Postby sfuqua » Mon Dec 24, 2018 3:59 am
Oratory in Samoa is much, much more important than it is in any Western culture I am familiar with. Educated Samoans all know how to make polite speeches, but there is a second level of speeches where everything is poetry and nothing means what it seems, where even common words all mean something else, and where there are many words that you will never hear somewhere else. This language should never be recorded or written down. I bet only Samoans really know this stuff even to this day. You could listen to these speeches all the time and never really figure it out. The only way to learn this is from a chief. You will never be taught it unless your family expects you to become a chief one day. The only people who are actually expected to make these speeches are "talking chiefs" or tulafale. High chiefs, alii, usually can understand but they expect that they will be represented by a tulafale.
Now, remember from the last post what had already happened. My friend had brought me to speak for him. While I had no title, emotionally I was his tulafale. The young lady in question, had almost explicitly said that I was her tulafale, when she said that I spoke for her. "Her whole attitude was, I am alii. Respect me and listen to me, but don't talk to me. My tulafale speaks for me." Before we left in the morning, it was decided that I would be "best man" for the wedding. One of the chiefs who had been in on the discussion the night before said to me, before we got on the bus, told me with a wicked smile, "I really look forward to hearing your speeches at the wedding." I then realized to great trap I had stepped into.
I was suppsed to be spokesman for the wedding party. I had to make at least three speeches in front of different representative groups from the village of the "villiage virgin", the taupou who was getting married. (In case anybody is thinking evil thoughts about the term "villiage virgin," don't. Taupou is the Samoan word, and from what I can tell, they behave just like other Samoan girls in their personal lives. In case anyone is interested, from some personal knowledge, the best I can tell Samoan young women behave much the same way that American young women behave in their personal lives. It's none of anybody's business, except for their lovers. )
I would have a great opportunity to "fail utterly," then the bride and her family and my friend would lose face and the chiefs would be nice to me and fall down laughing when I left. I could "succeed normally" and make speeches were appropriate for an educated teacher to make, without getting too deep into chiefly language. I could probably do the second one, but the tulafale of the bride's village would get to smugly bask in their superiority. Most Samoans who were not chiefs would be able to accomplish this and I thought I could.
But I wanted to make the earth shake and the mountains smoke. I wanted to give my friend and his crazy, beautiful bride the respect they deserved. A true Samoan speech draws on knowledge of relationships and stories that normal people don't know. A true Samoan speech can block out the sun, if it intends to. A true Samoan speech, My God, I didn't know what I was talking about. I could flirt with the bride's sister, my Samoan was up to that, but this was graduate school Samoan.
The weekend ended and I had to go back to my village on Upolu. When I met with my language tutor, I told him my story of the weekend. He laughed a lot; I think he had been in similar situations before. He was the son of a high ranking tulafale. He laughed and said thay he would be really challenged to be a best man at a wedding on Savaii himself. After fading out on our discussion, he suddenly got a crazy look in eyes. He said suddenly, " I have a crazy idea. I have to get permission, but this may work and it may help me too..."
He left.
The next day he came back and told me that he was being trained, as the son of a tulafale, to make a wedding speech in Savaii if he ever had to. Since I was a young man in their village, to a certain extend I would be representing our village, so my tutor had been given permission to teach me what he was learning. He could only teach me the part that pertained to what I needed to do as best man, but he was permitted to to teach me everything, including big dark secrets of Samoan speech making. My tutor seemed very enthused, because instead of being taught slowly and gradually according to the secret curriculm, he was going to learn a lot of secret speechmaking at a young age...
Every night he would be drilled pushed into memorizing huge chunks of material while he was trying to eat dinner and then hang out with the chiefs. Every afternoon he would attempt to drill and badger all of this into my head. I was studying Samoan at least as intensively as I ever did, but it had nothing to do with anything I ever learned before. I've read in books that the Samoans have lost all of their knowledge of ancient Polynesian sailing traditions, but do you know that there is a "sailing chant" to get to Manua from Savaii that I learned. Do you know who rebelled first in the time when the Samoans drove out the Tongan overlords (1200)? Do you know the marrige that happened around 1400 that makes the men and women of my village in Upolu and their village in Savaii brothers and sisters? Do you know who heard the moan of Taii in the underworld. Do you know where the chiefs of Saleaula went when the volcano pyroclastic flowed their villiage in 1900? Do you know about Salamasina's lover? Do you know the special words for house, mat, girl, different chief names, boat, etc that are used only in the bride's village. Oh God I studied! I even, forgive me, wrote things down.
