Ia edemw? Edei Mia!

One week into language training, and I can now properly greet people, talk about my family, talk about food, and count to ten. Well, to be truthful, I can only count to ten using one of the counting systems. There are different numbers that you use for counting round objects, long objects, days of the week, and anything that’s alive. And don’t even get me started on the pronouns! There are three different forms of we, depending on how many people you’re talking about and whether or not you’re including the person you’re talking to as part of the “we.” And possessive pronouns are impossible – there are different categories for clothing, food, drinks, transportation, buildings, and objects. For example, if you want to say “my,” “ahi rausis” means “my pants,” “kenei uht” means “my banana,” “nei pil” means “my water,” “werei pwoht” means “my boat,” etc, etc. We haven’t even begun to understand the pronouns!

It’s really frustrating being at the beginning of learning a language, particularly since I have a hard time just pronouncing some of the sounds that we don’t really use in English. I just want to be able to communicate! It’s hard to be patient and accept that the language will all make since in time.

In case you’re interested in the language, Pohnpeian has about 38,000 native speakers and it is the major language of the Pohnpei State of the Federated States of Micronesia. Since Pohnpei has a history of colonization with Spain, Germany, Japan, and the United States, the influences of Spanish, German, Japanese, and English are evident in Pohnpeian. Table is “tehpel,” October is “Ocktohpe,” and lots more. Since Pohnpeian existed only as a spoken language before colonization, the written form was developed by the Spaniards and Germans. So the spellings are representative of the Spanish and German alphabets. Very few people actually write or read in Pohnpeian, however. There’s no “correct” way to spell any given word, so our two manuals have differing spellings for various vocabulary words.

Peace Corps doesn’t care about teaching us the written form, but since all the Pohnpei volunteers are such visual learners, we’ve been begging for anything in writing. I think the most common thing we ask in language class is “how do you spell that?” and poor Truleen (our WONDERFUL language teacher) has to come up with the most logical way to spell the word. But when someone says something in Pohnpeian, I can’t repeat it. I need to see the individual letters written out to make sure I’m hearing all the individual sounds.

It was exciting to see a little progress this weekend. My host grandma speaks very little English, so I was actually able to converse with her a little bit this weekend! I was able to tell her where I’ll be living, that I’ll come back to visit, that I was going swimming that day, that I liked the food, etc. Of course, she then went on to ask me more questions that I didn’t understand (I have a very strict script I can follow and it doesn’t work when people deviate from it, lol!), so then someone needed to translate for me again.

Anyway, here are some pictures from model school and snorkeling :)