Showing posts with label language learning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label language learning. Show all posts
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Friday, September 17, 2010
Good to be Home
What a good feeling to be back home in Paraguay after fourteen months in the US, mostly traveling around. We flew back into Asunción on August 4th and got back to Escobar as soon as possible to find our house and our dog Oso wonderfully cared for by Antonio and Lida Guerrero.
Before we went back to Escobar I went to our cell phone provider to get a phone that I could use, as I was using our Motorola V3 before, to connect to the internet. The salesman talked me into buying a BlackBerry, saying not only could I get email and browse the web using the phone but I could also use the phone as a Bluetooth modem to connect my laptop to the internet as I had done with my other phone.
Well, salesmen are salesmen everywhere, I guess, and this guy somewhat exaggerated the capabilities of the BlackBerry which, though a good phone and very useful for brief emails and a little internet browsing, is not good at all as a Bluetooth modem. The upside of that is I've been wasting no time at all online. The downside is that some things I really need to do online--paying bills, for example, or updating my blog--I just can't do.
Part of the problem is a very variable cell phone signal at our house. This aspect of the problem I'm hoping to remedy with a dual band cell phone repeater. But there also seems to be a problem with the phone itself as a modem--even when I have a good signal it only connects a fraction of the times I try.
That's the frustrating side of life. The exciting part of our life is helping missionaries with language learning, and I just finished this week a four-week refresher course with SIM missionaries Jeff and Amy McKissick, who have also just returned from the US. They are super committed to ongoing Guarani language learning and it's always a delight to work with them. Check out Amy's post on their language-learning experience.
Right now we have a couple of days in Asunción. We're celebrating Timmy's fourth birthday today, and tomorrow we'll go back to Escobar and take with us Lizet's mom who is here for a visit from Bolivia. We're staying at the mission guest house, where we have a wireless internet connection, so I'm trying to remember and catch up with all the things I need to do online.
I keep reminding myself that to get to live in such a wonderful place as Escobar, and be involved in the exciting ministry we get to have a part in, we have to make some sacrifices, and if one of them is a reliable internet connection, well, then, so be it! It's well worth it.
Before we went back to Escobar I went to our cell phone provider to get a phone that I could use, as I was using our Motorola V3 before, to connect to the internet. The salesman talked me into buying a BlackBerry, saying not only could I get email and browse the web using the phone but I could also use the phone as a Bluetooth modem to connect my laptop to the internet as I had done with my other phone.
 |
| Lucas and Timmy are happy to be home |
Part of the problem is a very variable cell phone signal at our house. This aspect of the problem I'm hoping to remedy with a dual band cell phone repeater. But there also seems to be a problem with the phone itself as a modem--even when I have a good signal it only connects a fraction of the times I try.
 |
| Our neighbor "Abuela" (Grandma) Asunción's house |
Right now we have a couple of days in Asunción. We're celebrating Timmy's fourth birthday today, and tomorrow we'll go back to Escobar and take with us Lizet's mom who is here for a visit from Bolivia. We're staying at the mission guest house, where we have a wireless internet connection, so I'm trying to remember and catch up with all the things I need to do online.
I keep reminding myself that to get to live in such a wonderful place as Escobar, and be involved in the exciting ministry we get to have a part in, we have to make some sacrifices, and if one of them is a reliable internet connection, well, then, so be it! It's well worth it.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Incarnation is Identification
I recently spoke with a man who had been a missionary in Brazil. While he was there he made a great effort to learn Portuguese well, taking as his models the Brazilian Portuguese speakers around him. His goal was to sound just like them them--or as much like them as possible--when he spoke.
To this day, twenty years after leaving Brazil, he speaks excellent, idiomatic Brazilian Portuguese. The hard work that he did many years ago continues to yield dividends in the way he speaks the language.
He told me about a time he traveled with a fellow missionary in Brazil. After an interaction with a Brazilian man, his colleague turned to him and asked in an annoyed way, "Why do you do that?"
"Do what?" my friend replied.
