The Challenge of Chinese

To learn Chinese, said Dr William Milne, Robert Morrison's colleague, is "a work for men with bodies of brass, lungs of steel, heads of oak, hands of springsteel, hearts of apostles, memories of angels, and lives of Methuselah."
(Edwin W. Smith, The Shrine of a People's Soul, 1929, p 89.)

The Mystery of Mixtec

In his study (of the Mixtec language in Mexico) with Nalo (Ken Pike's Mixtec language teacher), Ken was making lists of the words which were alike in pitch, and by the end of the month it was complete enough so that he felt that he could start comparing the various lists. He hoped that with the comparison he would find the answer to the tone problem that had been plaguing him. But he didn't want to take that step alone; he had already had so much trouble with Mixtec that he was afraid he would miss the answer. He wanted the help of God who created the universe. He knew that God who at Babel had scrambled the world language could bring order out of chaos and make him to understand the Mixtec system.

Once more he made his way up the mountain in order to be able to pray. He prayed for the Mixtecs, the 165,000 of them who needed to be told of Christ, and who needed His written Word. He prayed for the 55,000 Mazatecs, and the Zapotecs, and for the ethnic groups who spoke other tone languages which he knew should and would have translators some day. He told of his need for help; how could he translate the Bible in Mixtec if he couldn't hear and record one of the essentials of that language, tone? Desperate as he was for the answer, concerned as he was for Mixtec, he asked that the solution not come to the Mixtec problem until with it he had a technique with which he could help his fellow translators. By sunset, tired, hungry, thirsty, he felt prepared for his next two-hour session with Nalo.

The next day he listened to the language helper repeat the lists of previously arranged words, and he wrote down the pitch of each one as it compared with a word which he had chosen for a criterion. It was the use of the criterion word which helped him to see that the tone of speech was relative, and that the Mixtecs changed key according to their moods. By the time he had listened to the same lists several times, comparing them with different criterion words, he began to see that in some instances the tones of one word affected the tones of another. This explained why he had heard the word for "cloud" sometimes with one pitch pattern, and sometimes with another. The mysteries of Mixtec began to unfold.

One more day, that is, two more hours with the language helper, and the problem with its solution which has stood the test of years was spread out before him. It was this: Each syllable of Mixtec was spoken on either a "high," "mid," or "low" pitch, and certain words exerted an influence upon other surrounding words and caused them to change from one pitch to another.
(Kenneth L. Pike, Stir, Change, Create, Wycliffe Bible Translators, 1967, p 149-150.)