Not all those who wander are lost

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DaveAgain
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Re: IRISH: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby DaveAgain » Mon Dec 17, 2018 5:13 am

sfuqua wrote: My Irishness seems to be from people who were put into to Ulster plantation to dilulte the "native Irish" in the region.
If I remember correctly, before James I united the Scottish and English crowns, the border area between the two countries had been allowed/encouraged to be somewhat lawless. After he became King of England James decided to change the policy, and deport the wilder elements to Ulster.

So your Ulster DNA might be from bandits!

[George MacDonald Fraser's Steel Bonnets is the only history book I've read on that]
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Re: IRISH: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Thu Dec 20, 2018 3:03 am

It's funny, but when my daughter was "on the way" a few years ago, I stumbled over a wealth of genealogy materials prepared by some of my cousins. I know that genealogy is taken very seriously by some folks, but I just was looking for a story I could tell a little girl when she got old enough to ask.

A few years later I have a 30000 person tree that I'm connected to. I don't take it very seriously. Shockingly, everything I have ever been able to check, through DNA or otherwise, has been accurate. Some people are amazing researchers... I've only added a couple of hard things myself.
I am descended, clearly, with paper trails, to a lot of important, or importantly connected, people in Virginia way before 1700. It is strange how that so many people from Kentucky, who are often looked down on as inferior, have a solid connection to royalty (maybe they should be looked down on because of the connection to royalty). A lot of these people have connections to royal families in Europe (perhaps faked, I only really believe things from about 1600). Then it gets fun. Many royals in Europe had fake genealogies made which connected them to some pretty strange connections.

Anyway, I am descended from Thor, Odin, Zeus, Muhammad, James the brother of Jesus, Charlamagne, Achilles, Agememnon, Julius Caesar (I know the problems with this one), Sir Francis Drake (more problems), 50 kings of Ireland, a bunch of Scottish folks, a bunch of Scottish folks who moved to Ulster (supported by DNA now). The real genelogy, backed up by DNA and real documentation, shows that I am descended from a lot of farmers over generations. I am descended from an illiterate man with a French surname, who arrived in Virginia as an indentured worker, who somehow married "the master's daughter" a year or so later, an educated, rich, young woman. He was given land by the father and founded the family which is spread across the US. He never did learn to spell his own name.

Of course this is all nonsense. I am what I am and that's all that I am. Everybody alive is probably descended from everybody alive 3400 years ago.https://www.popsci.com/descended-from-royalty#page-5

I promise to leave DNA and genealogy out of this for at least a post or two.
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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...

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Re: IRISH: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Thu Dec 20, 2018 3:51 am

I find that I really like the old, grammar-translation courses in Irish.
One of the reasons that I quit the path I was on with Spanish and French, is that I was tired not only of the languages, but I was tired of the approaches.
Assimil, my old love, has become annoying. Sure, explosive increase in comprehension, but superficial understanding of details. The same thing annoyed me with the Ben Madigan books, which are quite wonderful in their own ways.
If you slowly translate something, you understand it. That isn't enough to lead to fluent production, but it is something. There is a whole slice of the Internet devoted to learning Irish using "old resources". It mostly seems to be located in the US, but maybe I am just confused. Some of the old courses have online audio which was produced by nonative speakers. I find it quite useful, even if it isn't exactly perfect. I would be glad to speak Irish as well as any of them.
For me at least the first issue about my speech is comprehensiblity. If a native speaker an comprehend it, OK. Next, there is pleasantness. If my accent hurts their ears, well that's bad. Beyond that is the issue of sounding native. In my best language, Samoan, people could usually pick up that I was a nonative speaker pretty fast. Partly it was complexion, but usually it was accent. I am very, very proud of the times where I spoke to someone extensively in Samoan and they thought I was a native speaker. I need less than the fingers on one hand to count those times.

Anyway, I like the old courses. I think that I have missed the brute force difficulty of these courses. It is like doing algebra, but it seems to sink in deeper.

