FEL logo

Foundation for Endangered Languages

FEL Grants: Supported projects

FEL regularly provides small grants to fund projects that revitalize and support the use of endangered languages. On this page you can see reports from a selection of the projects that we have supported. By joining FEL, you can support activities such as these.

Select a grantee, language, region, or year:

Grantee:

Language:

Region:

Year:

Grants for language: Kinyindu

Title: Kinyindu Endangered Languages’s Proverbs Translation for the Nyindu Indigenous Young Generation

Country: Congo

Language(s): Kinyindu

Grantee: Bamwiji Musombwa

Year: 2014

Project summary

The overall objective of this project was to promote our Nyindu indigenous people’s ancestors’ wisdom contained in proverbs, by providing translations in Kiswahili and in French of the recently documented proverbs. Kinyindu is the endangered language of the Batwa originated Nyindu indigenous people living in the Lwindi rural district; in the Mwenga territory in South Kivu, an eastern Province of the D.R. Congo / Central Africa.

Thanks to the grant received from the FEL, our team has worked on promoting our Nyindu indigenous people ancestors’ wisdom and the traditional knowledge contained in our proverbs by translating these proverbs first in Kiswahili and then in French. In order to do so, I first gathered with remnant literate Nyindu indigenous and Kinyindu speakers, to discus the procedure to be followed in working on the translations. Given that some of these remnant Nyindu speakers do not speak or understand French, we worked first on the Kiswahili translation. I then have worked on the French translation from both the solely Kinyindu version of the proverbs (which had been produced before the current project started), and by referring to the bilingual Kinyindu-Kiswahili version mentioned before.

At the end of October 2014, the electronic versions were available, and after some revision and editing, the printed versions of the bilingual Banyindu indigenous Proverbs book in Kinyindu - Kiswahili, and the bilingual Banyindu indigenous Proverbs book in Kinyindu - French were published. Finally, the issued books were introduced to our community members and copies were also distributed to 8 schools functioning in our Lwindi territory.

From left BAMWIJI NABUVUMA NANDANGA in our home village in KILIMBWE
MUSOMBWA IGUNZI Michel an activist for the survival of Nyindu endangered ancestral wisdom
Researcher IGUNZI with 3 informants in KILIMBWE
SUMILI MIKUNGULO Nyindi indigenous informant who provided Proverbs
Young members of the ASHPAN association wearing Tshirts provided at a national festival during the project time period. This is a sign of a renaissance move due to FEL support to ASHPAN
 

FEL Blog

FEL on Facebook

Contact us

FEL is a not-for-profit charity registered in England, Wales and the USA

©2025 Foundation for Endangered Languages

Privacy statement