Sing or Dance?

Translation is fun.

The middle line of Psalm 149:1 in Maa reads

«Entaranyaki OLAITORIANI osinkolio ng’ejuk»

This translates «שִׁ֣ירוּ לַֽ֭יהוָה שִׁ֣יר חָדָ֑שׁ» (Hebrew) or «ᾌσατε τῷ κυρίῳ ᾆσμα καινό» (Greek).  Some of y’all might know the King James:  “Sing unto the LORD a new song!”

But the Maa phrase can translate into English as “Dance unto the LORD a new dance!

Um, what?!  How’s that?

If we’ve visited with you, you may remember the answer.  The noun <osinkolio> means equally “song” and “dance.”  The verb <arany> means equally “to sing” and “to dance.” Thus “arany osinkolio” can be translated four ways into English:
……. • I sing a song,
……. • I dance a dance,
……. • I sing a dance,
or
……. • I dance a song.
In the Maasai cultural imagination, singing with the voice without also dancing with the body (or is that dancing with voice while singing with the body?) is unimaginable, except for the infirm or lame.

While other African languages have different words for singing and dancing, as does English, this lexical insight applies across many African cultures.

Application:
of COURSE we line dance during worship here.  What else?

Word of the Day

Amesút

“to clean or remove charcoal
from the outside of the calabash gourd
after cleaning the interior of the gourd.”

The gourds — used as containers especially for milk and sour milk — are cleaned with a stick of wild olive wood (olóírién), the end of which is a live coal. This burns away any pathogens or other bad stuff and lines the interior of the gourd with charcoal, which has a filtering/purifying effect. It also gives your milk a smoky taste.  So if you’re taking chai in the villages and your tea tastes a bit like smoked cheese, this is why.

So AMESÚT only refers to the removal of olive wood charcoal from the outside of a gourd that’s just been cleaned on the inside.

How’s that for specificity?