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Speaking in Different Languages

The very first believer from one Central Asian group we worked with said that it wasn't possible to pray or preach in his mother tongue. 'Our language is too poor, it doesn't have the right vocabulary for prayer or preaching. How would you even say the word "prayer" in our language? The word "doga" means "charm" as well as "prayer". We couldn't possibly use that word in church! We should use Russian, which is a rich language and has all the right words for these things!'

This is a very common response when people first become believers. They see their own language as inappropriate for use in worship. This is because what they see as 'Christianity' is being modelled in a language of wider communication like English, French, Russian, Urdu or Classical Arabic. To use a more local language seems like a step down to something too basic for spiritual use.

In the end a whole bunch of young men became believers, and they didn't have the same hangups as the first believer. They began meetings where people used their mother tongue, sat on a carpet on the floor instead of pews, drank tea while having fellowship, and wore Central Asian clothing.

The word used for prayer, by the way, was 'doga' but it was obvious when saying 'let us make/do doga' that they were talking about 'a prayer' not 'a charm'. In the Bible translation the translators used a combination of words doga-dileg, meaning 'prayer-request'. New believers are taught to give up using charms and amulets, of course, as soon as they trust in Isa Mesih (Jesus the Messiah).


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  1. Jenny G20 April 2018 at 14:38

    New paradigms require new vocabulary to be developed in any language. And this can be a stretch for people - but it can also be done! How great that your folks soon had a group to work out such things together. It's true that it isn't possible for just one person to manage that in most cases, since language expresses shared experiences.

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    1. Dawut26 April 2018 at 08:15

      What a wise reply - thank you! Just to say that do`a is an Arabic loan word and in Arabic it means free prayers (personal or family requests, etc.) whereas in this language of Central Asia it has 2 senses. The believers didn't have to develop a term for prayer - there was one in existence already, but they had to give each other permission to use it in the new (follows of Isa) context.

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