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March 1, 2001
Dear Friends,
Our goals right now center around language and learning culture. Any of you who have learned a language know that it can be both exciting and frustrating. Thankfully, Marcus and I both learned to laugh at ourselves a long time ago, or we would be on a plane home right now! One hard thing about learning Tawala is that it doesn't have all of the same sounds as English. For example, their letter "L" is quite a lot different. And our dear teachers want us to learn to speak properly. They can't imagine why we don't get it. Marcus told me about this language learning experience recently.
Marcus: "Geka ginolina goana awai?" (What is the name of this?)
Tawala speaker: "Polo" (Pig)
Marcus: "Polo"
Tawala speaker: "No. Polo"
Marcus: "Polo"
Tawala speaker: "No. POLO"
Marcus says that he never did get it right--and such a simple word!
The village school children decided to teach us to count recently, which provided some more amusement for us. Tawala has a very complex counting system. As a matter of fact, some people never learn to count, because it's just too complicated. From one to one hundred, there are mixtures of fingers, toes, hands, legs and people dying, all to express numbers. For twenty, you say "One man dies." Just to give you an example, in Tawala, thisis how one says 99: Lawa wohepali hi-hilage po nima luwaga hi-tutu po ae emosi i-tutu po wohepali (literally "four men died and two hands hit and one leg hit and four."
Now y'all learn that, and I'll send you some more.
Please pray that we will have patience, discipline and perseverance in order to learn this language.
God bless you, Diane Reese (with Marcus and Hannah)
Marcus volunteering
at the community
workday in Mutuyuwa, where he does most
of his language learning.
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