed impossible.

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A Saying for Those Living Under a Rock

Have you been sleeping in the ear of a bull?

-Local Oral Tradition

Tonight I was enjoying some fish and chips at a downtown Indianapolis plaza while recovering from a long day of support-raising training. Suddenly, I found myself recruited by strangers to join a team for the Taylor Swift trivia competition about to begin in the plaza. I warned my three enthusiastic new friends that I was one of the worst people they could possibly find for knowing pop music trivia. When it comes to superstars like Taylor Swift, I have very much been living under a rock. Or, as my Central Asian friends say, sleeping in the ear of a bull. And I am okay with that. There are Central Asian idioms to learn, after all.

Alas, the Swifties recruited me anyway. Funnily enough, I did help them get the answer right to the first song Swift ever learned on her guitar. But this was only because anyone who was a teenager beginning to learn the guitar in the 2000s was bound to quickly learn Kiss Me by Sixpence None the Richer. It was easy, catchy, and made you sound much better than you were. This deduction shocked us all by actually being correct and left my much younger teammates (who had been stumped by the question) thoroughly impressed. I also helped them spell the name of Zayn Malik, not because I know anything about him as an artist, but simply because I’ve had Muslim friends named Zayn or Malik. You really never know when two utterly isolated fields of knowledge are going to suddenly intersect.

Anyway, back to Central Asia. “Have you been sleeping in the ear of a bull?” is the kind of idiom someone would throw out when a person is ignorant of something that has become common knowledge to seemingly everyone else. In English, we would say things like “Where have you been?” or “How could you not know that?” or “Have you been living under a rock?” Imagine someone in the US not knowing that America is facing the slow-motion train wreck of Trump vs. Biden 2.0, for example.

My unbelieving Central Asian friends might use this saying when they’re insisting that it’s really the US who controls groups like ISIS as part of its grand puppet master strategy for the Middle East. And my believing local friends might use it when foreign Christians reveal that we don’t really understand what Jesus is talking about with the whole wineskins thing. Their common experience with using goat skins for liquids that ferment makes Jesus’ parable about the kingdom needing new goatskins super straightforward, something everyone surely knows – unless they’ve been asleep under a rock, that is, or in the ear of a bull.

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Every Language Has a Chance at Immortality

Every language is learnt by the young from the old, so that every living language is the embodiment of a tradition. That tradition is in principle immortal. Languages change, as they pass from the lips of one generation to the next, but there is nothing about this process of transmission which makes for decay or extinction. Like life itself, each new generation can receive the gift of its language afresh. And so it is that languages, unlike any of the people who speak them, need never grow infirm, or die.

Every language has a chance at immortality, but this is not to say that it will survive for ever. Genes too, and the species they encode, are immortal; but extinctions are a commonplace of palaeontology. Likewise, the actual lifespans of language communities vary enormously. The annals of language history are full of languages that have died out, traditions that have come to an end, leaving no speakers at all.
Ostler, Empires of the Word, pp. 7-8

Even more than the linguist, the Christian knows that every language has a chance at immortality. The presence of the world’s diverse languages in the Son of Man vision of Daniel 7 and the heavenly throne room vision of Revelation 7 imply that many languages will indeed be immortal, living forever on the lips of their redeemed speakers. This makes practical sense since no one human language is sufficient on its own to describe God in all his wonder. In fact, we may need to invent some new ones to account for the new experiences of finally seeing God face to face, having friends who are angels, possessing spiritual bodies, etc.

What do we make of the languages that have gone extinct in world history? If we take the promises of “all languages” literally, then we would need to insist that there were believers somehow present in all of those language groups in time past. More likely, the “all” of these passages is symbolic, meaning that the vast majority of the world’s languages will indeed be represented in heaven. A third intriguing possibility would be that of language resurrection, where there is a return in the new heavens and the new earth of languages long dead, just as my kids and I hope for a return of dinosaurs, wooly mammoths, and giant sloths.

After all, if we’ve got billions and billions of years to enjoy, I would certainly sign up for a class on old Sumerian were the library of New Jerusalem to offer such a course.

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Stubborn Barriers and the Gospel’s Global Spread

What are the common barriers that keep the gospel from spreading from one group of humans to another? How can one group have a strong presence of believers and churches and yet live side by side with other groups that are completely unreached? The answer to this question is not as simple as it might seem.

The modern missionary movement mainly used geographic and political lenses when they sought to evangelize the world. William Carey’s An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen featured a list of the world’s countries, their population sizes, religions, and other statistics. Mission agencies followed suit until the late 1900s, focusing mainly on countries and political boundaries when they sought to organize their missions strategy. This is not without biblical precedent. In the book of Acts, we see that Paul’s missionary strategy is focused on the cities and provinces of the Roman Empire. Paul and Luke are using a geographic lens when they seek to apply the Great Commission (along with a very broad ethnic lens of Jew vs. Gentile). Paul’s ambition is to preach to the Gentiles in places where no one else has yet laid a foundation (Rom 15:14-24).

