In Gbaya, the notion of broken spirits in Song of Songs 6:10 is emphasized with gbɛlɛsuwɛɛ, an ideophone used to describe something that has no strength.

“The team took the reference to flags or insignia as a sign of danger, from the history of their own people of 19th century. They interpreted that she would be terrified, and therefore rendered the question to her, ‘Why have you become weak gbɛlɛsuwɛɛ why?’ In effect, encouraging her not to be afraid.”

Ideophones are a class of sound symbolic words expressing human sensation that are used as literary devices in many African languages. Since the subject matter of Songs of Songs is particularly conducive to the use of ideophones, there are a total of 30 ideophones in the Gbaya Bible in that short biblical book alone. (Source: Philip Noss)