Calling All Chichewa/English Speakers

As some of you already know, one of the side projects I've planned for this year is a Chichewa textbook for English speakers, which I'd like to make available as a free PDF download.

I've blogged before about the some of the lacklustre resources currently out there (although, to be fair, the Chichewa Guide for Tourists isn't all that terrible at being what it is, aside from those few gems). The real problem, as I see it, is that all of the current resources are either terribly pedestrian (as in the above-linked case) or very, very intensive, as in the aptly-titled "Chichewa Intensive Course" by Marcel Salaün. Salaün's book is actually quite good at explaining the workings of Chichewa grammar; the real problem in this book is that examples are seldom given when a new concept is introduced, and where there are examples, they're usually given in Chichewa only - aiding in the confusion. The book is not meant as a stand-alone guide, and it took me nearly a year of study and practice to be able to understand half of the lessons found within. Still, it's a great reference - for someone who already speaks Chichewa fairly well.

I actually have two projects in the back of my mind here. One is to create a Chichewa textbook for English-speakers that will stand fairly well on its own (though, of course, no language can be learnt properly without practice). This one will take a long, long time - quite possibly more time than I'll have in Malawi.

The project I'm really focusing my energy on is a "Chichewa Verbs" book. Sort of like this, for Chichewa rather than Spanish. The Chichewa language has a really elegant way of dealing with different verb forms. In addition to the basic temporal tenses (past/present/future, etc.), which are created by the addition of the appropriate "infix," each verb may also take a number of different suffixes which change the meaning of the verb. In Chichewa, these are called misintho ya aneni - simply put, "verb modifiers." They usually change the direction of the action, like so:

Ndidya nsima.
I'll eat nsima.
Ndimudyetsa nsima.
I'll feed him nsima. (Literally, "I'll cause him to eat nsima.")
Mundidyere nsima yanga.
Please, eat my portion of nsima. ("Eat my nsima for me.")
Eeeesh! Anandidyera nsima ndani?
Hey, who ate my nsima? (Same form as the previous one, but here it has the connotation of theft.)
Nsima yadyedwa.
The nsima has been eaten.
Nsima yadyeka.
The nsima is edible/delicious. (This one's for you, Mike.)

These rules hold true for most verbs. -tsa is the "causative" suffix, -dwa is for passive voice, and so on. However, there are exceptions, and some of these suffixes (particularly -ra, the "applied form") are difficult to nail down with one universal rule. This is why I'd like my first Chichewa/English venture to be a reference book for Chichewa verbs and their modified forms; even if you manage to learn the root form of every Chichewa verb, you'll still have difficulty understanding the language without a good understanding of these modified forms.

I've got a few other ideas as well. In addition to translating as many verbs as possible with their modified forms, I want to provide, for each verb root, a list of related verbs and nouns, special rules for that verb (for example, many verbs tend to assume the perfect tense when we might expect them to take the present tense; no one ever says ndikutopa, "I am tired," but rather ndatopa, "I have become tired"), and examples of that verb as used in Chichewa proverbs, colloquialisms, popular Malawian song lyrics, and passages of the Bible/Qur'an in Chichewa.

And now, in my penultimate paragraph, I come to the actual point of this post, as alluded to in the title. If you speak both English and Chichewa, and are at all interested in collaborating with me on this little project, please contact me! It doesn't matter if you live in Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, or somewhere halfway around the globe - most of this work will be done online, anyhow. Just bear in mind that I plan on offering this as a free download, so I can't promise you any riches - though perhaps I can offer you the glory of co-authorship.

There you have it. Please shoot me an email if you're interested...you can reach me at duffell [at] gmail dot com. Thus far I've completed just five verbs, but I'm hoping to speed up the pace to 5-10 verbs per week. With a small team, we could accomplish much more, much faster!