I was able to make the answers to _Progress in Irish_,_First Steps in Irish_, and _Buntús Cainte_, the whole book, into anki cards and have made decks out of them. I really like pounding away at them. I have the decks set up where I do each of the cards in both directions, so I get an L2->L1 card before I get the L1->L2 cards. For me, pronouncing Irish correctly is still challenging. The mp3 files produced by students are a great help. I am still waiting for the _First Steps in Irish_ book to arrive from Ireland, but I have the answers put into anki cards and I have the (student produced) answer keys.
I am shadowing the audio for these courses intensively.

I would expect that in a few months, I will be done with these courses, and then I will need to consolidate my Irish (and correct my pronunciation), and It will also be time to wake up my Spanish and French. By that time I will be able to shadow through the Ben Madigan books with pretty good comprehension (Ulster dialect, native speaker) along with Assimil Spanish (Spain dialect) and Assimil French (dialect, uh, French??).

This is far in the future. Maybe I'll do Welsh or Latin next.

I just find the process of grinding the edges off of my brain with a language to be fun.

Friday it will be winter break from teaching. Thank Goddess!
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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...

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Re: IRISH: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby galaxyrocker » Sat Dec 22, 2018 4:14 am

You know, I really have to say that your passion for Irish is infectious. It reminds me of the time before Irish became just another part of my life, back when I was super excited about it and to do anything in Irish, and before I became cynical relating to it. It definitely motivates me to getting back to reading, and focusing on the language again and possibly finally pushing through the relative plateau I've been at. And I want to thank you for that. It really is something I've missed, and it's extremely awesome to see someone interested in studying the language and really enjoying it, not just doing it for school purposes.

If you are a fan of the grammar-translation model, you might really like Micheál Ó Siadhail's Learning Irish, too. It's Connemara based, and he uses an adapted orthography for that, but it's really one of the best books for learning Irish I've come across...In fact, it might be one of the best language learning books I've come across period (I love the grammar translation model). Each chapter starts with vocab, then explains several aspects of grammar, in a useful order (like, he explains all version of the verb(s) for 'to be' first, teaching you how to use them before introducing other verbs), and has several translation exercises going both ways as well as a reading passage. It's really quite good, and has native speaking audio (though apparently that can be difficult to find; let me know, as I have mp3s.)
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Re: IRISH: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby Teango » Sat Dec 22, 2018 5:14 am

sfuqua wrote:I am very, very proud of the times where I spoke to someone extensively in Samoan and they thought I was a native speaker. I need less than the fingers on one hand to count those times.

That's none-the-less very impressive, sfuqua! I seem to recall your daughter used to tease you for speaking Tagalog with a Samoan accent as well?

By contrast, I need less than the digits on one finger to count the number of times I've been taken for a native Hawaiian speaker. I'm repeatedly told I speak the language with a Jamaican accent, but dat arright, ih nuh badda mi...

It would be great to hear more about those gratifying "mistaken for a native speaker" occasions sometime. :)
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Re: IRISH: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Sun Dec 23, 2018 3:24 am

It was more than two years after I got to Samoa when I was first, briefly, mistaken for a native speaker.
One of my "great" moments in Samoa came a little before that. Samoan has a sort of a secret code, a secret vocabulary only known by chiefs. Most Samoans don't know this language well, and I wonder what has happened to it since I left the Samoan world 30 years ago...
A friend of mine fell in love with the "village virgin", a sort of princess for a given chief. She was very elite in Samoan society, and they hadn't known each other long when the went crazy for each other. My friend needed to go ask the family's permission to marry the daughter. He asked me to come along, in case his Samoan failed... We couldn't land in the airport near where she lived, so we landed about 10 miles away at the other end of the island. We walked most of the way (across Savaii). We got a ride on a lumber truck the last few miles and showed up the "princess's" family after dark. After we ate, the mother of the family (the chief himself had suddenly died a couple of weeks earlier; the family was still reeling), asked us what we had come for.
My friend quite competently said that he had fallen in love with their daughter, that she loved him, and that he wanted to devote his life to make her and their children safe and happy....
The mother said "No." He sort of clouded up and looked at me and said, "help me."
And I started, sitting crosslegged and sore from walking, I started to politely argue. The young lady in question, was constanly walking through the room serving drinks, and food, stopping occasionally to sit next to her mother while I kept talking. I pushed the idea of "true love" I pushed the idea that he would make a wonderful husband, a wonderful patriarch of an Afakasi (mixed race) family. The girl kept walking through, without saying a word. I still remember her beautiful, blazing eyes as she watched and listened. After a couple of hours, I had pretty well argued down the mother, who still could just tell us to "hit the road" if she wanted. She asked three chiefs from surrounding families to come and join the conversation.
The other chief's were quite reasonable, they suggested waiting and talking some more another day, and they pointed out that as far as they knew, there was no reason for a rushed marriage (uh???). It sort of sounded like a good idea to me, but the eyes of my friend and the young lady said "no." So I kept arguing. Other family members were brought in the give their opinion, most supported the mother of the family. The chiefs started running out of steam. My legs hurt horribly. The mother had found a post in the house to lean against, which gave her an unfair advantage in endurance. I needed to urinate. It was one o'clock in the morning... I kept smiling and arguing.

