The Finer Pont of the Language Barrier

Every day, no matter what amount of activity or inactivity that day involves, I am confronted with the fact that English is not the principle language of this island. I can talk to as many Americans and as many fluent Chuukese people as I like, but ultimately the language barrier pervades my lifestyle here. This was something I prepared for upon arrival, I had been to foreign countries before and even stayed in the houses of people who barely spoke English; it wasn’t until being here that I began to notice more curious sides of the language barrier.

One such element is the way that scraps of another language, almost entirely remote from their original tongue, can be as effective, if not more effective, than fluent language. This is highlighted every day on two levels for me on my walk home from St Cecilia’s. The first is a group of kids around the village of Peddia (as mentioned in my last post). Everyday these kids play on the road and everyday they greet me as I walk home from school with a hearty ‘good morning’. When I was still in high school, I often used good morning at odd times of the day for comical effect. These kids, however, do not. They genuinely are wishing me a good morning at four o’clock in the afternoon. I often give them back a carefully pronounced ‘necurier annim’ which in English means ‘good time-around-three-or-four-o’clock’. Then the next day, they will greet me with a hearty ‘good morning’. I figured it is an act of courtesy. It doesn’t matter that the white guy knows enough Chuukese to greet us. We hear Chuukese greetings all the time. We’ll give the white guy a greeting in his own language; maybe he’ll respect us for it. I like to think I do.

This, as all things to do with the language barrier, goes both ways. Whenever I am on the walk home, people will always ask me questions in Chuukese. A Xavier staff member once explained it to me like this. “You are a white guy who is not in a car. You are therefore an object of curiousity.” Unfortunately, my Chuukese is so limited that I generally have no idea what they are talking about. People invariably have told me on many occasions various terms such as ‘where are you going’ or ‘I don’t understand’ that I could recognise or use. However, my mind never retains them. Instead, my response to all questions from the local people is to point up the road and say ‘Xavier’. At this point they always respond with an ‘aaaah’ and a nodding of the head. I figured that this answered the majority of the questions they could of asked; where I am going, where I live, why I am dressed so funny. And even if it does not answer their question it explains why I can barely speak Chuukese. The consistency with which this answer has satisfied countless questions in another tongue is a mathematical marvel.

***

Another thing that I have discovered is that the English language is so complex that even for fluent speakers there are still aspects of it that are only truly accessible to native speakers. Teaching a class where the majority of kids are fluent English speakers has allowed me to view this element first hand. Sometimes this appears in the way kids frame a particular phrase. But the most curious is when it shows up during the handling of areas of our language considered taboo. This was highlighted during one particular lunchtime spent in the company of Caroline, an American teacher, and Mary Helen, one of my students. Mary Helen speaks English as well as I do. She can impersonate my accent better than any of the Americans on island. However, this particular lunch she casually turned to another classmate and with the lightest possible intonation called him a particularly derogative term for a homosexual man beginning with the letter f. The only people in the room who seemed to register the gravity of the word were Caroline and I. The eight graders seemed surprised at our response. We tried to explain that it is an extremely offensive term and that it should be abstained from on all occasions. Her reply was simple and blunt:
“In Chuuk, it’s not a bad word at all.”

Another of these incidences occurred in an essay by one of my students on the topic of whether foreigners were good for Chuuk. During my study skills lessons we had drawn up a basic map of the topic, a couple of possible points and a crash course in essay structure. Whilst in order to pass only a paragraph with three arguments and an opinion was needed, the higher end of these essays had well constructed essays with a strong structure and an attempt at explaining their points, not simply listing them. The majority of these essays ran along simple lines, saying either that they were good or bad and following a similar line of argument that either involved Christianity for the good and drugs for the bad. A couple attempted to merge these arguments into a ‘both equally good and bad’ line of reason and was done quite well. But nothing compares to the bizarre and compelling viewpoint presented by an unusually bright student named Jonvan.

Jonvan is one of those students who knows that he is too smart for the school he’s in. He’ll come to Xavier next year and be challenged academically for the first time in his life, but during his time at Cecilia’s his extraordinary intellect manifested itself in bizarre ways, from the self destructive to the overly affectionate (interrupting my class by shouting ‘I love you Mr Joe). So when he handed his essay in and explained that he had used arguments he learnt in study skills class, I should have braced myself for something interesting. What resulted was an opinion that was so left field, yet so incredibly clever that it took my breath away. Jonvan’s argument was essentially that the foreigners that came to Chuuk ultimately were driven by a need to dominate in all aspects of their occupation. In five small paragraphs and two handwritten, A4 pages, my eighth grader had produced an interpretation of Micronesian history better than any I had heard.

