Language motivation

One of the biggest factors in learning a language is motivation. One of my biggest motivators is my friend Yura above. I have introduced you to Yura before. Right now I'm getting fired up about Yura's language- Evenki. People who have known me for years have heard me talk about the Evenki people a lot. Now, I do remain a big picture thinking person, and maintain a strong interest in all peoples Siberian, but let me fill you in....

I am currently taking Language Learning (second language acquistion) and Phonetics at SIL. For my major assignment in phonetics, I need to find two "phonetic inventories" (that is all of the sounds made in a language) for my chosen language. It wasn't that hard for me to choose a language. I caught myself off guard. When I wasn't thinking strategically about Siberia, my heart just went straight to the Evenki people. But what if I couldn't find the resources I would need to do my assignment on the Evenki language? My head started ticking. My sister suggested that I contact an old professor of ours and seek contacts through him. I actually left a message on his answering machine. Still, a library is always a good place to look. After searching Melbourne, Monash and Latrobe universities online, I was turning up some ideas. Melbourne has 30 Evenki related texts (linguistics, anthropological and geo-political); Monash 5 and Latrobe also a handful.

Melody, Abigail and I all took a trip to Melbourne Uni yesterday (one of my old haunts). You may be able to imagine my joy at discovering a linguistic description of Evenki that did include the required phonetic information. I became even more excited when a book I had previously viewed at Monash, was confirmed to have the required data from a second source. My linguistic juices started to flow.

All of this has fired me up again to dream of some of my ideas. I would love to learn the Evenki language. As I research this language as well as other linguistic and translation theories this year, I will indeed be preparing myself well to learn it upon our return to Siberia. I remembered some of my dreams. Learning this language will speak huge volumes to Evenki people (around 200+ in our home city in Siberia; around 400 in Yura's home town- plus 35 000 others in Russia). I hope that it will ignite a passion in Evenki people that they may choose to teach it to their children. I hope that this will speak volumes to their cultural self esteem and open the doors for them to know God's love. I hope I can show them God's love.

This is my passion.

Do you want to join me?