Watch Your ETs and EYs

Now that we are finally back home in the tribe, and somewhat settled, I can get to work on improving my Palawano. This term we are back without children to care for or homeschool. We’ve handed over the medical program to the Palawanos. So I have a lot more time to give to language. My goal is to reach a higher level so that I can have a more direct part in the translation of the New Testament.

Arlyn and Bing Bing are two young women, sisters, who work with me. They help around the house, guide me on the trails when I go out visiting, and assist me with language. The other day we were doing laundry, and I said to them, in my most polite Palawano, "It would be good, hopefully, if the clothes would hang you out in the sun to dry." The girls respectfully smiled, nodded, and then turned around and went outside to hang the clothes to dry.

When they go home, do they roll around on the floor, laughing uproariously, telling all their families about my language mistakes? I don't know. But when I found out what I had actually said to them, I had a rueful laugh on my own. Ah, such is CLA, Culture/Language Acquisition. An intelligent, competent middle-aged woman becomes a stammering lunatic. Wistful thoughts of my two years at Bethel Seminary, sitting in air-conditioned classrooms, studying in my comfortable, orderly, bug/rat/gecko/termite-free home, drift through my mind. Speaking ENGLISH. Fluently. Articulately.

But I'm having a blast with the language, culture and relationships here. Loving digging into it all. Spoken language is stored in a different part of the brain than are academic subjects. You can’t learn to speak a foreign language without actually speaking it. And you can’t speak at first without making mistakes. Alas, it is all part of the process.

We are very lucky, blessed, that the Palawano people are so nice to us. They understand that I am trying to learn more of their language and I don't always get it right. They don't really think their language is hard to learn. Even their kids can speak it. But they certainly recognize that I am struggling with it.

The week before I was mixing up the words for "hang out in the sun" and "dry." This week I got those sorted out, and made a more complicated mistake. Palawano takes a root word, then adds prefixes or infixes or suffixes to modify the meaning and change the tense. Then there are three classes of pronouns and noun markers. Which one you use determines who does what to whom or what. I said,

Menunga teyen ba iblad kaw et menge badyo.

But I should have said,

Menunga teyen ba iblad muyo ey menge badyo.

You gotta watch your ets and eys. So this week I'm focusing on exactly that. Along with a few other things.

Rini comes over three mornings a week for concentrated language sessions. She is great at explaining things, and has no problem correcting me when I say it wrong. Then the other mornings I get out of the house to visit and practice speaking. Afternoons I listen to the recordings I have made, and process what I'm learning. And at any point in time someone may stop by to visit, or borrow something, or bring us something, or ask our advice on a medical problem.

Saturday afternoon at 4:30pm is the women's prayer meeting. I pray in Palawano. I am so thankful that our patient and omniscient God knows my heart, because no doubt I pray some funny things sometimes.