As I am working towards my goals of reading a French and a Chinese book this year, I read a few articles on how to
study languages. (I hoped some reader would share their study tips in my last post but I guess this blog has so few readers no one answered. So I had to look for study ideas elsewhere.)

One article pointed out the difference between having a vague idea of studying some language and having more measurable goals as to what one wants to do with that language. I gave this a lot of thought.

Turns out I have definite ideas of what I want to do with the languages I am studying or want to study. Maybe I did need to write them out. Thus, for my future reference, here are the reasons for learning my target languages:

Romanian: to read one Romanian book every year, for ease in travelling and for less laborious reading. Basically, Romanian is a jokey and warm language that boosts my self-esteem; I just want to have more of it in my life.

Chinese: to read at least one Chinese book every year, for ease when travelling in Taiwan. I also want to read more comic books from Taiwan and Hong Kong. As well, I want to write more beautifully in Chinese, maybe hiring a tutor to help me with Chinese calligraphy. I want to write a lot of letters in Chinese to my friends in Taiwan.

Japanese: to read the occasional Japanese book or article on cultural topics that interest me (mostly onsens, food, games, arts, crafts and literature). To be able to understand my favourite Japanese tv shows and movies without subtitles. To be able to research new onsens for subsequent trips.

French: to read one French book every year and to read a few nineteenth and twentieth century novels or other books in the original. I also found French very useful when travelling in Tunisia, so I want to be able to use it in other Francophone African countries like Senegal and Rwanda. I want to read more French and Belgian comics. Of course there’s also the extensive travelling in France I want to do and possibly living there.

Spanish: so much great Spanish literature to read in the world! Plus, Spanish is just a fun language to speak. One of my goals is to spend the Mexican Days of the Dead in Oaxaca with a family there. Then there is a personal research project I want to do in South America.

Italian: for reading more Italian comic books, some literature and mostly for ease of travelling and of travel research. I also want to rent apartments there for month-long trips. It would be nice to have long conversations about Italy with my future neighbours.

German: because I want to live and work in Austria. I also want to read some German literature in the original language and I want to play boardgames in the original languages.

Russian: for speaking and some reading. I suspect there’s a whole world of cool, wacky children’s literature I need to read in Russian. I want to watch Cheburashka without making up my own dialogue (my Cheburashka DVD set only has Japanese subtitles).

Swedish: I want to read all of Tove Jansson’s books in the original language, as well as any biographies. Also, I want to travel to Sweden. Hopefully I’ll find more reasons to study Swedish once I start learning about the culture.

Inuktitut: mostly I want to learn to write in their cool alphabet. I don’t know any Inuit people, but it would be cool to try some out when I visit Iqaluit. Plus, I believe that one should speak the language of the country one is in. Canada has a lot of aboriginal languages yet all the annoying white people here snarl “Speak English!” to poor immigrants trying their best to speak English, when really English is not the original local language. Ideally, Halq’eméylem would be better for my needs but I like the Inuktitut alphabet so much.

Taiwanese: for speaking when I visit Taiwan. I also want to learn at least one Chinese dialect to see if it’s really a dialect or if it is a separate language. Plus, Taiwanese sounds so bad-ass.

Cantonese: to order dim sum in Richmond for starters. Also, to watch Hong Kong movies in the original, to chat more when I visit Hong Kong or when I meet grandmothers at friends’ houses here in Vancouver. Chinese grandparent types have lived through an amazing and dramatic century – they must have incredible stories.

Hungarian: like with Swedish, I hope that I’ll find more reasons to study when I start studying Hungarian. Mostly, I want to be able to have conversations when I travel to Romania and Hungary (Hungarians are such nice people), and especially to be able to do research on Romanian history.

Kinyarwanda: for travel when I go to Rwanda. I want to ask questions and be a good enough listener so I can understand the stories about life in Rwanda and the genocide. I bet too that there are some great etiquette lessons the Rwandans have, which, once I learn what they are, I’ll write about.

Amharic: also for travel. Plus, I want to learn the Ge’ez alphabet. Again, I want to be able to listen better to conversations and to meet the people who don’t just speak English. We’re also lucky in this part of Canada because we have a lot of Ethiopians. It would be nice to understand Ethiopian songs too. I can’t sing but I have a secret fantasy of going into an Ethiopian karaoke bar and wowing everyone. If there are karaoke bars for Ethiopians.

Arabic: mostly I want to conduct some history research in Syria. Maybe once I know a little Arabic, I would find some good literature to read in the original language.

Finnish: for ease of travelling and it is the language of the country where Tove Jansson was born and where she lived. Now that I have started studying it, it turns out Finnish is incredibly beautiful and melodic. No wonder they and their Baltic neighbours are such good singers. I want to trill like those Finns. There are also more and more Finnish comic books I am discovering that I want to read. Another reason I want to study it is because, like Hungarian and Estonian, it is not in the Indo-European language group.

Norwegian: I want to travel there. I also had a Norwegian penpal who sent me a book on his country and in the book it said that by law every library in the country must own a copy of every Norwegian book. With a government that supportive of Norwegian writers, they must have a few good ones. I want to read these authors in the original.

Dutch: I love travelling to the Netherlands and I loved Flanders. I want to chitchat more in Dutch/Flemish with the people there. I also want to research a WWI topic.

Estonian: because it’s another beautiful, trilling language. Mostly my goal is to learn from cover to cover the one Estonian textbook I started. I have no hope of speaking Estonian when I am not travelling there. But I can read and master this one book.