Political and geographic borders and systems can absolutely provide barriers to the gospel. Consider the great contrast of the two Koreas. South Korea, one of the most Christian nations on earth, neighbors North Korea, one of the most unreached. With the same language, ethnicity, and historically the same culture, what is the barrier? The DMZ and the North’s communist/cult of personality government that seeks to stamp out Christianity.

However, the nation-state lens of modern missions was insufficient to recognize other massive barriers to the gospel. 20th-century missiologists like Donald McGavran and Ralph Winter demonstrated that this political and geographic lens meant that there were thousands of “hidden peoples” who were completely overlooked because of the ethnic, linguistic, or cultural barriers that existed even within countries. A missions agency might consider a country reached because of a strong presence of Christianity among the majority ethnicity, but with their nation-state lens fail to see that the minority ethnicities were completely without a witness.

Starting in the late ’70s, this led to a paradigm shift in missions, where agencies adopted the primary lens of unreached people group (UPG). This ethnolinguistic lens also has biblical precedent, with a strong thread of God’s heart for all peoples (panta ta ethne) evident throughout the Bible. We see this focus on ethnicity and language in passages like Psalm 67:4, Isaiah 66:18, Daniel 7:14, and most famously, Rev 7:9, “a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages…”

This lens seeks to recognize three other significant barriers to the gospel: ethnicity, language, and culture. It recognizes that humanity typically divides up into groups that identify as distinct from others around them along significant ethnic, language, or cultural lines. Sometimes ethnicity is the main barrier, where the same language is used and similar cultures exist, but neighboring people groups struggle to influence one another because of longstanding ethnic tensions. This is the case with many ethnic Christian groups in the Middle East and their Muslim neighbors, all of whom are fluent in Arabic.

Other situations show that focusing on ethnicity alone is not enough. Our own central Asian people group share a common ethnic identity with neighboring groups, but their languages are not mutually intelligible. In this case, language is the primary barrier, not ethnicity or culture. A missions agency might see the church take off in one of the dozen or so language groups of this ethnicity and consider their job done. In reality, this language barrier is going to prevent the spread of the gospel to the other segments of this ethnicity unless there is a very intentional effort.

Yet other situations show that culture can be the primary barrier. This is where things can get really murky, yet an honest appraisal of how humanity actually functions shows that this is often the case. Cultural differences provide significant barriers to the gospel. This is where socio-economic, religious, and even generational differences come into play – and evil things like caste. For evidence near at hand, consider how hard it is for middle-class churches to reach the poor and working class, and vice versa. It is very difficult for any of our churches in the West to truly impact subcultures different from ours that live within our own cities and towns, and this is with a shared history of Christianity. How much more might cultural differences prevent gospel impact among groups that have no Christian heritage? Even here there is biblical precedent for acknowledging this barrier. Many of the Jew-Gentile issues that Paul deals with in his letters are not just issues of religious background and conscience, they are issues of differing systems of culture and meaning – head coverings being one example.

The key is to recognize that multiple barriers exist to the spread of the gospel from one group of humans to another. These barriers might be political, geographic, ethnic, linguistic, or cultural. The Bible acknowledges all of them. That means we don’t have to lock ourselves into only one lens; rather, we should make use of all of the lenses the Bible gives us when we are seeking to discern why the gospel might be making inroads in one group and not among others.

Once we’ve recognized the primary barrier or barriers, then we are in a good place to discern if they are significant enough to warrant a separate church planting focus or not. Typically, I believe that geography and language do warrant separate approaches, while ethnicity and culture need to be taken on a more case-by-case basis. This needs a post of its own, but in brief, we must remember that the New Testament church brought Jew and Gentile, Greek and Barbarian together into the same churches, messy and scandalous though that effort was. The splintering of missions strategy into hyper-specialized church planting efforts can often reinforce natural human divisions, rather than overcome them.

Deep divisions cut through lost humanity, cutting off whole countries, peoples, languages, and cultures from the good news of salvation through Jesus. Yet the Bible shows us that these can and will be overcome. To play our part in this we will need to take these barriers seriously, on the one hand, even as we trust that the simple gospel is powerful to conquer each and every one of them. We must work hard to understand and undermine these barriers, though our faith must not be in our ability to figure them out.

Carey understood “the Obligations of Christians to Use Means in the Conversion of the Heathen,” even as his faith was in the sovereign power of God to save the nations. May we follow in his footsteps – til every barrier falls.

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Sayings of Delight, Respect, and Service

I will sacrifice myself for you.

