..."We've got a loverrrly bunch of COCONUTS..."

This is the tree that grows out back.

This is the woman who climbed the tree that grows out back.

This is the girl who was given the coconut from the woman who climbed the tree that grows out back.

This is the frown on the face of the girl who was given the coconut by the woman who climbed the tree that grows out back.

What a shame she doesn't like coconut!

Not taking ourselves too seriously...

I'm reading through one of my favourite books again. It's called "Soul Survivor" by Philip Yancey (The by-line is "How my faith survived the church".) Yancey goes through several people who have been influential in his life, and his faith, and dedicates one chapter each to them. It's fascinating. There is Martin Luther King, Jr, Ghandi, Tolstoy & Dostoevsky, John Donne, and others. This latest chapter I've read is about Annie Dillard, a modern-day pulitzer prize winning author. I haven't read any of Dillard's work first hand, but he quotes some of her work in the chapter.

I had to laugh out loud as I read the other night, as she captured so well what happens on Sundays at church. Some of the "fatigued Bible readings, dilution of the liturgy, the horrifying vacuity of the sermon..." She goes on to say "Week after week we witness the same miracle: that God is so mighty he can stifle his own laughter"!

I love it!

(Have to admit, I've been to many church services that could be described like that, but currently loving our international, interdenominational church in Manila.)

Languages, Languages everywhere!

Another reason I love living in the Philippines is the multilingualism. While New Zealand is far from monolingual, my daily life in the ‘mainstream’ culture (apart from teaching & researching linguistics) was very much a monolingual one.

Here, our house is home to three daily languages! (Four, if you count the German grace that the girls love to sing before meals.) Coring, our driver, and our two yayas, Jenalyn and Myrna, are all trilingual. With us, they use English, but with each other, they use a mixture of Tagalog (the Philippine national language – also called Filipino) and Visayan. They all originate from the middle section of the country, where Visayan (also called Cebuano) is the lingua franca. Jenalyn actually comes from a different island from the other two, so her dialect of Visayan is sometimes called Boholano, but it’s close enough to the Visayan dialect spoken in Davao, where the other two are from, so there’s no barrier to understanding.

Both of the ladies speak Tagalog and Visayan with Tessa when they’re looking after her. Yesterday, Emily got quite concerned about this and said “Jenalyn, the baby doesn’t understand Tagalog!” We all laughed! I explained to Emily that babies don’t actually understand ANY language, unless they hear it often enough, so in fact, Tessa didn’t understand English yet either! I explained that Tessa was growing up hearing other languages, so when she starts speaking, she will be able to speak Tagalog, too, and not just English.

Well, Emily was quite taken by this idea, and asked Jenalyn to talk to her in Tagalog as well! So last night, over desert, we learned how to say ‘Do you like papaya?’ and ‘Yes, I do like papaya’ or (as in Zoe’s case) ‘No, I don’t like Papaya.’

I’m also enjoying being a (volunteer) guest-editor for a journal published by SIL and the Linguistic Society of the Philippines. I’ve worked on 3 articles thus far, and have enjoyed immersing myself in the linguistic research going on in different parts of the country. What I find fascinating is how the political history of a country is reflected in its current linguistic landscape.

The Philippines was a port for Portugese and Spanish traders for hundreds of years, and was also a key trading portal for the Malays and other Asians, like the Chinese. In some coastal areas, a creole survives (Chabacano), which originated from a trade language spoken by Portugese/Spanish traders in their ships. It has become ‘nativised’, now being a living language, and even has its own dialects in different parts of the country.

Some statistics show the Philippines to be one of the largest English-speaking countries in the world. The lingering status of English as an ‘official language’ in the Philippines reflects the fact that their latest colonizer still happens to dominate the world’s political landscape. Sure, English is spoken, but only in the big cities, and only as another lingua-franca on top of all the other languages. So rather than describing the actual linguistic practice of the people, such flashy statistics reflect more the Catholic approach to birth control here. (…for which the Spanish can be thanked!)

It’s a small world after all…

I love living internationally. We might live in the Philippines, but we’re very much a part of the expat arena, and have friends from all over the world. This became particularly apparent when Zoe’s preschool celebrated United Nations day a couple weeks ago. The children dressed up in their national costumes, made the flags of their home country and sang songs in a performance for the parents. We didn’t have any Maori costumes, or even black T-shirts, so Zoe dressed in colours to match her flag. (And her little sister dressed to match!)

As for the singing, if you’ve been to Disneyland as many times as I have (don’t forget, I grew up in LA) then “It’s a small world” never loses its association with little mechanical dollies dancing in the caves of the boat ride. However, I actually found it quite moving, watching these real, live ‘dolls’ singing that song together all dressed up.

At the British school, too, where Emily goes, the international influence is not restricted to Britain. They recently celebrated the Indian festival of Dwali, and made little candle-holders with glitter. They also recently had a cooking lesson with one Italian boy’s mother, where they made “Biscotti dela Nonna” (Grandma’s cookies).

And at the end of the day, even though they come from all over the world, they are still children who love to play with each other..