Medefaidrin

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Medefaidrin is a constructed special language with its own alphabetical script that has been created, developed and practiced since the late 1920s by the members of a small Christian mission group known as Oberi Okaime in southern Nigeria (Itu region and Ibiono-Ibom in the state of Akwa Ibom ) has been.

The following consider Medefaidrin as a "spiritual language". The language was created by two leaders of the sect, Michael Ukpong and Akpan Akpan Udofia . It has its origin in the phenomenon of speaking in tongues . It is reported that the Holy Spirit , called the seminant , revealed the words of the Ukpong language, which Udofia wrote down. Both had Ibibio as their mother tongue. At that time there was no standardized spelling for this language . Such was only introduced in 1983 .

The Oberi Okaime script is often mentioned in African literature, but rarely the language for which it was created. The font belongs to the type of European fonts, characterized by alphabetic letters in two variants, lowercase and uppercase letters . The shape of the letters is a priori.

After the language of Ukpong and Udofia had been completed, the members of the sect established a school in 1936 that taught children in Medefaidrin. In addition to religion and Medefaidrin and its script, arithmetic was also taught. However, these lessons were not tolerated by the British colonial administration and banned in the same year. Although efforts to reopen the school were unsuccessful, the sect continued to use the language for liturgy , hymns , letters, contracts, and other handwritten documents. It was only later that language lost its practical function. However, on February 7, 1986, classes in Medefaidrin began in a Sunday school in Ididep . The lessons were given by the now very old Akpan Akpan Udofia himself. It was an attempt to revitalize the language.

In its structure, Medefaidrin is less similar to the local Ibibio language than English . This applies to both their phonotactics and their syntax . Medefaidrin is an accented language like English, while Ibibio is a tonal language . In Medefaidrin there are some sound sequences that are neither found in English nor in Ibibio. There is a specific article dei and prepositions that are reminiscent of the English, for example su (English to ), fra ( from ), nai ( by ) or kin ( in ). Most of the words, however, resemble neither the English nor those of Ibibio, but are created a priori, without a recognizable system. The morphology does not seem to be very schematic. Some morphological elements are borrowed from English, for example the plural morphem -s . Similarity to the Ibibio is probably in the semantics and obviously also in the time calculation. In 1933 the group decided to reintroduce the traditional Ibibio calendar. It is noteworthy that the week after this calculation is eight days. A month has four such weeks and the year has sixteen months, i.e. 512 days. The number system of Medefaidrin also reflects that of Ibibio.

Both in typological terms and in its function, the Medefaidrin is similar to the special language of the Eskaya on the Philippine island of Bohol . The medieval Lingua ignota of Hildegard von Bingen looks like an immature embryo from a language from the same class.

literature

  • RFG Adams (1947) Obεri Ɔkaimε: A new African language and script Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, 17 : 24-34. [1]
  • Akpan Akpan Udofia (1953) Dictionary, transcriptions and translations of texts. In: Hau, Kathleen (1953). Oberi Okaime Script, Texts and Counting System. Material relating to the Oberi Okaime language of southeastern Nigeria.
  • Kathleen Hau (1961) Oberi Okaime script, texts and counting systems. In: Bulletin de l'Institut Francais d'Afrique Noire. Series B, Sciences humaines, 23 : 291-308.
  • Monday B. Abasiattai (1989) The Oberi Okaime Christian mission: Towards a history of an Ibibio independent church. Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, 59 : 496-516. [2]
  • Gerald Heusing (2007) A language called ”garden waste”. About special languages ​​in Africa. In the culture shown and the hidden , edited by Bernhard Streck. Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden. Pp. 39-56.
  • Dafydd Gibbon, Moses Ekpenyong & Eno-Abasi Urua (2010) "Medefaidrin: Resources documenting the birth and death language life-cycle" in Proceedings of the Seventh conference on International Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'10)} , {May19-21 , Valletta, Malta}, ISBN = 2-9517408-6-7. ( PDF )