Traditions and Tones

It's a bit late, I guess, but Happy Easter! On Thursday night some friends and I had a passover seder dinner together. It meant a lot to experience that little window of Jesus' life, to have a glimpse into what He was doing the night before He died, and see when it was that He washed His disciples' feet and handed Judas the piece of bread to show who would betray Him. It was also cool to see how the passover celebration pointed to Jesus for thousands of years before He ever came to earth! At one point during the meal, there are three pieces of flat bread in a napkin. The middle piece is taken out, broken, and hidden. Later the kids (or the adults if there are none!) hunt for the broken bread and whoever finds it gets a prize. Just like Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, left His home to be broken and hidden in the earth so that whoever finds Him will have the greatest reward! And that tradition was established before He was even born!

Last night a visiting Australian linguist gave a presentation about some work he's done in Cameroon. Many languages there are "tonal", which basically means that the meaning of a word can change depending on the pitch you use when you pronounce it. It can be pretty complicated to devlop an alphabet for a tonal language . . . how do you mark the tone? Should you mark ALL the tones or only the tones on words that could easily be confused with another word? This guy did an experiment and found that, in one language, people could actually read it MORE quickly and with FEWER mistakes when tone was NOT marked at all! Fascinating.