"Why do you try talk like the Brazilians, instead of like an American?"
"Because they talk right, and I want to talk right."
"Well," his friend concluded, "don't do it around me."
I thought about that story again a couple of weeks ago when I was listening to a radio program about language learning. The man being interviewed said something to the effect that the greatest compliment you can pay a language learner is to mistake him/her for a native speaker.
I realized that this was exactly what my friend's colleague had wanted to avoid. There was something in his self-identity that resisted identifying with Brazilians and he didn't want to risk ever being taken for anything but an American.
Now I realize that for most of us it is very unlikely that we would ever learn a language so well as an adult that we would be taken for a native speaker. But putting that aside for the moment, one of the reasons that my language students tend to be the most motivated language learners in the world is that they don't only want to communicate information with Paraguayans; they want to identify with them in the language that defines them as Paraguayans--Guarani. By learning Guarani, we affirm, value, and make part of us something that most Paraguayans hold in very high esteem--the language that is uniquely theirs.
Dr. Gailyn Van Rheenen, in his book Missions: Biblical Foundations and Contemporary Strategies, talks about this identification: "Such identification is not an external façade designed to create some kind of artificial congeniality; it is the heart of God incarnate in the missionary." (p. 66) The heart of God was demonstrated in Jesus, the Word who took on human form and had to learn words--human language--as a baby. His identification with us, his creation, sets the pattern for missionary identification.
That's why language learning for missionaries is not an onerous task to be endured so that the real missions work can begin. It is an indispensable step in the process of incarnation that every missionary must engage in completely in order to be effective ministers in the context they've been called to. For this reason, people who go to minister in contexts where they "don't need to learn the language" find themselves at a distinct disadvantage, because they lack one of the most fundamental tools of identification.
To this day, twenty years after leaving Brazil, he speaks excellent, idiomatic Brazilian Portuguese. The hard work that he did many years ago continues to yield dividends in the way he speaks the language.
He told me about a time he traveled with a fellow missionary in Brazil. After an interaction with a Brazilian man, his colleague turned to him and asked in an annoyed way, "Why do you do that?"
"Do what?" my friend replied.
"Why do you try talk like the Brazilians, instead of like an American?"
"Because they talk right, and I want to talk right."
"Well," his friend concluded, "don't do it around me."
I thought about that story again a couple of weeks ago when I was listening to a radio program about language learning. The man being interviewed said something to the effect that the greatest compliment you can pay a language learner is to mistake him/her for a native speaker.
I realized that this was exactly what my friend's colleague had wanted to avoid. There was something in his self-identity that resisted identifying with Brazilians and he didn't want to risk ever being taken for anything but an American.
Now I realize that for most of us it is very unlikely that we would ever learn a language so well as an adult that we would be taken for a native speaker. But putting that aside for the moment, one of the reasons that my language students tend to be the most motivated language learners in the world is that they don't only want to communicate information with Paraguayans; they want to identify with them in the language that defines them as Paraguayans--Guarani. By learning Guarani, we affirm, value, and make part of us something that most Paraguayans hold in very high esteem--the language that is uniquely theirs.
Dr. Gailyn Van Rheenen, in his book Missions: Biblical Foundations and Contemporary Strategies, talks about this identification: "Such identification is not an external façade designed to create some kind of artificial congeniality; it is the heart of God incarnate in the missionary." (p. 66) The heart of God was demonstrated in Jesus, the Word who took on human form and had to learn words--human language--as a baby. His identification with us, his creation, sets the pattern for missionary identification.
That's why language learning for missionaries is not an onerous task to be endured so that the real missions work can begin. It is an indispensable step in the process of incarnation that every missionary must engage in completely in order to be effective ministers in the context they've been called to. For this reason, people who go to minister in contexts where they "don't need to learn the language" find themselves at a distinct disadvantage, because they lack one of the most fundamental tools of identification.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Learning Guarani Online
There don't seem to be a whole lot of good resources online to learn Guarani. Recently a colleague sent me a link to LearnGuarani.com, a site that's under development by Stephen. So far so good. I'm hoping this will develop into a useful resource for beginning Guarani learners.
