content

life (132) community (99) guahan (70) crafting (57) gallery (50) viewed (45) Celebrate (43) album (41) shopping (24) cast (16) oishi (12) hooping (5) growing (4)

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Life in Wonderland: Eigo o hanashimasu.

Watashi wa Andrea desu.
Chamorro jin desu.
Eigo o hanashimasu.

In order to get a degree I need to take two semesters of foreign language.  I chose to take Japanese.  Many people take Japanese because Guam's main economy is dependent on Japanese tourists.  I don't really intend on working in this industry forever.  I just wanted to learn Japanese.

Anyways, in my last class we worked on a dialog where you had to say what ethnicity you are and what languages you speak.  My class is made up of different ethnnic backgrounds.  What I found interesting was that many of the students from the Philippines and Chuuk speak their native language as well as English.  All of us Chamorro students could only say, "Eigo o hanashimasu."  I speak english.  Not one of us speak Chamorro.  Although I do know of one student who took a semester of Chamorro at U.O.G.

It's strange that we haven't left our home, like many of our other classmates, yet they can speak their native language.  Okay, so it's not that strange and it isn't new info.  It was just really weird, hearing it out loud as my classmates declared their mother land and the languages they speak.  I wonder if any of the others picked up on this.  I wonder if any of them were as mamahloa, or embarrased, as I was at that moment.

1 comment:

  1. I know you've got a head start Drea, but to me at least, Japanese really seem soooo hard to learn!
    Good luck!

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for taking the time to view my blog! Comments and questions are welcome. :P