Speak Chamorro Mobile app

Young Men’s League of Guam launches ‘Speak Chamorro’ mobile app
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Friday, February 24, 2015 

(Hagatna, Guam) Today, the Young Men’s League of Guam (YMLG) is pleased to announce the release of the ‘Speak Chamorro’ mobile app. 

The Speak Chamorro app is free and available on Google Play for Andriod phones and the iPhone version of the same will be available next Friday, March 06, 2015. 

The features of the app include:
a. Chamorro word of the day
b. Definition of the Chamorro word
c. English translation of that word, and
d. The use of the Chamorro word in a sentence and its translation in English. 

The genesis of developing a mobile app came about in a recruitment meeting between Brother Bob Pelkey, President of the YMLG, Brother Dr. Wilfred P. Leon Guerrero, Member of the Board of Directors, Brother Wil Castro, Public Affairs Officer, YMLG, and Lt. Governor Ray Tenorio. Lt. Governor Ray Tenorio stated “that I too have made it a goal to become proficient in my language and if there was a way we may help others like me, that would be great.” 

The Guam Department of Education Chamorro Studies Division is a development partner for the app. Brother Ron Laguana is the administrator of that division and a member of the Board of Director for the YMLG. He assists the league by providing the content used in the app. 

The YMLG prioritized the development of the app in consideration of Mes Chamorro and upon the start of its ‘Drive to 100,’ a 24 month campaign leading up to the league’s centennial anniversary. The league was founded in March of 1917. 

According to YMLG President Bob Pelkey, “for many years we have served our community by providing scholarships, sponsoring events, participating in clean-ups, caroling during the holidays for the young at the hospital, man’amko, and for those who are sick or needy, and in other ways. This year we want to do something that would reach as many people in a way that was meaningful to the league but relevant to those who share our love for the Chamorro language and culture, so we developed the Speak Chamorro app.” 

The Young Men’s League of Guam is the oldest Chamorro fraternal organization.
For additional information about the app you may contact Brother Wil Castro, at 929-6209 or wilcastro671@gmail.com or visit us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ymlgguam

The Importance of Being Bilingual

The Importance of Being Bilingual
Michael Lujan Bevacqua
May 19, 2015
No Rest for the Awake - Minagahet Chamorro

For the Importance of Second Language Learning Forum that I helped organize a few weeks ago, we were honored to have a very diverse and exciting panel. Coming at it from different angles, they covered a number of way, some more philosophical and others more practical, as to how learning a second language can be important and as a result, something that should be required at UOG. 

The panel featured the following guests:

Kenneth Gofigan Kuper, a Ph.D. student in Political Science at UH Manoa and former student of mine. He is a young activist who has taken up both the banner of decolonization and language revitalization. I've been working with him on a number of projects such as Ha'anen Fino' Chamoru Ha' and the upcoming Lalahen Sinahi project. He took Chamorro as his second language requirement at UOG and it changed the course of his life. 

Ronald T. Laguana, the current director of the Division of Chamorro Studies in the Guam Department of Education. He is a founding member of the group Nasion Chamoru and is also one of the people behind the popularization of the Inefrei written by Dr. Bernadita Camacho Dungca. He is a proud and active member of the Inetnon Lalahin Guahan, YMLG. 

Toyoko Kang and Clarisa Quan are both professors at UOG. Kang is a Japanese language professor and Quan is a Linguistics and English professor. Both of them have been critics of the dropping of the second language requirement at UOG. 

Dr. Laura Souder Betances is a pioneering Chamorro scholar. She was the one who first connected the academic ideas of feminism into Chamorro scholarship. She is the author of Daughters of the Island and the co-editor of the volume Chamorro Self-Determination with Robert Underwood. She and her husband are consultants for diversity and education.

With the help i nobia-hu Elizabeth Kelley Bowman, we gathered together some of the main quotes by the panelists. I'm sharing them below for people to see. As you can see, it was a very interesting discussion. This may have been part of the reason why the overwhelming majority of people who attended the event and who completed a survey, supported keeping the language requirement in place. 

*******************

 

I took Chamorro 101 to fulfill the language requirement.  I didn’t really care about the Chamorro language.  There was nothing in it for me.  . . . There was so much evidence of internalized racism and internalized colonialism, but what happened was that I ended up taking a few courses, with Chamorro language being a pivotal one, with Siñora Teresita Flores . . . and I learned a lot.  We would come to class and I would learn words that I used to remember hearing my grandmother speak when I grew up.  . . . You have just given me the gift, siñora, of understanding something that I never understood my entire life.  I got more and more involved with this, based off of taking a random class, because it was a GE requirement. 

