It's all Greek to me....

Magandang Hapon! (That's Good Afternoon in Tagalog)

We have started full time language studies. To be honest its hard to get back into “Study Mode”. I've been out of school so long that my brain is not use to getting fed so much new information so quickly. A missionary that we met Friday night said that Tagalog was rated an 8 out of 10 for difficulty. She said it's because of the stresses and inflects needed on words to get the right meaning. For instance, take the word “hapon” from my greeting. In this use of the word you put the stress on the “a” (hápon). If you say it with the stress on the “o” (hapón) then you are saying “Japanese”. So if I say my greeting with improper stress I would be saying “Good Japanese” or “Pretty Japanese”. Fortunately everyone here will figure out what you mean even if you butcher the language while learning.

We have had two full weeks of language with our tutor Tess. Each day we have new vocabulary and drill on old ones that we have learned (I use the term “learned” loosely here since I'm still working on the words from three days ago). Valerie has a slight advantage on me because she was fluent in Spanish back in high school and there are some similarities between the two languages. In fact, the words used to tell time and count currency are derived from the Spanish numeral system. After vocabulary we spend time on pronunciation. This is when we get to test our ability to speak the language. The drills go fairly smooth until we hit the “ng”. On our first day we were given a list of the Tagalog alphabet (which has 20 original letters) and one of the letters is “ng”. This is an anomaly that seems to stump a large number of newbies to the language. It is pronounced the same way you would say it in “sing” or “king” but the placement in the words makes it more difficult for Americans to get it right. For instance, the word “ngipin” is kinda hard to get right since I'm use to the “ng” at the end of the word. The crazy part is that Filipinos can really hear this letter well and they can tell when you are saying it wrong (even though I think I'm doing it right). However, I'm happy to report that after two weeks of practice we're getting better at it. Our tutor is very impressed and says we are much further along in our pronunciation than most are at this time. The drills and pronunciation take up most of the morning so we usually break for lunch after them.

In the afternoon we work on sentence structure. And I thought the “ng” was a bugger to figure out...There are two ways to form sentences. The formal/longer way and the common way. Guess which way is easier for us? Formal. The formal structure looks similar to English and so we can guess the structure much easier. The common structure is the reverse of the formal with a few words left out. Here is an example to help explain. “Ako ay may kotse” means “I have a car” “Akin (I) ay may (have) kotse (car)” (This sentence may not be 100% correct so those of you who are fluent in Tagalog please forgive me). This is the formal way to say it and is acceptable, however it is not common. The common way to speak it is something like “May ang kotse ko” which loosely translates “The car is mine” but if you look at the sentence the structure deviates from the English. These are short/basic sentences (all we have learned at this time) but it gets more complicated as the sentences grow in length. By 3:00 pm our brains are pretty much fried. There have been a number of occasions when our tutor looks at me and asks “Tom...Are you OK?” It's usually right after she asks me a question in Tagalog and I am suppose to answer her back in Tagalog. Apparently I must get a blank look on my face as my mind tries to construct my response (usually the hang up is the vocabulary and my mind is trying to sort through all the new terms to find the right one). That's about the time Tess has us get up and start writing out sentences on the board to help us get the blood flowing and work out the structure.

On Thursdays we go on fields trips in the afternoon to practice our Tagalog on unsuspecting strangers. Our first trip was in our neighborhood where we had to try and hold a conversation. Thank the Lord we were allowed to have notes to refer to. We had to say “Good Afternoon...How are you?...May I practice my Tagalog with you?...My name is Tom...This is my wife Valerie and my daughter Faith...What is your name?...Where did you come from?....Where are you going?.....What is the Tagalog for (place an English word here)?...Thank you.....Good by.” Sounds simple enough? It's simple if you like public speaking and you're confident in your ability to speak the language (both of which I am not). With sweat dripping down my neck (could have been from nerves or the heat and humidity...it's hard to tell...I sweat a lot these days) we headed out to meet strangers! Tess wanted us to speak with people of our own gender. We came across two teenage boys first. One had headphones on and was deep into his music but the other didn't and he made eye contact. Nervously I said my phrases and waiting for his response to each. I was more nervous until I would ask the question “Can I practice my Tagalog” before that statement is made I feared people would think I was fluent and try to hold deep meaningful conversations with me. However, I'm pretty sure my butchering of those first few sentences made it very evident that I was new to the language. The boy smiled and answered my questions politely. His name was JP. I learned later, as I passed by him a second time, that he had seen me at a one day conference I had attended earlier that week. We moved on down the street and headed to the birthing center.

Valerie was able to practice her Tagalog on some women waiting outside. The first woman she spoke with was very shy. So shy that she got up and left in the middle of the conversation. Tess told us that we should expect things like that since the people are so shy. Valerie did a great job. I guess because of working in the Express Care she was always meeting new strangers so she was use to talking to them. She may have been nervous but I couldn't tell it. She spoke to a few more women and we moved on to find a second victim...I mean stranger for me to practice with. We ran into a small boy (maybe 5 years old) I tried to talk with him but he just stared at me not saying a word. Must have been strange to him to have a six foot tall white man towering over you asking to practice his Tagalog. We headed down the street to where the tricycle drivers were parked. There were a lot of men there so my chances were good that I could talk to a few. The first person I tried talking to was the driver of a truck that was sitting in the cab with his two year old child standing next to him. I asked my first question and he said a few things that I didn't understand while hiding behind his daughter. He was very shy and very interested in staying out of a conversation so we moved on to a group of guys sitting on some tables chatting. I gave them my speech and they graciously allowed me to practice. Two of them were named June so I thought it would be funny to ask them what the Tagalog word for “Twin” was. I asked if they were twins and they just looked at me funny and said “no”. I realized it was a pretty bad joke to begin with but the language barrier made it worse. I kindly said good bye and we headed back to the house. It wasn't that bad of an experience so I'm sure I'll do better the next time we have to do this.

The following Thursday we went to the mall for our field trip. We had our shopping list of things we needed to buy and we had to go in the stores and practice asking “Nasaan ang .....” that is “Where is ....”. If we didn't know the Tagalog for the word of something we were looking for we had to ask the person what that word was and then ask where it was. To me this was a much easier assignment since I wasn't having to hold long conversations. We went through the stores and found most everything we needed. I made one sales person so nervous that she forgot the Tagalog for a word and had to go ask someone. As a treat we all stopped and had Ice Cream at DQ (Yep that's right there's a DQ here). Nothing too exciting to write about on this trip but there are more trips to come so stay tuned.

I keep reminding myself that we are only two weeks into language so I can't expect to be a linguist already. Most of the missionaries we have talked to were required to spend two full years in language before they could start doing the ministry work they felt called to. We are in full time language for about two more weeks then we start part time language for 11 months while working in the areas we feel God has called us to. Tess and the Nelsens think we are doing great and expect us to be masters of the language in no time. Time will tell. Our hearts' desire is to know the language so we can build relationships in the community and share the good news of Jesus Christ. So we press on in hopes of being useful to our Lord and Savior. I'll keep you posted on how it's coming.