If you want to learn Guarani not just as a linguistic exercise--that is, if you're interested in actually communicating with mother-tongue Paraguayan Guarani speakers--you need to keep a couple of issues in mind:
First, there's a movement to "purify" Guarani by removing as much Spanish vocabulary from it as possible. There is a sense in this movement that Guarani is somehow weakened, corrupted, or made less beautiful by the inclusion of loanwords. Whether that is true or not is a subject for another posting, but suffice it to say that if you want to use a Guarani that actually communicates, you should focus on "Guarani-Jopara," (mixed Guarani,) or Paraguayan Popular Guarani, which does include a lot of Spanish loanwords. The words that academics have either created to reference new concepts or revived from archaic sources will leave most Paraguayan speakers perplexed and instead of promoting relationship will tend to increase distance between you and your listener.
Second, if you are learning Guarani with a Paraguayan Guarani-speaker as a resource, generally speaking he or she will not be confident about writing in Guarani. Paraguayan children now learn to write in Guarani in school but this wasn't always the case. I do not mean to suggest that Paraguayans are illiterate but most adult Paraguayans feel much more confident reading and writing in Spanish than in Guarani, even if Guarani is their first language. Unless your Guarani resource person has studied Guarani, either he/she will be reluctant to tell you how to spell things in Guarani or he/she will spell it in a way that diverges from the accepted orthography.
For this reason you are likely to come across a number of different spellings for the same word, such as: jaé, jhaé, jha'e, or ha'e, (meaning he/she/it,) only the last of which is written in the currently accepted way. (Just look at any map of Paraguay and you'll see a dozen Guarani place names spelled in an orthography based on Spanish that is diferent from the current official orthography!) This can be confusing to the beginner but it's by no means insurmountable. You have to learn to hear the sounds and transcribe what you hear. With practice you'll do this with little difficulty.
If anyone comes across any good online resources for learning Guarani-Jopara, I'd be happy to know about them.
If you want to learn Guarani not just as a linguistic exercise--that is, if you're interested in actually communicating with mother-tongue Paraguayan Guarani speakers--you need to keep a couple of issues in mind:
First, there's a movement to "purify" Guarani by removing as much Spanish vocabulary from it as possible. There is a sense in this movement that Guarani is somehow weakened, corrupted, or made less beautiful by the inclusion of loanwords. Whether that is true or not is a subject for another posting, but suffice it to say that if you want to use a Guarani that actually communicates, you should focus on "Guarani-Jopara," (mixed Guarani,) or Paraguayan Popular Guarani, which does include a lot of Spanish loanwords. The words that academics have either created to reference new concepts or revived from archaic sources will leave most Paraguayan speakers perplexed and instead of promoting relationship will tend to increase distance between you and your listener.
Second, if you are learning Guarani with a Paraguayan Guarani-speaker as a resource, generally speaking he or she will not be confident about writing in Guarani. Paraguayan children now learn to write in Guarani in school but this wasn't always the case. I do not mean to suggest that Paraguayans are illiterate but most adult Paraguayans feel much more confident reading and writing in Spanish than in Guarani, even if Guarani is their first language. Unless your Guarani resource person has studied Guarani, either he/she will be reluctant to tell you how to spell things in Guarani or he/she will spell it in a way that diverges from the accepted orthography.
For this reason you are likely to come across a number of different spellings for the same word, such as: jaé, jhaé, jha'e, or ha'e, (meaning he/she/it,) only the last of which is written in the currently accepted way. (Just look at any map of Paraguay and you'll see a dozen Guarani place names spelled in an orthography based on Spanish that is diferent from the current official orthography!) This can be confusing to the beginner but it's by no means insurmountable. You have to learn to hear the sounds and transcribe what you hear. With practice you'll do this with little difficulty.
If anyone comes across any good online resources for learning Guarani-Jopara, I'd be happy to know about them.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)