I really had no interest in the Chamorro language four years ago, when I was twenty.  I’m twenty-four now.  And so, it was so important that I took that course, because sometimes the best things in life tend to hit you over the head when you least expect it.  And that’s why I support having second-language requirements as a GE, because we should not take away the opportunity for another person to have the story that I have.  To have the story of reconnecting with their roots as a Chamorro, no matter if you’re taking Tagalog classes, you’re taking Chinese, there’s so much reconnection to who you are, because through language, you can see the worldview, hear the worldview, the epistemology of your ancestors.  And there’s nothing that should take that away from you.

Kenneth Gofigan Kuper, M.A.

Yanggen para taiguini pa’go, na mafunas ya para mungga machule’ I Chamorro guini, pat maseha hafa na suhetu, Chapones, Tagalog pat maseha hafa, insuttu enao! Para guini gi tano’-ta gi este i eskuela-ta. I Unibetsedat Guahan i mas takhilo’ na unibetsedat guini gi Pasifiku.

Ronald T. Laguana

Language learning, teaching, shares some category of the learning process of critical thinking.  For example, . . . in [Japanese] 101 they are really completely beginners.  So they can’t analyze each word vocabulary particle, or prepositions; they have to analyze, and then, to get the meaning, they have to synthesize.  . . . Students have to learn how to analyze the information and to synthesize and then find out, evaluate, those information . . . Those kinds of learning process occur in second-language learners.  For example, each language has different concepts or realizations. . . .

To learn culture, to just read about Japanese culture in English, I don’t agree.  I don’t agree. Learn through the language, and learn to use it.  Otherwise they cannot use it. Learning should be used.  . . .  So that means students got deeper perspective. 

Toyoko Kang, Ph.D.

When I heard that they wanted to take away the second language requirement, I said, “Huh?”  We live in an island that’s multilingual, that’s multiethnic, that’s multicultural, and they want to take it away?  And Guam, I think, reflects the world as it is today.  We’re living in an increasingly multilingual, global world where multilingualism, multiculturalism, are the norm, rather than the exception.  And for you to take it away is ridiculous.  Or even to kind of reduce the requirement for it.  Second-language learning is cultural learning as well; learning modern languages is to learn the cultures as well.  . . . It promotes cultural awareness, it promotes criticism of ethnocentrism, believing that yours is the only correct one, superior one, it promotes acceptance of other people, other cultures, and I think it is very, very important. 

Clarisa Quan, Ph.D.

To the members of the faculty senate, who may be listening, who may be eavesdropping: it’s important that these voices, our voices, be heard.  . . . As Dr. Underwood said, “Siña mantulaika este na recommendation,” no?  And that’s the thing to remember.  Sometimes we make logical decisions, and they lead us to wrong destinations.  And we have the opportunity here to change course.  And to defy logic, because sometimes things are simply not logical, especially when they belong to matters of the heart. . . .

Universities exist to universalize students.  And how do we universalize students?  We universalize them by providing them with different universes in which to learn, to make decisions, and to operate, and to be successful.  One of the things that Sammy [Betances] and I have been doing lately, in the Marianas, in the Northern Marianas, and in Palau, is that we have been talking about the global-island divide, and how do we bridge that divide?  . . . If we’re going to operate and be successful in the global reality, we need to know more than one language.  Fortunately, many – most – of us are bilingual.  But we need to know many languages, because in order to be successful, you have to negotiate in many parts of the world.  In order to have an economic future, we need to be able to speak the languages of the people that we are trading with.  . . .

So that’s very important, from a language perspective, from a global perspective, from a university perspective.  Diminishing the capacity of students to learn more than one language, than the lingua franca which is English, is diminishing the capacities of universities to fully function as universalizing places for students. . . .

So that’s one aspect of language.  And I’d like you to think about another aspect of language, and that is language as the umbilical cord of culture.  Language connects us with culture.  And ladies and gentlemen, we don’t need to be reminded of this.  The Chamorro language and culture exists here, on this island, and these islands, of the Marianas.  Nowhere else on earth, nowhere else on earth, do we have the sovereign right to speak and live as Chamorros except in the Marianas.  So we have another responsibility.  This is not just about making available languages.  We’re not talking about just any language.  We’re talking about our indigenous language.  We’re talking about the responsibility that we have to protect the sovereignty of our language and our culture.  Nowhere else will anybody do this for us. 

