Preparing to Learn
- Jan
- 16
- Posted by jfeser
- Posted in Faith and Ministry
It’s been a while since I’ve been in school. Now here I am, ready to embark on a new educational experience. No, I’m not going for a Masters degree (yet), nor am I trying for some professional certification (is there one for the field of non-profit management?). What I am doing is embarking on a journey of learning the Maasai language.
Why?
I’ve considered my motivations for this carefully, and there are more than one, so let me state them:
- It’s been too long since I’ve taken myself into the amazing land of language acquisition. I studied German and Spanish in university, I learned Swahili (both formally and informally), and before that I was learning French and Lingala (neither of which I had any particular mastery of). But I haven’t put any real effort into any language since 3rd year of university – and that was *cough* quite a while ago.
- Maasai isn’t related to any language I currently speak, and it intrigues me. It always has.
- I can honestly say I’m learning from scratch. As of today, the start of this project, I know my numbers (1-100), I know the word for a donkey and a cow (well, one of the words for a cow, anyway), I can say hello to men and women, I know the word for God, holy, and good, I can say, with moderate success “I’m going home” and “I’m going to the office” and “I don’t know”. I know the imperative for “stand up” and “sit down”… and that’s it. I think that counts as learning from scratch.
- There’s not a lot of information on the language. There’s far more than none – I just accessed a grammar from 1900 that USC has – but there’s also far less than I’m used to. For an English speaker who has always studied well documented languages with 1000-page textbooks before (or at least a very handy reference in the case of Lingala), this should be an adventure.
- There are a lot of Maasai speakers around here. I can easily find people to practice on, and I’m only hours away from immersion. There are even a few foreigners who have learned it through immersion, and I’m counting on them to be able to answer some of the questions that will surely pop up.
- We’re doing quite a bit of work in partnership with the Maasai. Last fall I was on tour with The En-kata Choir, and constantly laughed at the fact that they had to speak a second language in order for me to understand and translate into English. It would be very practical in many ways to bypass Swahili and go straight from Maasai to English in the future. Also, as we proceed with this amazing idea of creating a Maasai opera, a working grasp of the Maasai language should be a priority.
So that’s it – I have personal, practical, and professional reasons. Here goes.