81. Thomas, David D. 1974. Review of: Vietnamese grammar, by Nguyễn Ðăng Liêm. 87. Thomas, David D. and Nguyễn Ðình Hòa, editors. For many years David Thomas was a real good friend, nice colleague and great instance to me. Dave set the example by taking quite a few large chunks of outing of his and Dot’s projects to additional the overall department objectives — both as Acting Director and at workshops. Though he had his convictions and sturdy commitments, and we each developed a firm bridge of trust and common ground in our views, he never asked me to join his group for he believed within the proverb that not all eggs should be in a single basket and that there are distinctive ways every one can serve together with his gifts and capacities in any social structure and cultural surroundings and so have a major contribution to the overall society. Then Dave set one other example: when the Branch didn’t have a fulltime bookkeeper, since Dave was positioned in the nearest allocation to Saigon of all our teams, he volunteered to do the accounting.
1954 – David was then assigned to SIL in Manila, Philippines where he labored on Bible translation and the preparation of textual content supplies to be used in minority languages. Dot was additionally accepted by SIL, and shared David’s curiosity in linguistics and Bible translation. 1973 – In 1973, David and Dot worked in Cambodia, including administrative in addition to instructing tasks. Though Dave’s time as Director ended in 1963, he continued because the Branch Linguistics Committee Chairman and Branch Librarian for the rest of his years in Vietnam and Cambodia, through the transition in the Philippines 1975-78, and subsequently in Thailand. During the interim years 1975-78 Dave and that i made a number of trips together through Thailand and Malaysia to spawn the SIL work which continues in every country to at the present time. Dave was possessed of a quiet self-confidence, however was devoid of any sense of self-significance. Dave was the one to allocate many of us to our language tasks.
Another of his strong suits was his suggestion that house furlough should be a time of further coaching to prepare oneself better academically for the initiatives undertaken in Vietnam. It could also be tough to appreciate now in the twenty first century just how little was recognized about this Southeast Asian family of languages when Dave and his wife Dorothy (Dot) arrived in Vietnam within the 1950’s to begin their research. So he lastly prayed, “Lord if that is you speaking to me, remind me in the morning, and I will write to her.” And the following morning, that thought popped up once more, so he did write to Dot. But the next evening, the same thought came, and once more on Saturday evening. ” He found his reply in the same place another related searcher had found it when he discovered that Kenneth Pike and some of his colleagues were at work unraveling the mysteries of unwritten languages all over the world.
He valued those who took the difficulty to study ‘more than they wanted to’ so as to assist each themselves and their colleagues to do a more competent job. His intellect was happy in finding out the unknown, his coronary heart was fulfilled in sharing the tools of literacy and the knowledge of the Scriptures – both issues valuable to himself – with those who likewise thirsted. Since I’m extra an engineer than a theoretically oriented person, he encouraged me with the data that Penn was not a beholder of a specific linguistics concept, but valued the sphere analysis of SILers. He practiced what he preached, finishing his PhD in linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. Dave’s experience on the University of Pennsylvania was shared with me. His encouragement of younger scholars everywhere in the organization has had a profound impact on our work around the world. He made me work hard on manuscripts of any sort and to polish them, mentioning, by the way, that any good manuscript needs to be worked over and corrected at the very least 15 occasions, to make it prepared for a writer, and to be understood unambiguously in the whole world, especially right here in Asia.