I will be your alcohol waiter.
Local Oral Tradition

These two local sayings are used interchangeably for the same kinds of situations. Locals might proclaim one, or both of them, when they are expressing delight at seeing someone dear to them, or when they see a cute child. They might also use them as a very warm affirmative to a request, such as if you ask them if they would mind helping you understand how to pay your water bill. And when you see your mother’s third cousin’s teacher walking through the bazaar and you engage in the expected blast of honorable words to “outdo the other in showing honor,” these phrases will also then undoubtedly come out.

The first one about being your sacrifice is dramatic, for sure, but understandable. The person is using this hyperbolic saying to proclaim that they would (hypothetically) do anything for you, even die for you. There are still animal sacrifices in our Islamic context, mainly connected to religious feasts. Some would understand them as securing some kind of forgiveness of sin, but most see it simply as a religious tradition meant to bring joy to the family (through feasting on the meat) and care for the poor (since a portion of the sacrificed meat must be given away to the less fortunate). Unlike Christians in the West, every local has experience with what an animal sacrifice actually looks, feels, and smells like. They’ve seen their grandpa or uncle ritually slit the cow or sheep’s throat and seen its blood spill out all over the courtyard tiles. Many have also ceremonially stepped over the blood as it drains away in the street gutters. So even though they don’t mean it literally when they say they’ll be your sacrifice, it’s still a saying that can carry some real weight, depending on how it’s being used.

The second saying about being your alcohol waiter is a bit more mysterious. How did this come to be such a common and respectful saying in an Islamic context where alcohol is supposed to be forbidden? First, alcohol was definitely around over the centuries (and still is today) even if it’s supposed to be off-limits for good Muslims. A historic presence of Jews and ethnic Christians meant that Muslims could, and did, often buy alcohol from these communities. Second, quite the drinking culture emerged among the men during the second half of the twentieth century when our region was heavily influenced by secularism and modernity. Third, there’s always been areas of uneasy tension between the older indigenous culture of our people and certain Islamic laws and customs. Alcohol seems to be an area where some locals view the mainstream Islamic policy of teetotaling as a foreign imposition at odds with the traditional freedoms of their people.

But how did offering to be someone’s alcohol waiter come to be a proclamation of respect, service, and affection? This is quite the mystery, both to me and to my local friends. Regardless, I have seen old Muslim women who would never drink nor condone anyone else doing so saying this to my children as they kiss their cheeks. The resulting irony is hard to miss. A Muslim grandma is offering to be the alcohol waiter for an underaged child whose family is with a Christian missions organization with a no-alcohol policy – yet everyone is smiling and feels valued and respected. Language is such a strange thing sometimes.

All of this means that if Chick-Fil-A ever opens a branch in our area, their workers will have quite the range of local equivalents for their required response of “my pleasure.” And some of most polite among these would be, “I will be your sacrifice” and “I will be your alcohol waiter.”

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Preachers, Watch Your Idioms

Our home church in Kentucky is quite diverse. Over the years, there has been in-service translation in a number of different languages. Currently, we have a crew of Afghan believers who sit up in the balcony. One of them with good English translates the sermon for his friends sitting around him. Occasionally, a brother preaching will use a particularly confusing idiom and I will glance up at their section, wondering if the translator will even make an attempt at that one or just let it go. There are times where he doesn’t seem to know what to do with a given phrase, and even from far away I can see the struggle. Should he try to translate it, and risk communicating the wrong meaning, or just let it go and hope it wasn’t too important of a point?

The same thing that makes idioms so useful (and even fun) is what also makes them so dangerous. Idioms are phrases that vividly communicate a package of meaning in their local language context, but a meaning that can’t be understand from the direct sense of the words themselves. Because they are missing the cultural and historical context, an outsider listening isn’t able to understand that the meaning of the whole is completely different from the meaning of the parts. Consider English idioms such as “break a leg” or “shoot the breeze.” If you were an English learner, how would you ever guess that these phrases mean “good luck” and “casual conversation,” respectively?

This can be true even in the same language, as I have I sometimes learned the hard way. “Shotgun wedding” did not mean what I thought it did. And yes, I learned this by using it in the wrong way around my future in-laws. Growing up as an American in Melanesia with missionaries from other English-speaking countries, we also found out that there were certain phrases of everyday American English that had very problematic meanings in other dialects of English. “Say I had a nose-bleed, not what you would say in America,” is one of these early lessons that I remember receiving from an Australian auntie.

But if idioms can be problematic even from one dialect of a language to another, they are exponentially more problematic when it comes to translation from one language to another. I’ve written before about the hazards of second-language sermons, where you think that saying “we trust in the person and work of Christ” means, simply, trusting in who Jesus is and what he did. But your trusty local-believer-sermon-checker just laughs and tells you that you just said we trust in the relatives of Jesus, since “person and work of” is a local idiom for someone’s kinfolk. Never mind when you offhandedly say things like “on fire for Jesus.”