However controversy abounded in a particular paragraph about the early colonists treatment of Chuukese women. It showed this theme of dominance in a sexual light. That’s pretty delicate material for an eighth grader and on all accounts it’s quite a valid point. It impressed me that he had chosen to grapple such a topic.
Unfortunately, in order to portray it, he used the ‘F’ word. Twice. My mind was immediately struck by the implications of using obscenities in essays (my Hamlet essay in year 12 sure would have been more interesting) and, more importantly, how I should mark it. If it was put in there gratuitously to stir a reaction, the kid deserved to be failed. But if he used it to describe the act and could not find a suitable euphemism, perhaps the term might even earn some merit. I consulted a few of the other Xavier faculty on the matter and their response was pretty consistent. Fail him. It was Sam who took the dissenting view. He put it better than anyone.
“It’s kind of rough, sure, but when you consider the way that Chuukese women were treated when the first Westerners came, there’s not really anything else you can use to describe it.”

So I ended up giving him an A. A low one at least, I wasn’t going to give him full marks even though his essay deserved it. I took him aside the next day at school. I asked him why he thought I wanted to talk to him. He looked completely bemused. I told him it was about his essay. He replied “Oh, did I fail or something?” I explained that no, he hadn’t.
“Then why am I here?”
“Jonvan, you used the F-word in your essay.”
“Oh yeah.”
“Jonvan, you can’t do that.”
“Yeah I know, but I was right wasn’t I?”
“Yes, Jonvan, you were right.”

***

The third way in which the language barrier appears in life here is in the moment where the language barrier is entirely transcended. These moments are rare but memorable. The best of these was the evening I was stranded downtown with Randy. It’s a fairly regular thing for us faculty folk to get a lift with the girls on the busses down to the rest of the island to pick up supplies. The bus then returns from its drop offs, picks up the staff and returns to Xavier. This has worked extremely well, except once. This exception occurred when Randy and I were told that pirated copies of a British TV show ‘Skins’ were at a particular shop next to the airport. We then told the driver to pick us up from the shop, and went about in search of our British TV show.

It was at around six-thirty while waiting out the front of the shop that alarm bells began to ring. With the realisation that at least the first bus to return had forgotten we began to wait by the road for the later busses. By the time it was dark, we realised that we had missed the bus. Readers of my last post may have picked up on the idea that Chuuk isn’t very safe after dark. It really isn’t. Cheap alcohol and high unemployment mean that we aren’t advised to be off the Xavier campus after dark. So, more than being stranded on the other side of the island, we also were in a pretty dangerous situation. Randy decided he would go back to the store and ask to use their phone. I was to wait to see if any late coming busses passed us. The distance between my vantage point and the store was no more than a hundred metres or so, and nobody was around. So, I was left on my own.

It was about two minutes into my solitude that I saw a shadow across the road. I convinced myself that it was imagination. However, as it began to move and eventually start crossing the road, my mind went from denial to worst-case-scenario. The annoying thing was that I was going to beaten up and Randy wasn’t going to be there. I think in a life threatening situation, the least you can ask for is a witness. There’s something strangely reassuring in a witness. I took a few deep breaths, closed my eyes for a second, and opened them to see a middle aged Chuukese man, who was now standing next to me.
“Nepong (good evening).”
“Nepong.”
(something in Chuukese)
“(with finger pointing up road) Xavier.”
“Ahhh.”

Randy returned, and after realising that the middle aged man wasn’t going to beat me pulp, used his more extensive knowledge of Chuukese to gather more information. His name was Iyam, a name I remembered because it sounded like Liam without an L. Randy somehow conveyed the idea of a bus, lateness and impressively, the idea of being forgotten. Iyam replied by inviting us over to his house for rice and fish. But the conversation soon ran dry, the extent of our cross-lingual knowledge could only last us ten minutes. But Iyam stayed and waited with us. Eventually, his son joined us. So did his best friend. By the time a car from Xavier arrived, the three of them had waited with two complete strangers who didn’t speak their language for two whole hours. Though they barely spoke to us for the whole two hours, it was the kindest gesture I have been showed in my time here.

Leaving the place we had waited for so long, I thought about the way that Iyam and his companions had picked up on such a basic human thing; two anxious white guys on the side of the road. And in their actions, the language barrier is forgotten. Nothing needs to be said. Just stand next to them. Moments like these make all the small, trivial aspects of the language barrier that I am exposed to every day look rather inconsequential.