One of the chiefs, who was probably as tired as I was, finally said something amazing.
Maybe we should hear from the "girl" involved in this issue.....
Bless her heart, she said, "I have nothing to say. The man I love, my future husband, and his friend speak for me." Then she lowered her eyes, moved a little further from her mother and clouded up with tears.
Mom clouded up, gave up and said she just was just trying to make sure that everyone was happy, the neighboring chiefs made brief speeches and left, and I finally got to straighten my legs and go to the toilet. It took 11 hours. I couldn't straighten my legs properly for a couple of days, and that was back in the days when I was in training for crosslegged sitting in Samoan houses.
They are still happily married 40 years later.
I'll tell about the wedding later; my hands are tired.

I've recently figured out that espeak is an app for android that has a tts voice for Irish which ankidroid will connect to. The tts is far, far from natural, but I've found it useful for getting a first approximation of the pronunciation of a given Irish sentence. My Irish pronunciation is still shakey and the tts voice stops me from the stupider pronunciation mistakes.
My current setup is involves an anki deck that contains all the anki cards I can easily make from _Progress in Irish_, _First Steps in Irish_, _Buntús Cainte_ and the files from the TEG "sample materials" for the Irish CEFR test. I'm doing 50 cards a day. All of the notes are set up to go "in both directions", L2->L1 and L1->L2. I'm plugging through about 50 cards a day right now, with the funky, espeak tts...
I also shadow the audio connected with these textbooks...
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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...

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Re: IRISH: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby eido » Sun Dec 23, 2018 3:44 am

That was a lovely story. It made me smile. Oh my goodness. Great job, @sfuqua! It seemed out of a fairy tale.
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Re: IRISH: Not all those who wander are lost

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.
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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...

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Re: IRISH: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby Ani » Mon Dec 24, 2018 4:49 am

Oh I love this story...I hope it never ends
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But there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.

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Re: IRISH: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Fri Jan 04, 2019 2:28 am

As I started speech I realized that I was shaking quite a bit. As I declared that it was forbidden to walk on the ground, fly in the air, or travel on the sea during my speech, I realized how out of my league I was. If I fouled things up, or if the chiefs that trained my language tutor had messed up, I was going to be in some trouble. The chiefs whom I was speaking to, were sitting around in shock, as I continued through the formulas that made up the speech, I started to think that I might pull it off. When I finished there was silence for a minute or so, then the village representative made his speech, a speech much shorter and simpler than mine. He wasn't prepared to face off against what appeared to be appeared to be a well trained tulafale from Upolu...
I still wasn't sure if I was OK, but as food was served, the chief sitting next to me asked me to repeat a little of the speech, apparently his favorite part. In a low voice, I obliged. He closed his eyes when I was finished and said, more or less, "My God, that was beautiful. I can't believe your mouth can say those words."
I had to make a few more speeches that day, simple speeches I could probably have made without extra training. During one meeting, I think with the women's committee, I was fed and entertained by the other taupou's of the village, three lovely young women who obviously had a lot of fun razzing me and making me blush. They were in traditional taupou outfits, which left a distracting amount of female leg exposed. I was crosseyed trying to keep my eyes pointing in a respectful direction, and I'm quite sure that the young ladies enjoyed torturing me. After dinner (God, how did I eat anything?), came an event which affected me emotionally more than anything else that day...