When preaching in another language, one learns quickly to purge your English manuscript from as many idioms as possible, since the idioms of your language almost never translate directly – and even seemingly-direct phrases can prove to be local idioms. But if you are not preaching in another language, and instead preaching in your own tongue, it’s all too easy to forget about your idioms. If any of your congregation are non-native English speakers, or if there is any translation going on in your service, then for the sake of clarity, you’ve got to watch your idioms.

If you want to pay more attention to clarity in this area, here are some practical ways to do this:

Know your audience. Watching your idioms is very helpful if your audience is linguistically diverse. But if you are speaking (or writing, as I am here) primarily to native English speakers or those with very high levels of English, this is not as much of a concern.
Make sure your main points are not expressed in idiomatic language. This ensures that everyone present is at least able to understand the main outline of your teaching. Instead of “Christian, Jesus calls the shots,” say, “Christian, Jesus is our leader.”
Scan your manuscript beforehand for any idioms that could be replaced with simpler, more direct language. Then, replace as many of them as possible.
If you really like a given idiom, you can still use it, just be sure to define it when you use it. A simple half-sentence definition following the idiom means you can (ahem) have your cake and eat it too.
Regularly ask your translators or non-native English speaking attendees if there are phrases you use that are hard to understand. If you have a regular rhythm of sermon review, this could fit well into that time. If you have not learned another language, you might be unaware of what is idiomatic speech versus literal. In this case, believers from other language groups can help you learn how to “see” the idioms your language is full of.
Americans, watch your sports idioms. This is a very common area where American preachers, preachers, and writers assume common understanding when it’s often not there.
Pray for interpreters and translators. Their job is not easy and they often have limited time to weigh the pros and cons of a more meaning-based translation vs. word for word. Strive to make their job easier, not harder.

Preachers, our goal is clarity. Paul asks for prayer that he might make his proclamation of Christ clear, which is how he knows he ought to speak (Col 4:3-4). If Paul needed help with this, then so do we. Paying attention to our idioms can be one part of how we strive for greater clarity.

I’ll leave you with a classic video that highlights what can happen if you are preaching through translation. While it’s rarely ever this bad, many a missionary can indeed resonate with what is parodied here.

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A Proverb on the Expansive Power of Language

The number of languages you know, the number of persons you are.
Local Oral Tradition

I learned this popular proverb early on when I was studying our Central Asian language. This saying presents the fascinating idea, common in the multilingual world of the Central Asia, that there is an expansive power inherent in language learning. According to our locals (and the neighboring people groups, who have an equivalent proverb in their languages also), there is some kind of astounding addition to your life that happens when you learn another language – an addition significant enough to grant you some kind of extra personhood.

Many years later I would find out that this proverb does not actually originate in Central Asia, but in medieval Europe. It was Charlemagne, Charles the Great, king of France and Emperor of much of western Europe who said, “To have a second language is to possess a second soul.” That’s quite the claim from Big Charlie, a king who was actually illiterate, though apparently gifted in speaking and understanding multiple languages. What was it that Charlemagne experienced that would cause him to make such an outlandish (and potentially heretical) claim? And how can you square this with the couple years of foreign language study you may have been forced to do in high school that made you feel not like you had gained an extra soul, but rather like you no longer had any soul left at all?

If you’ve never learned another language, or if your initial dabblings were as dry as saltine crackers baking on a North African sand dune, you’re going to have trust Charlemagne. You’re going to have to trust our Central Asian friends. You’re going to have to trust me. Or at least hear us out. Something expansive happens in your life, both inside you and around you, when you learn another language. And it makes all of the hard work absolutely worth it.

It’s not uncommon for polyglots, those who have learned many languages, to speak of having a different personality for each language that they speak. I only speak three languages, but I get what they are talking about. My parents are Americans, so I am a native American English speaker. But I was raised mostly in Melanesia, where I learned the Pidgin trade language as a toddler, and thus grew up bilingual. Then in college I spent a year volunteering in Central Asia, where I began to learn my third language. I would later return to the same region for seven years and eventually become an advanced speaker of that language. It’s a subtle thing, but yes, I think and I act differently depending on which language I’m operating in. I have, in some sense, gained a different side to myself, or rather found something that only that unique language and culture can draw out.

The author C.S. Lewis wrote something very similar in The Four Loves about the effect that different friends have on drawing out the unique facets of someone’s personhood, “In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets.” I would contend that languages have a similar effect on us. No one language is large enough to “call the whole man into activity.” Learning another language is like gaining another true friend, the kind who can bring you to life in unique, funny, and fascinating ways.

Have you ever considered that there may be facets to who you are that you can only discover by learning another language? No, not a second soul – but perhaps a part of your soul you’ve yet to become acquainted with.

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