This is our game.  These are our decisions.  . . . It is our responsibility to stand up, and that is why this kind of gathering is so important, because we need to make our voices heard.

Laura Torres Souder Betances, Ph.D.

More Chamorro Classes at GDOE

Extra classes may cost $11M: DOE works to implement additional Chamorro courses

Meryl Dillman
The Pacific Daily News
1/8/12

Public middle and high school students must take additional Chamorro language and culture classes by school year 2014-2015 under Guam law, raising concerns about cost to the Department of Education and the future of college-bound students.

The law could add millions of dollars to the Guam Department of Education's annual budget to pay for extra teachers, equipment, materials and, possibly, new facilities, DOE officials acknowledged.

High school students face the possibility of having fewer electives to take.

Debra Duenas, who has a son in middle school, is concerned about the possible reduction in electives to make room for the additional Chamorro lessons.

"Electives are needed to round out your education," said Duenas, a librarian at Juan Q. San Miguel Elementary School.

More courses

Currently, public school students are required to take Chamorro class in every year of elementary school, one year in middle school and one year in high school.

Public Law 31-45, which was Bill 95-31 written by Sen. Mana Silva Taijeron, states that seventh-graders should be included by school year 2013-2014, and eighth graders by the following school year. It also states ninth-graders in high school will take mandatory Chamorro course work by school year 2013-2014 and 10th-graders are to be included to the program the next school year.

Additional costs

Ronald Laguana, administrator for Guam DOE's Chamorro Studies Division, said it's been estimated that it could cost $11 million a year to pay for full implementation of the new requirements.

To implement the requirements, the education agency may have to add roughly 50 more teachers, which means more money to pay their salaries and benefits. It also will mean more equipment, supplies and facilities, said Jimmy Teria, a Chamorro language and culture specialist in the Chamorro Studies Division. The money would need to be appropriated to DOE by the Guam Legislature, as part of the department's budget, over the course of the implementation of the new requirements.

Cutting electives

Right now, students need 24 credits to graduate from high school -- six credits per year over four years.
The implementation of the new requirements still is being worked on, so it's unclear how adding an additional year of Chamorro language and culture will be handled, but a committee has been formed to address the implementation of the new requirements, education officials said.

Joseph Sanchez, acting deputy superintendent of Curriculum and Instructional Improvement, said the removal of a credit to accommodate the new Chamorro class requirements is a likely option. It most likely will be an elective that is removed, he said, because he can't imagine anyone wanting to remove a core course.

Sanchez said the community has to be aware of the fact that some things will have to be removed from the curriculum in order to accommodate the new requirements.

Taijeron said it never was the intention to overshadow or downplay the importance of other subject matters, and there are other options.

"Instead of cutting classes, there are other ways to incorporate the language and culture into those classes," she said.

For example, she said, Chamorro dancing could be incorporated into a physical education class or Chamorro music and art could be added to art classes. This could create a dual-credit course.

"There are many ideas, and it really doesn't have to mean cutting back anywhere in the Department of Education," she said. "Of course, it will have an impact on the curriculum, but it doesn't mean other classes will have to suffer."

Support

Taijeron said she introduced the legislation because she grew up in an era on Guam when language and culture weren't a focus in school.

"We have an opportunity to offer this to our children, and there's such a passion for it," she said.

She also said she feels it's her duty as an elected official to do her part to be sure the children of Guam have an opportunity to learn the culture and language.

When a public hearing was held on the bill, there was overwhelming support, Taijeron said. The law was passed unanimously.

Laguana said the law is a positive move because people thrive on language and culture. He also said he thinks the program will be funded.

"I'm sure the Legislature wouldn't pass bills and have it non-funded," he said. "When the time comes, it will be funded."

Grassroots

If the goal is to teach children and the community about the Chamorro language and culture, more work needs to be done than just in the schools, Duenas said.

She said teaching language is more of a grassroots and community issue and it needs to be spoken and taught at home and in the community for it truly to be effective.

Duenas said her son, who has been taking Chamorro classes in school and is half Chamorro, doesn't really speak the language.

Duenas has lived on Guam her entire adult life, but isn't Chamorro and doesn't speak the language, so she can't incorporate it at home and immerse her son in the language and culture, she said.