The night before I left, the chiefs invited to me eat with them along with my language tutor. They questioned me a little and then started talking about other things. One, old chief, whom I didn't know looked at me and said "you'll do fine." He then started to chuckly and said that I was going to blow that villiage in Savaii away. Another chief suggested that some of the chiefs might wet themselve during my speech. I was finally told, "don't mess up, we trust you to repreesnt us."
Then the day came at last. I traveled to Savaii with a lot of people and food. The night before the wedding was at least as crazy as any other time. The other taupou of the village met me, a bunch of sophisticated, educated young women who seemed to just want to make sure I felt at home, and I went to bed early. The day started out with the actual wedding, a Samoan mass and wedding; the bride was Catholic. We said the usual things, and I didn't lose the ring, so we got through. The only sour note for me was our friend who was from Ireland, Belfast. When he received the "body of Christ", he stepped back out of the line of sight, dropped the host on the floor and then ground it under his shoe. Samoans have a talent for not seeing what shouldn't be seen, so nothing happened, but I was not impressed. As a longtime member of the pagan, athiest, Buddhist, skeptic branch of the Catholic church, who only goes on Easter and Christmas, but who missed the last few years, I was just very unimpressed by his bad taste. Do your drama at your own wedding, idiot. I decided never to visit Ireland....
Once the church part was done, I had to make some simple speeches to pay the priest for his trouble. He seemed to be nice guy; he was from New Zealand. I paid him and didn't talk to him again. He had to leave the village suddenly a couple of months later when it became apparent that he had impregnated, I believe, 5 of the local girls. Maybe it was 4 or 6, but the idea is the same. Ah, those Samoan girls and a lonely young man...
After the church part of the day, around 10am, we ate a lot, and everybody got knocked back into a pretty good food coma. The chiefs from the bride's village gathered in a house and they invited the wedding party to the house to welcome us. It was time for my speech. I was pretty scared. I had a good chance of making a fool of myself. I possibly could stumble and insult someone. There was some chance that if I made enough mistakes and insulted my hosts' village, I might get thrown into the ocean.
I got in the house and let everyone settle down. The groom looked worried, but the chiefs back home had said to wait to build the suspense. The chief sitting next to me, in the "friend of the visitors" position in the house, politely looked away and began to roll a cigarette. Samoans are great about looking away from something, if they think that it will be embarassing for the people involved. I waited until the room finally was silent and people were uncomfortable, just as I had been told to do. One of the chiefs cleared his throat and asked me if I would like one of the local chiefs to speak for me...
I replied: "Ua paia Finau ma ona laueleele, o Afiioaga o le aiga Saumalau, ae puipui e le ati pou niu, o le allii of le itu. Ua sa le sami, ua sa le ea, ua sa le vao. Aisea..." I won't go further because I promised that I would not reveal it...
More tomorrow.
I pulled the CEFR stuff out of my anki deck today. It isn't arranged in any sort of grammatical order. I should look at this later, or perhaps I should just do the Assimil-like Ben Madigan books. So right now I am working through the other books, all mixed together in my anki deck. _Buntús Cainte_ is slow, steady, and exactly right speed. My impression of _Progress in Irish_ is that it is, very cleverly, completely effective. These old courses, combined with anki, are pretty cool. I haven't done enough _First Steps in Irish_ to really evaluate it, but I suspect it will work too. I'm still looking forward to getting _First Steps in Irish_ in the mail from Ireland. Right now I have anki cards and audio to shadow, but it would be a lot better with a book. Progress in Irish and Buntús Cainte are great books for beginners... Anki is great.
I am a happy camper.
6 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川
the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]
Sometimes Japanese is just too much...