Constructing a sentence in Fijian

I’m currently working from the bible of the Fijian language reference book, Fijian Grammar by G B Milner. Published originally in 1956 I can make inference from the tattered, yellow pages with a spine held together by duct tape that this brown book could well be a first edition. According to the University of South Pacific course website, this book is still the recommended read for learning Fijian, and it’s no wonder why; Milner has explained the Fijian language in such a way as to remain colloquial in tone, but still respectful.

I came across the section on the Fijan Genitive today, otherwise known as “Their custom the Fijians” section.

The best way I learn language is to understand how a sentence is constructed and then memorise words to fit into certain parts, that way I can start communicating with people from day one – I believe a much more motivating and enjoyable way of learning a language.

Unfortunately Milner doesn’t go too in-depth on sentence construction, other than the above genitive, so I’ve expanded what a typical sentence would look like below.

 

For a transitive sentence (a sentence where the subject is ‘doing’ something)

particle-pronoun/tense/verb-suffix/particle/subject/preposition/particle/location

 

For an intransitive sentence (a sentence where the subject is not doing anything, used for stating something about the subject)

particle/pronoun/tense/verb/preposition/location

 

As you can see, and as Milner explained in his sentence “Their custom the Fijians”, the Fijian sentence starts with a pronoun as a teaser before announcing in more detail who we are talking about, or the subject of the sentence:

Their custom the Fijians

Instead of the English genitive:

The Fijian custom

Which completely ignores the pronoun altogether.

I have added a dash to certain parts of the sentence (e.g. the particle-pronoun) to indicate that the particle is connected to the pronoun, however the particle may change depending on the sentence and so although they are both connected, they can be interchangeable.

The same occurs with the suffix on the verb, which always occurs in transitive sentences and is the equivalent of adding “ing” to the verb.

Fiji Times wins Campaign of the Year

Front page of the Fiji Times

Fiji Times won News Limited’s Campaign of the Year Award on Friday night for its free speech campaign.

The Fiji Times has openly opposed the regime’s censorship on its publication. Earlier this year at a UNESCO workshop in Samoa, the Times’ editor Netani Rika explained his frustration in being muzzled by the regime.

“Basically, any story on government must put the interim regime in a positive light or it will not be permitted, even if balance is provided in the form of a comment from a minister or senior public servant,” Rika told The Australian.

Since the abrogation of the constitution on April 10 this year the Fiji Times newsroom has been allocated censors who removed content deemed unsatisfactory by the regime.

Instead of replacing the censored items, the Sunday edition was sold with the empty white space to illustrate the regime’s control over the newspaper.

“It was a sensation and drove home to the people of Fiji the point that we were powerless to tell the truth, to tell the country what it needed to know,” says Rika. The edition is now a collectors’ item.

During this year, opponents of the military regime including Rika himself have been threatened. In two situations these people have had their car vandalised and their houses firebombed.

The pro-regime blog, Real Fiji News bullied Rika to “…Leave your day job so we can move ahead, you are without a doubt the most evil of them all, and your day is coming don’t worry about that, in fact we have one little surprise left for you”.

Rika told the audience at the Awards that their newspaper’s effort was due to those that have stood by them throughout this year.

“The support of family is so important to what we do and this award is a tribute to our wives, husbands, partners and children.
“This award is also a tribute to all our readers who have stood by us. They have made our circulation grow to new levels,” said Rika as reported by the Fiji Times.

Learning Fijian

Lesson One:

• Memorise the new sounds in your language.

This is important for all languages as many will force you to create sounds that you may never have had to do in your life and this can be very exhausting. Do this on the first day and go through the sounds everytime you start a lesson.

Lesson Two:

Memorise Question beginnings

As a new learner and visitor to a country you will be asked and you will ask a lot of questions. Many interrogative sentences will begin with who, what, where and how? Learn the equivalent in your language and you are half way to understanding a question. Go through these everytime you start a new lesson.

Lesson Three:

Introduce yourself. This is important in any language. Generally people will want to know:

• Your name
• Where you’re from
• What you do for a job
• Your age (sometimes)
• If you are married
• If you have children
• What village/tribe/family you are from

Lesson Four:

It’s best to introduce yourself all at once, it shows your openness but it also let’s you avoid interpreting a lot of questions at once. However now that you know the answers, know the questions that match up with them.

• What’s your name?
• Where are you from, etc

Lesson Five:

I’ve left this lesson later even though it’s one of the first things you’ll have to say when you arrive. Learn to greet, chances are, you’ll already know the general informal way to greet.

• Hello (formal)
• Hello (informal)
• Hello (more than one – this differs in Pacific countries).
• How are you? (in some countries this is replaced with something culturally important, e.g.  where are you going? (Fiji)).

Lesson Six

Memorise 8 objects you use everyday or you are likely to use everyday when you get to the new country.

My Goals

• Learn a Fijian joke and say it well (with all the right pauses and expressions)
• Write a short story which is actually interesting.
• Read a newspaper.
• Learn a Fijian legend and tell it well.

World of Warcraft: a woman’s perspective

Night elves are the most popular characters for women in WoW

Reading time: 5mins

I often made fun of people who play WoW. My first introduction to it was about 3 years back when I was at my sister’s house. I began a delightful conversation with my sister’s flatmate only to realise he was talking through his microphone to his party of orcs on World of Warcraft.

