Chamorro lessons on CD (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Chamorro lessons on CD
http://www.guampdn.com/news/stories/20040407/localnews/181127.html

By Katie Worth; kworth at guampdn.com
Pacific Daily News

[photo inset - Masako Watanabe/Pacific Daily News/mwatanabe at guampdn.com
Finished product: University of Guam bilingual education professor
Jacquelyn Milman holds the Chamorro language educational audio compact
discs she helped to produce in her home office.]

If you've been wanting to learn Chamorro but can't seem to fit classes
or lessons into your schedule, don't despair, because soon there will
be a way for you to learn it on your own.

Language professors at the University of Guam plan to release Basic
Chamoru, a text and CD set, this month that will help people teach
themselves Chamorro.

The low-budget production was the brainchild of bilingual education
professor Jacquelyn Milman, who said she had tried to teach herself
Chamorro but had a hard time picking up pronunciation simply out of the
grammar books. Then, after learning basic French through a text and CD
self-teach program, she decided to work on a similar self-teach program
for Chamorro.

"My husband and I learned French this way when we were preparing to take
a trip to Europe, and I liked the idea -- it worked for us -- and I
thought, that would be a good method to use in Chamorro," she said.

Basic Chamoru is being considered by a book publisher, but even if it
doesn't get picked up by a publisher, Milman said she and her
colleagues would self-publish the project this month.

The program's text was written by Milman and edited by Anna Marie Arceo
of the Micronesian Language Institute and other language teachers who
are fluent in Chamorro.

The speaking models use a methodology called Suggestopedia, or
Accelerated Learning, a method developed by Bulgarian psychiatrist
George Lozanov and used by the Department of State to teach its
employees foreign languages, Milman said.

According to Milman, Lozanov believed that much of the brain's learning
potential can be tapped effectively through music, based on research
indicating that the brain absorbs information that is presented
rhythmically faster than it does other information.

Based on this belief, she said, Lozanov developed a program of learning
language by setting it to slow, rhythmic music.

Collaboration

In order to do this with Chamorro, Milman recruited the help of music
producer Albert Chaco, as well as Chamorro language teachers and
musicians. After some lengthy delays, the musical portion of the
project was concluded by music professor Randy Johnson, who has a
recording studio at the University of Guam.

The team produced three lessons, each of which focuses on a theme:
meeting people, at a fiesta and shopping for clothes. At the completion
of the program, students should have about a 500-word vocabulary and a
basic understanding and speaking ability in Chamorro, Milman said.

She said her goal is to keep the self-teach program affordable -- $20 or
under for the text and six CDs. If it is successful, she said she would
consider expanding the lessons, as well as producing a similar Chamorro
text and CD set in Japanese, with hopes that it will appeal to Japanese
tourists.

The project has been created entirely by volunteer work and financed
mainly by Milman, except for a small seed grant from the Guam Council
on the Arts and Humanities Agency, which went to Chaco.

Milman said she would like to recover some of the money she has put into
the project, but that it has mostly been a labor of love for her and
the others who have devoted their time and resources to the project.

Local demand

The new learning tool will meet a need for the community, which
increasingly is interested in recuperating its lost language skills,
said Arceo, who did grammar corrections and translations for the text.

"I've worked at the Chamorro Language Commission, I've been a Chamorro
teacher. I'm here now at the Micronesian Language Institute at the
university, and there's always people calling with the need to learn
the language, and they ask if we have anything, if we're selling
anything for them to learn it with," she said.

"It's unfortunate because here on Guam, -- because of the colonization
and because of our history -- most of our young people don't know how
to speak Chamorro. The average person who speaks and understands it is
maybe age 45 and above," she said.

But this new program, along with other texts written by Chamorro
language expert Katherine Aguon and others, may help more people speak
and understand Chamorro. She said the self-learning tool will help
those who may not be able to attend classes or learn in other ways.

"Sometimes you have the desire (to learn Chamorro) but there's no way or
the means are very limited, but with this people can learn it in their
car or in their home," she said. "It's an outlet. It's very positive."

Originally published Wednesday, April 7, 2004