Apostle of the Alphabet

By the millions, primitive Indians eke out brief existences in the backlands of Latin America, cut off from the 20th century--or the 15th century, for that matter--by forbidding mountains, matted jungle and a towering cultural barrier. Their national languages, whether Spanish or Portuguese, are unknown tongues. Most of the Indians cannot even read or write their own dialects, and many tribes have no formal written language at all. Now, thanks to a private, U.S.-based outfit called the Summer Institute of Linguistics, the Indians are learning at least two of the three Rs.

The institute began training its first teams of teachers in 1934. Today there are 460 linguists at work inventing written forms for 175 of the 590 tribal tongues they have found in eight Latin American nations.

When Paper Talks. Compiling an Indian language requires the teacher to be taught by his pupils. If he is lucky, a field worker will find at least one member of the tribe with a smattering of Spanish or Portuguese. The institute man then points to a hut, tree, rabbit, or other familiar object and asks the Indian the word for it. As he learns the Indian dialect, the linguist records the sounds on tape. Then, using basic phonetic symbols, he constructs an alphabet for the language. The process can be exasperating. One tribe of suspicious Bolivian Indians refused to cooperate, convinced that the whole thing was a plot to steal their language. When linguists tackled the Cocama tribe in Peru, they found that the men spoke one language, the women another.

Once words are learned and written down, linguists can prepare a bilingual dictionary and primers and teach the Indians how to read. Then the real rewards begin. The teachers cite cases of illiterate Indian boys and girls, taught by the institute, who are now successful surgeons, scholars and teachers. "When they first learn how paper talks," says an institute linguist, "it is a thrilling experience for the Indians and for us."

"Don Guillermo." The man behind it all, the institute's founder-director, is William Cameron Townsend, 67, who has lived with languages and Indians nearly all his life. A persuasive man of infinite patience, Townsend learned his first Indian dialect in 1917 while selling Bibles in Guatemala. In 1935, at the invitation of the Mexican government, he launched the institute's first research and teaching mission. As more governments sought help, Townsend pioneered his own techniques of training and teaching, and dispatched teams to country after country.

With headquarters in Santa Ana, Calif., the institute has an annual budget of $3,000,000 provided by contributors in the U.S. and Latin America. Institute presses in Mexico work overtime printing dictionaries, Bibles and textbooks in 80 Indian languages; some steps in translation are now handled by electronic computers at the National University of Mexico. In Peru, where Townsend has been working since 1945, institute teams stationed near the headwaters of the Amazon keep in touch by radio and a fleet of planes. Yet it is only the beginning. "This is the most virgin field of science I know," Townsend says. "Of over 3,000 languages in the world, we know nothing about 2,000."

One day recently, Indians in the jungles of eastern Peru drummed a message on hollowed tree trunks: "Don Guillermo is leaving." Townsend was leaving Peru for Colombia, but 200 trained linguists and other personnel will carry on. His work had earned him Peru's Order of Merit, a warm farewell abrazo from President Fernando Belaunde Terry, and the affectionate title "Apostle of the Alphabet" from grateful Indians.

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