Learning a New Language (Written 10/14/05)

Well today we had our first day of formal language training and right now I can already tell its going to be a long haul. While Samoan (pronounced SAHmoan) is basically an easy language to learn, every word ends in a vowel which can easily mess up a tongue that’s use to ending in consonants most of the time. Also, as we have been quick to learn in this language if you mess a word up it can easily turn into a swear word. Like the word Talofa can mean either ‘Hello’ or it can mean a$$hole depending on how long you hold the ‘o’ in the word – so its quite easy to possibly offend people. Luckily, Samoans like to laugh a lot so they just think you’re trying to be funny. Phew! Our trainers are awesome and really want us to learn their language as best we can – so we tend to laugh a lot at our mistakes and help each other out when we can. Thank goodness they like to laugh a lot because I told one of our instructors to ‘eat me’ today just be enunciating a word incorrectly – it was quite funny. As most of you know, I took French in both college and high school but can hardly retain any of that information because it was of no practical use to me. With Samoan, just living in the culture surrounded by these people has really helped me stay committed to learning their language (I’m not comfortable wearing the Lavalava yet but that will come with time). In just two days I’ve learned the basic way of saying hi on the street (Malo), bye (fa),thank you (fa’fataei), please (fa’amolemole), rainy (timu), good (lelei) and very good (lelei tele). This is all within the first three days of being here – so while I may not be able to form complete sentences yet, there’s still hope for me. Also just so that you all have some idea of who all is teaching me here are the biographies of my language trainers (who are all Samoan):

Leata Lima = From the village of Vaitele. Taught for 6 years at the primary level in Samoa, and for another 6 years in Pago Pago (pronounced Pango Pango) American Samoa. She has worked for the Peace Corps since 1987. She’s a very nice and jovial lady who never stops smiling, she definitely brings an enjoyment to the process of learning how to learn this new language.

Faleseu Pita = From the village of Apolima. He was educated in Nga Tapuwae College in Auckland from 1983-1986. He is the lead trainer for the language team. He’s a big guy with a big heart and a lot of patience. He’s always willing to listen to all our mistakes and laughs with us when we make mistakes constantly.

Onofia Simone = He is a talking chief (matai) from the village of Mulivai in Safata. He’s an older guy who does the negotiations with the villages in which we will be staying during training.

Setu Timoteo = From the village of Faleasi’u. He’s our driver during pre-service training (PST) but is the youngest of the language staff and thus the one that we probably identify most with. Has a very energetic personality which is great when learning this unique language.

Well there’s our language crew in a nutshell. I know it would be better if you could associate faces with these names but it may be a while before I’m able to post pictures. As for me personally, I’m settling in well here – still wrapping my head around the fact that I will be gone for two years but it gets easier everyday as my body adjusts to the time difference, the heat and the humidity. And with 180 hours of language training ahead of me (including time with our host village families) I’ll have a lot of time to adjust to the fa’a Samoa (the Samoan way).

P.S. if anyone has any questions that they want me to answer specifically you can email me and I’ll post to the blog my responses so everyone can kind of be on the same page now that I’m actually here. L8r.