Perhaps it was this damp introduction that made me pity those who play WoW. But now I have played and enjoyed the  Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game, and yes a lot of girls are doing the same.

“You want to join my party?”

First thing’s first, WoW is not a social game unless you join a guild. You do interact with people from other parts of the world, but unless you’re in a guild everyone keeps to character, and hardly any personal information is exchanged. Some people are nice and cast healing or improvement spells on you, but other than that it’s about as social as a Japanese cosplay party.

Joining a guild increases the amount of socialising and takes you beyond the realm of WoW, you get to know the actual people in your guild and you learn to look out for each other.

In other semi-social ways you can join a party and go on quests, but this just gives you a better team than non-player characters (NPCs) who usually muck up your fight strategy by attacking too many characters at one time or forgetting to heal themselves. You don’t really get to know these people unless you meet them regularly.

If you’re a lone ranger like me or hate trying to keep up with people who can toggle keyboard commands on a very quick basis, joining a team won’t be in your books at the start – but you’ll have to learn to get over that, the game requires you join a party for the really difficult missions.

“What’s the sound of a bunny being killed?”

“Click”.

Word of warning: the beginning can be a bit boring. Most beginner level fighting scenes are simply point and click until the monster is dead. This is good for the girl (like myself) who doesn’t enjoy real-time killing. A super mutant striding toward you at an incredible pace while you’re trying to get your sights up is pretty scary. WoW fights are far less daunting.

The good thing is, the fights do get more challenging. Earning spells and buying more weapons can add strategy, but it may take a week to do this.

However once you get into it, the game becomes increasingly addictive. There is an abundance of quests to go through and a regular reward system (money!). Constantly improving your wares seems to be the common aim, and girls who are a fan of simulation games e.g. Simcity and The Sims will love this aspect.

“What shade war paint should I use today?”

Creating a character is one of the best aspects of the game. A lot of girls pick night elves for their svelte feminine look, and would probably be more inclined to be druids as these guys do their damage from afar with spells. There are a lot of night elf druids running around, but it might also be because of the mystical look of the night elf itself.

Women will also love the shopping aspect, a lot of quests or kills will give you access to money or trade goods and these can be used to constantly upgrade armour – which can then be seen on your character in real-time. Cute!

“Hey you wanna meet over wild boar at lunch?”

For some girls, who like me had previously turned their nose up at the fantasy world, WoW is now their meeting place for gossip. They join their team, go on quests and talk about their day, what better way to relieve tension than attack a corrupt town? Might help if you have a headset though…

Great game if you can afford the subscription. Ladies will love the interaction, upgrades, scenery and mission stories. But would help if it had, yes I’m going to say it, a love story. Hey, orcs need love too you know.

More info on WoW basics can be found here:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/basics

Life-hacking: shortcuts through life

Reading time: 2 mins

Mobile phones, GTS systems, the world wide web -  all this technology and yet it still takes us years to play the piano or learn a language. During this information age, we as time-poor consumers have learned to take or expect effective shortcuts, life-hacking if you will.

Life-hacking, says Tim Ferriss, author of bestselling book Four Hour Work Week is about deconstructing, streamlining and mapping any challenge.

Tim Ferriss says he deconstructs life in order to understand them quicker

The term life hack has been around since 2005 and relates to cutting corners effectively. In most cases it’s usually a diy no 8 wire sort of case, for example polishing crome with coke and aluminium foil. However, Ferriss spins it a little by hacking learning techniques.

His blog fourhourworkweek.com apparently teaches you such things as learning a language in three months, how to hack your sleep to relax more and how to read 300% faster in 30 minutes. His internet and book fame have earned him a premiere for a TV show in the states called Trial by Fire.

I don’t know if the stuff he does is possible, but I don’t think his technique can work for all languages as it seems very anglo-centric.

So I decided, the best person who can teach me how to hack my way of learning a language is myself. Here’s my challenge: Learning Fijian in under three months.

Most language learning is memory. Best memory techniques for me is repetition, and contextualising words ie putting them in sentences. Don’t worry about the alphabet or counting for now, just get straight into it! It’s funner that way.

Go here for my post on learning Fijian by travel.

Finally, I can see your brain

Reading time: 2 mins

Sometimes when you still can’t get your ideas across, perhaps it’s time to open your brain up and plaster it on a page.

Brainstorming or mindmapping can be a very effective way of generating new ideas and solutions, by connecting and growing one idea from another.

A mindmap of Pacific NGOs at debategraph.com

It’s even better though if it’s done in flash as I soon found out with debategraph.com – a nifty wiki with flash programming that allows many people to look at a complicated issue, map out arguments and form one’s own opinion about it.

Some issues already on debategraph.com include Peace in the Middle East and Intellectual Property in the Digital Age.

The key for mapping is pretty easy to understand, there are the main arguments and the protagonists and any extra information you wish for referencing.

I started one just to map out the roles of Pacific Island NGOs and what they’re doing in the Pacific. Potentially this can be split up into smaller debates regarding the fate of climate change refugees in the Pacific or the coup culture in Fiji (this would really benefit from it I think).

I’m hoping to outline all or most of the NGOs by the end of November, but anyone is free to help! Here is the link to the page, registration is quick and easy.

How Pacific Island NGOs are helping the Pacific region