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.
