[lg policy] Guam: I Ferian Lenggu åhi

Tue Oct 27 14:11:50 UTC 2009

I Ferian Lengguåhi

October 27, 2009

I Ferian Lengguåhi

[Chamorro version deleted (HS)]

I went to Bremen, Germany for the Festival of Languages. I went there
at the invitation of Dr. Thomas Stolz, chair of the Department of
Languages at the University of Bremen. He invited me, Professor Rosa
Salas Palomo and Dr. Robert A. Underwood, president of the University
of Guam.

Dr. Stolz has been interested in the CHamoru language for over a
decade now. In fact, in the spring of 2007, he brought over to the
University of Guam nearly a dozen students, all females, who were
studying CHamoru at the University of Bremen. The trip was the
culmination of what he called a field study and hands-on exposure to
the language. His trip was my first meeting with him. He had impressed
me with his earnestness and genuine desire to see our indigenous
language become a focus of an exchange program between the two
universities and to encourage foreign, European students to look at
and study the uniqueness of CHamoru. It was at this time that I also
had completed my master's thesis in Micronesian studies, a feat that
was monumental because it was the first thesis from the University of
Guam and in the region of Micronesia to be written entirely in the
CHamoru language. Dr. Stolz requested for a copy of this thesis which
he has housed in the archival documents section of the library at the
University of Bremen.

>>From that trip, one student, Barbara Dewein, stayed behind and
attended the summer and fall semesters taking my CM101 Elementary
Chamorro I and CM102 Elementary Chamorro II classes. On this trip to
Bremen, Barbara took the time from her busy schedule to show us around
the city and to take us to a number of cultural sites.

Dr. Stolz was the brainchild of the festival of languages and was
instrumental in its planning and coordination that included
comparative studies in grammar, morphology, linguistic features,
phonology, typology, syntax, lexicons and other studies conducted in
the following languages of Chinese, Turkish, Maltese, Dutch, Spanish,
Creole, Polish, African languages, Canadian use of French, Hindi,
Arabic, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese, American and British English,
Australian aborigine languages, Rapanui (Easter Island) and, of
course, CHamoru. Although, much of the festival featured colloquiums,
CHamoru had its own special day that was held at the Overseas Museum
in the middle of downtown, a tourist and commercial center of Bremen.

The event was billed as "The Early Documents On and in Chamorro," a
colloquium on the occasion of the foundation of CHiN-Chamorro
Lingustics, an international network which was a part of the Festival
of Languages. At that presentation, Dr. Underwood spoke first on
Language policy on Guam followed by myself on CHamoru literacy, Prof.
Salas Palomo presented a crash course in the CHamoru language for
beginners. The other presenters were Dr. Rafael Rodriguez-Ponga from
Madrid, Spain. He represented the Association of Spanish studies in
the Pacific. Not only did Rodriquez-Ponga speak CHamoru quite well but
has been to Guam twice in the over twenty-five years of study in the
CHamoru language. His presentation was on communication between
islanders and visitors and the 1565 vocabulary language of Guam. It
was a subject that was in-depth and something that I now have a much
better understanding of. He and Dr. Underwood knew each other quite
well.

Next was Dr. Thomas Klein, a German who now teaches at Georgia
Southern University. Dr. Klein had last been to Guam in 1999 and had
interviewed me and a number of other people who dealt with the
teaching of the language on Guam. His talk on morphophonology of
CHamoru in earlier German documents was very familiar to me as one
aspect of it was the vowel fronting feature that was akin to the
German pattern called umlaut. Both Dr. Rodriguez-Ponga and Dr. Klein
gave me copies of their books which referenced many of my work.
Another speaker was Dr. Pierre Winkler from the University of
Amsterdam who spoke on translating Father San Vitores' grammatical
institutions of the Marianas language. Dr. Stolz then gave a talk
about the first printed book in Chamorro, entitled El verdadero
cristiano instruido written in 1863. The final speaker was Dr. Steven
R. Fischer from the University of Auckland who spoke about sources in
the island of Rapanui or Easter Island where Spanish became a marked
influence on their native speakers much like its similarity to the
Marianas.

The day's presentation culminated with a dance by Erikarose Naputi
Arceo Camacho, a former student of mine, also a niece and now living
in Mannheim, Germany. Erikarose presented a dance workshop several
years ago at the University of Bremen where she taught over ninety
German students in the dances of Pa'a Taotao Tåno'. Professor Salas
Palomo and myself accompanied her in the recitation of the Inifresi,
the singing of the Fanohge CHamoru and the O Asaina, a prayerful song
and chant that I had composed for the Festival of the Pacific Arts in
1996.

Afterwards, the group gathered on the outside of the museum and
discussed the formulation of CHiN, an organization that was also the
brainchild of Dr. Stolz. CHiN's acronym stands for Chamorro
(Linguistics) International Network and the first maga'låhi designated
by the group is Dr. Rodriguez-Ponga who issued an invitation that the
group will meet in Madrid, Spain in 2010. Dr. Robert A. Underwood will
serve as its first honorary president.

I will write about Bremen, Germany and other activities that we did in
my next article.

Peter R. Onedera is an assistant professor of Chamorro language at the
University of Guam's College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences,
Division of Humanities. You may e-mail him at onedera at uguam.uog.edu.

http://www.guampdn.com/article/20091027/OPINION02/910270316/1014/OPINION/I+Ferian+Lenggu%C3%A5hi
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