Madagascar Focus
by Hal Noss, freelance photojournalist

Curious bequest of the Welsh Bible pioneers

ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar — As a language, Malagasy has some ‘distinctive’ features – as Malagasy people readily acknowledge.

For one thing it has a tradition of very long proper names which to an outsider can be very confusing. Marc Rakoto, General Secretary of the Malagasy Bible Society, agrees. It is an issue, he says, which the country “is trying to deal with”.

Confusion has abounded in Malagasy ever since the language was first written down

For the time being the people have devised their own way of coping: if the last letter of a name is a vowel, for example, they do not pronounce it. So the correct formal pronunciation of the name of the capital is shortened to ‘Antananariv’. In conversation people go further and usually shorten it to ‘Tananariv’, or even just to ‘Tana’.

They apply similar abbreviations to personal names: for everyday purposes, most people shorten the long, formal version of their name to something less unwieldy.

Confusion has abounded in Malagasy ever since the language was first written down and it may have been the translators of the first Malagasy Bible who were to blame – or perhaps even the king.

The complete Bible in Malagasy was first published in 1835. The translators were two Welsh missionaries, David Jones and David Griffiths, who were serving with the London Missionary Society. As Mr Rakoto tells the story, they completed the New Testament in 1825. Until then, the language had existed almost exclusively in oral form and before embarking on their work, they decided to consult the king. They thought they would show him two sample translations, one using Arabic script, the other Roman script, and let him decide in which form the written language should take.

The king, Radama I, who could read English, French and Arabic, considered the matter carefully.

“Use the Roman script,” he said finally, “but take out the confusing consonants such as the double letters which English uses and the letters which have the same sound: if we have ‘s’, we don’t need ‘c’, or if we have ‘c’ we certainly don’t need ‘s’.”

“If we have ‘s’, we don’t need ‘c’, or if we have ‘c’ we certainly don’t need ‘s’.”

The king also specified that the language should henceforth adopt French pronunciation for vowels and so avoid the ‘confusions’ inherent in English.
Armed with the king’s helpful guidelines, the pioneer translators set about their work and in the process shaped written Malagasy for years to come.
They did not leave it all up to the king, however.

“These translators were Welsh people,” Mr Rakoto explains with a smile, “and the Welsh like to use the letter ‘y’ very much in their language. So that was the translators’ little personal touch to Malagasy: they put a ‘y’ in at the end of many words and if the last letter is a vowel it is not pronounced. Thus in Malagasy the word for ‘Bible’ is written ‘Baiboly’: the silent ‘y’ is the Welsh translators’ bequest.” (WR 362/19 - 9.01)