world language; your story my story; guanacos

[asakiyume]

In order to be a volunteer tutor for refugees and immigrants learning English, I had to do some minimal training (I'm not teaching; I'm only supplemental help), and part of that involved watching some videos on language acquisition. The video below on world languages was something extra you could watch. I knew most of the stuff in it already, but I liked the presentation, the varying examples used, and the inclusion of information about signing languages. Take a look if you feel like it--it's 11 minutes.

Watch on YouTube

My tutee is from El Salvador, is trans, and a real delight. We bonded instantly over both learning Portuguese--she sent me a link to a free online site for learning it, and I laughed, because the site is--of course!--for Spanish speakers learning Portuguese. Well so that will be a fun challenge, if I do it. I told her about seeing a bald eagle the other day and asked if El Salvador had a national bird, and she told me yes, the torogoz, and WOW. That is one beautiful bird. In looking around for more information, I stumbled upon this wonderful site called "Your Story Our Story," which describes itself as "a national project [that] explores American immigration and migration through crowd-sourced stories of everyday objects." It invites you to add your own. I came across it because a high school student in Annapolis had written about el torogoz:

El torogoz is a small bird that has many colors, blue, green, red and black and is from El Salvador. The torogoz is the national bird of El Salvador. All Salvadorian people know the bird and we have respect for the torogoz. Also we feel proud of our bird. The object is important for our people because we identify with the torogoz. That way we feel part of Salvadorian culture ... This represents me because I feel "guanaco** de corazon." It means I am Salvadorian deep in my heart.

Photo of a torogoz by Flickr user Erik Rivas--click through to get to his page


**A guanaco is an animal like a llama, and/but Salvadoreans refer to themselves as guanacos. I went on a google search to find out why/how/when, and it seems like it was originally a derisive thing, and not limited to Salvadoreans at all, but gradually became something they adopted with pride. (A los salvadoreños nos dicen guanacos ... ¿por qué?) It made me think of The Emperor's New Groove

Comments

[cmcmck]

Colours a bit like our native kingfisher- don't know it you ever saw one when you were over here?

[asakiyume]

I didn't, but I'm looking at photos courtesy of Google now, and I see what you mean!

[osprey_archer]

That's a fabulous bird! I love the really long feathers in the tail that are only feathery just at the tips - like feather antenna!

[asakiyume]

Me too! I used to draw birds like that all the time when I was little.

[sartorias]

What a GORGEOUS bird!

Bookmarking the vid . . .

[asakiyume]

Some birds have such an abundance of colors! So beautiful.

[sovay]

A guanaco is an animal like a llama, and/but Salvadoreans refer to themselves as guanacos.

I only knew it as an animal! Thank you for this story and the torogoz.

[asakiyume]

I was chasing it up as a brief footnote, and it turned out to be a whole interesting story in its own right!

[minoanmiss]

*reads and is edified*

[asakiyume]

*laughing*
You're such a sweetie ^_^

[sonia]

Thanks for the video link. I didn't know Urdu and Hindi are mutually intelligible with different alphabets! And Urdu tends to borrow from Arabic where Hindi tends to borrow from Sanskrit. I thought they were going to talk about Serbian and Croatian, which I'm old enough to think of as Serbo-Croatian.

[asakiyume]

That would have been another good example! Alphabets and identity: I'm trying to think what places I've heard about where choice of alphabet was nationalistic--maybe with the old Soviet republics of central Asia, and switching from Arabic to Cyrillic? Or maybe in the Balkans, indeed?

[mallorys_camera]

Viet Nam abandoned its alphabet for Latin script.

I can't remember when.

[asakiyume]

Yeah! So many alphabets are no longer in use--like the Manchurian one, for instance.

[sartorias]

While there wasn't anything new for me in that vid, it was really well done, and I'm earmarking it for future passing along for someone who has questions covered in it. She packed a lot in eleven minutes!

[asakiyume]

Yeah, that's how I felt! I knew all of it except the deaf stuff (which I am guessing you knew, since I know you've thought about deaf issues), but I like the presentation.

[sartorias]

Yeah--B was studying ASL pretty heavily for a few years. I learned a lot from discussing it with him, and filming his homework vids.

[amaebi]

Yes, that's what impressed me, now that I've finally listened to it.

[mallorys_camera]

Wow! Your orientation sounds so much more helpful than mine! They just kinda threw me out there and said, "Teach!"

[asakiyume]

It was a little over the top, actually, in terms of wanting us to write essays and so on--this is in addition to asking us for references from two people, etc.! And we're not the [also volunteer] teachers, we're just extra-fluff-on-top tutors! I guess it weeds out the people who aren't serious about making the commitment.

... And yet, it wasn't quite at the let's-get-down-to-business level of a course that would give you actual ESL teacher certification. Maybe one day I'll do one of those.

[wayfaringwordhack]

That is a stunning bird.

And stop posting such interesting, clicky posts. Just kidding. But I want to watch all the things, click all the links, go down all the rabbit holes. LOL

[asakiyume]

LOL, I know what you mean, though. Sometimes people post lists of links! In those cases I sometimes end up investigating only one or two, or I promise myself to come back (... and sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't, because LIFE)