Update

Please read the comment from Barry Martinson, the author of Song of Orchid Island. I was incorrect about him being “one of many missionaries who go to Taiwan to help snuff out any remaining aboriginal culture.” Though I am still vehemently opposed to missionary work, I do appreciate his work and am relieved that not all missionaries are there to change local cultures. I also promise to make his book the one on which I will begin improving my Chinese.

May 28, 2011

*****

Orchid Island lies to the far south of Taiwan, only of its last outposts before you hit the Philippines. In Mandarin, it’s Lanyu; in the original Yami, it’s Ponso no Tao. Taiwan, though predominantly Chinese – a group that is itself not as homogeneous as we’re taught to believe, with a distinction between Mainland Chinese and Taiwawese Chinese, between standard society Chinese and the Hakka, among the Hakka themselves, between the Miaoli Hakka and the Taoyuan Hakka, and so on – has a number of aboriginal groups that occupied the island before Chinese colonization.

The Tao or Yami are supposedly the least assimilated aboriginals on Taiwan’s islands – many men still wear the traditional loincloth that makes them fodder for the camera-happy Taiwanese tourist. Many Tao still prefer their traditional houses and some still hunt the flying fish.

On a stormy night in August 1998, I watched a mammoth thunderstorm unfurl over poor Orchid Island. From my vantage point far away, I watched the lightning torment this island. I sat on the veranda of our hotel in the dark, while some tough-talking Chinese girl smoked nearby. (I remember she was one of the few cool Taiwanese people I ever met. Most of the people I knew were cherubic, even when they were cranky.) As I watched the storm, I hoped that everyone on Orchid Island was doing ok. I hoped they were safely enjoying the majesty of their sound and light show.

That was as close as I ever got to Orchid Island.

Back in Taipei, one of my Mandarin teachers had an especially strong distaste for the Tao. She repeated again each month – as if we had forgotten from the previous month – that the Tao were insolent spoiled brats. Here was the Taiwanese government offering to build them concrete apartment blocks and what do they want? To continue living in their grass huts! The nerve!

I thought then, but never challenged this teacher, that perhaps grass huts were better suited to the Orchid Island climate. I had my own militant beliefs that concrete apartment blocks were the breeding grounds of the cockroach, and that the Tao were smarter somehow.

Then I read that the government actually ordered their traditional houses torn down.

There is also the proof that my opinion of Tao housing was more correct than my teacher’s:

The traditional Yami dwelling is a semi-subterranean house built in a shallow excavation so that only the roof shows. Cool in summer, warm in winter, these ingenious houses are nearly impervious to the fierce typhoons that strike frequently from May through September. On one side of these living quarters is a smaller work house with a board floor and an underground storage space. On the other side of the dwelling is an elevated, roofed platform, situated so that it gives a clear view of the sea and catches the cooling breezes, where the Yamis relax and eat, smoke, chew betel nuts, and visit.

The depressions in which the dwellings are built are neatly walled with stone; the level area in front of each house is covered with stones, and the spaces between houses are paved with stone and serve as pathways. The overall effect is of an extremely efficient, highly practical arrangement that is ideally-suited to the local environment.

Unfortunately, these traditional three-element housing units seem in danger of extinction, replaced by government-built square concrete boxes. The old houses have nearly disappeared from four of the island’s six villages; they are preserved in large numbers only in the two villages on the east coast.

(From Earl Wieman’s article, “Orchid Island: A People Lost in Time.” Photos of Orchid Island here.)

Before I left Taiwan in 1999, I bought a copy of a book called Song of Orchid Island. I bought the book more for the fact that I thought famous and tragic Taiwanese author San Mao actually wrote the book. I went upstairs to my library tonight, pulled the book off the shelf and, for the last few minutes, have been dismayed to learn that San Mao only translated the book. An American called Barry Martinson wrote it. He is one of many missionaries who go to Taiwan to help snuff out any remaining aboriginal culture. Can someone whose goal is to supplant a traditional culture with western culture via religion possibly be a sensitive writer? I could better accept San Mao writing about the Tao, because she was depressed and suicidal and everyone knows depressed people are usually nice.

I put the book back on the shelf for now.

From Go-Quiz.com

(Thank you, LJ!)

I, Maktaaq, am indeed radioactive.

I have lived in quite a few radioactive parts of the world: there is little chance that I would not have come into contact with radioactive matter. Who can say that Romania, neighbouring the Ukraine, isn’t a cushion of radiation? Japan, a sullen joy for conspiracy theorists, staged its own nuclear accident for my benefit when I lived there.

Taiwan was full of nuclear excitement. There are about 1,600 residences and 10 schools in Taiwan constructed out of radioactive steel. Covered up for 10 years, by 1997, when I relocated to Taipei, this problem occasionally made it onto the evening news. Unfortunately, only a third of the radioactive steel has been located. As for the buildings in which there is radioactive material, people still live in them, with no chance to move anywhere else. During a walk around the northern area of Taipei, I walked right into a radioactive sign attached to one of the tainted buildings.

North Americans think they are immune. (Bwa ha ha!) It is possible, however, that some of this radiation has set up camp here. Your cutlery is more dangerous than you think. Heck, you could probably celebrate a nuclear accident for every day of the year. Who needs Al Qaeda when we could bombard ourselves with the glowing goodness that makes fish sprout extra eyeballs?

So, yes, I am indeed radioactive.

As for squirrelly – I blame the radiation.