Sometimes while I was in Samoa, I felt reality shifting around me and I think for a while, I knew what it was like to be Samoan. I don't mean to be one of those idiots who claim a complete identification with another culture, but sometimes Samoa really got to me. The bride, was to dance one more time as a taupou just before she headed off for her wedding night. While the other taupou were helping her get her "costume" and makeup on, I was in the room some of the time, and I saw just how much stress she was under. She got her gear straight, and then went in to dance in the big hall. We sang and some people drummed while a few warm up dancers did their dances and the came the big moment while the bride danced as a taupou for the last time. There are a set of standardized things that she had to do with the dance, but there was a lot of room for improvisation. She was spectacular, so beautiful...

And as I was singing my part in the music, the low drone under the melody, I suddenly found that I had tears streaming down my face. I realized that of all the places in the world, and all of the times in history...right there, right then was exactly where I should be.

When the dance was done, everybody applauded, the bride gave us a cute little smile and then disappeared out of the house into the darkness, where her new husband was waiting for her to take her home (to her mother's house for that night). The wind went out of everybody's sails and most people started to think about bed. My evening wasn't done yet however...
Behind me, a voice said, the perfect New Zealand English common among educated Samoans, "Are you OK?" I turned around and saw a young woman who had been on the edge of the crowd; I guess she was talking about my weepiness. I had noticed her a few times during the day, wearing Western dress, looking pretty in her jeans and man's shirt. I answered in Samoan that I was being silly, and she laughed, and asked where I learned to make speeches like that. I said I had help. She said that she and a friend were going down to the beach in a few minutes, maybe I would like to come along. Hmmn... A trip to the beach at 10PM, while the whole village was going to bed? That sounds interesting...
I asked another man from our traveling party to come with me to the beach.

There was no electricity in the village, and it was incredibly dark until your eyes adjusted to the dark. There wasn't any moon, so your eyes had to adjust to see by starlight. You can see a lot by starlight, and we met the young women and began to talk and laugh the way people do. After a few minutes the two friends began to walk down the beach and I was left alone with my new friend. When you are out at night, with a view of the sky, the stars are glorious. It is hard to recognize constellations sometimes because all of the faint stars are visible. After a little talking that night, with me trying to read her expression in the starlight (you can see starlight in someone's eyes if it is dark enough), waiting for the flash or white teeth when she would smile of laugh, she finally asked me, "really, how did you do it?"

And I told the truth, that I was sort of a fake, that I'm sure the chiefs in my village love the fact that there were playing a joke on the chiefs of her village. She laughed the whole time, and finally said that she would have needed months of training to do a speech like that herself, and she was glad that a I, a nonative speaker, had not done it off the top of my head. She said she would tell her father in the morninng how I had done it. Some people were putting out the theory that I was possessed by a Samoan demon. I guess my new friend wasn't too worried about demons because she was alone on the beach with me at 1AM. We discussed those things that young people everywhere at all times discuss when it is late and they are alone. As I remember, we solved all of the world's problems. If only I could remember what our solutions were... We stayed out until our friends walked back down the beach around dawn. We had to report to our correct beds before anybody "important" got up, and I didn't see my new friend until just before I got on the bus the next day. She ran up, kissed me on the cheek fast (scandalous behavior in Samoa) and squeezed my hand.

My new friend and I dated for a while in the capitol, but we never really recreated the magic of the night on the beach with the Southern Cross wheeling slowly in the sky
When you're out at night in the dark in Samoa, the Southern Cross can give you an idea of the time. We would look up and say, well it's about 2AM, no need to leave yet...

Samoa changed me for the better. Even though I have lived in other countries, I really owe my life, my wonderful life to Samoa.

I had a ton of typos...
Last edited by sfuqua on Fri Jan 04, 2019 3:48 am, edited 4 times in total.
9 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...


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