A Practical Guide to Understanding Ciyawo

Acknowledgements

5 About the Authors Ian Dicks is an Australian and is married with two children. He lives and works in the Mangochi District of Malaŵi, and has been there, together with his wife, for 14 years. Ian works as a language and culture consultant, helping to facilitate others in language and cultural acquisition. Shawn Dollar is an American currently living in Mozambique with his wife and three children. He has lived in a Yawo area for nine years and has worked in development and language consultancy. Acknowledgements Firstly, we want to thank our wives, Wendy and Dierdre for allowing us the time, giving us encouragement and assisting us with the editing of this book. Without their support we would have surely failed! We also want to thank our colleagues who have stimulated our thinking on language, especially Charles Reed, Joel Mgawi and Keith Gallagher. A big thank you goes to many of our Yawo friends who have contributed to our language development over the years, particularly Omega, Yusuf Affick, Ahmed Msusa, Katherine Michael, Joyce Sonjela, Phillip Kazembe, Lajabu, Kobra, Gerard Josaya, Elliot Chilokote, Medson Elliot, Wayindi Elliot and Saidi Kutyokatyoka. Thanks also goes to Ciyawo language learners in Mangochi and Lichinga who have willingly allowed us to experiment on them in our language workshops. We salute you for turning up and credit you for giving us feed-back. We want to thank those who have helped edit and format this work, particularly Sue De Vries, Tim Cowley, Dierdre Dollar and Elaine Davey. A big thank you goes to Andrew McDonough from Lost Sheep Publishing (that’s a free advert for you Andy, we expect the same in return!) who drew the fabulous icons which appear throughout the book. Thanks also to our publisher Kachere, especially Mercy Chilunga who helped us get the book into print. We give a huge sikomo jekulungwa to Steffi Nchembe, who has contributed much to this book - so much so, that we also hold him personally responsible for the good and the bad bits in it! Finally, (we are now standing and clapping heartily) we want to thank Jane Hinton, who not only designed the really cool covers for the book, but who also worked tirelessly to make the book easier on the eye by completely reformatting it for us. Ian Dicks (Namwera) & Shawn Dollar (Mandimba), 2010. ABOUT THE AUTHORS & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...