The Islands of Palau were introduced with a population of 17,000 and because there has been a vast number of colonial dominance, there are several languages that you may hear. Here is more of an in-depth introduction into the islands of Palau. Palau is a multilingual community in which they share languages with Japan. Still to this day, there is a heavy presence of Japanese influence among the Palauan people. An example of this is, “After independence in 1994, English has remained as the official language along with the indigenous language, Palauan, and the teaching of Japanese as a foreign language has been widely adopted in Palauan schools (Matsumoto and Britain). After World War II, Palauan were forced to leave to Japan and were only able to return to Palau when the higher authority allowed it. In this article by Matsumoto and Britain, they measure the primary factor of sex and gender conforming the language differences. They also look into the secondary factors of ages, social and economic living and their groups. The article mainly focuses on the observation of three separate groups in the Palauan societies. They divided each into a voluntary helper in an Ageing Center, a local family member, and a volunteer in a governmental organization. By separating the groups, they were able to analyze the language differences among various communities and groups.
They began by examining the differences of Palauan language use among the males and females in both monolingual and multilingual communities. The groups that were studied were the Japanese-Palauan returnees to the islands. Matsumoto and Britain discovered that, “One significant finding is that first generation women in immigrant communities tend to use the ethnic language more than men in their daily communication at home and sustain its use longer than men do, while second generation women are apt to adopt a mainstream language more than men” (Matsumoto and Britain). Here is a website of Palauan language and introduction to different words. The first generation women are different from second-generation women due to the fact that they are more willing to speak a new language because it will increase their “social status”. As the years progress, English seems to be a growing new language, while Japanese is diminishing in the islands.
There were several Japanese immigrants that came to Palau and occupied more four times the population of Palauan people. The Palauan and the Japanese lived side-by-side and were not quarantined to separate living situations. This made it easier for there to be more Japanese-Palauan families, but as families arrived back to Palau they lost their indigenous language and conformed more towards Japanese. Japanese was, “the language of schools, of colonial administration and of the media and all written documents” (Matsumoto and Britain). They introduced an important factor of ethnic identity regarding that this may affect their language perception. Labeling themselves as “Palauan”, “Japanese”, or “American” seems to play a huge role in their language they speak.
I found this article interesting in the sense of the findings of Matsumoto and Britain of the language between genders. I believe that in society men and women do speak differently when it comes to language. Its no doubt that first generation women tend to use the ethnic language more than the men because they're like the ones that keep the language alive. But as history plays itself, each generation after that are more willing to learn and speak a new language such as English. It's usually the countries that take over little island nations that heavily influence their language.
ReplyDeleteThe findings of Matsumoto and Britain do not adhere strictly to the gender paradox. The authors seem to conclude that the people of Palau speak a certain language not because of their gender, but because of its functionality. Take for example, Palauan daughters tend to speak Japanese more because it is taught in schools and its use in the workplace is very important. Palauan sons on the other hand have a better grasp of English because of its role in government jobs(Matsumoto and Britain 16). But does the functionality of a certain language for the people of Palau have a correlation with the types of social and economical behaviors of a certain gender?
ReplyDeleteIt makes sense that although first generation women are dedicated to preserving their ethnic language and culture, the second and third generations of women are interested in learning another language. Even today, people who are bilingual or multilingual have a high value in society! The fact that men in first generations from immigrant communities are less likely to speak the original language is obviously because as the gender stereotype goes, the man must go out and work and provide for his family, and through this he may learn Pidgin, like people in Hawaii that worked on plantations, and spoke that at home. I love that women are such a paradox when it comes to language, as the article said!
ReplyDeleteIn Palau, the collection of languages spoken there provide those who live there with a choice of what language they want to speak in a given context. The women of the older generation in Palau are considered 'conservative' because they speak Japanese, the language they grew up speaking, otherwise known as their mother tongue (Matsumoto and Britain 15). The women of the younger generation also speak Japanese, yet are considered 'innovative' as opposed to 'conservative' because Japanese is not their mother tongue and acts more like a foreign language. If the conservative and innovative markers were applied to language use in Hawai'i, the Hawaiians who learned English from the missionaries would be considered innovative because of their use of a foreign language. Today, the majority of Hawaiians and people living in Hawai'i speak English and would be considered conservative because of the lifelong use of their mother tongue. It is apparent that the application of conservative and innovative labels for speakers differs from one place to another.
ReplyDeleteAs we discussed in class, gender types speak differently through language. In this article, Matsumoto and Britain examine not only gender, but also age, social and economic living which is looked upon as factors of language differences. Some men and women are either monolingual and or multilingual in the Palauan community. It was interesting to see how the “first generation women in immigrant communities tend to use the ethnic language more than men in their daily communication at home and sustain its use longer than men do, while second generation women are apt to adopt a mainstream language more than men” (Matsumoto and Britain). Of course the younger generations will be more willing to learn new languages. Soon Palau will become more of a multilingual community with a variety of languages spoken.
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ReplyDeleteIn the article, conservatism and innovation were contributing factors to linguistic behavior for the Palau community. These two factors were based on their language ability and “use of Japanese.” In the discussion and conclusion, it states “By contextualizing what social meaning “use of Japanese” may convey to different generations, we understood that “use of Japanese” by the grandparent and parent generations may represent conservative behavior, in the sense that it indicates maintenance of their mother tongue or ethnic home language, while “use of Japanese” by the children’s generation may be seen as innovative behavior, in the sense that it indicates the adoption of an in-coming overtly prestigious foreign language which assures job security” (Matsumoto and Britain). In this context, conservatism refers to preserving the native language, whereas innovative behavior is an introduction to something new/changes. As mentioned above, Leah provided a good example of how conservative and innovative behaviors are applied to language use in Hawaii. Conservative and innovative patterns are found in many language communities, but vary place to place.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading this article, I found it really interesting that I was able to find a similarity to the previous Besnier article about fakaleiti and their use of English and also our discussion in class. In the analysis for women and men, it was found that in both groups of high Japanese ability speaking and low Japanese ability speaking, the women in both groups engage in the language more so than men even though some of them arent' as well versed in Japanese. The same conclusion is true with the fakaleiti in Tonga. Although they weren't fluent in English, they spoke it more than non-transgendered men. Both articles suggest that women are less fearful to speak different languages than men. In contrast, our class talked about how women were more shy and reserved in speaking than men are.
ReplyDeleteThe finding that first-generation women try to hold onto the ethnic language and then the use of the ethnic language decreases with subsequent generations is something we have discussed several times in class so far. Knowing several languages may be useful to the second/third generation community members as they venture out into other areas of the world. Also, knowing several languages increases the "social status" of women who remain in the community.
ReplyDeleteI also found the pattern of conservative and innovative uses of languages in different communities very interesting. Even more, it is interesting to look at the differences in language patters from males to females. The discussions that we have had in class covered differences in language use amongst males and females, but the Matsumoto and Britain article went further, examining age and socioeconimic factors as well. Its an interestin topic that I would like to learn more about.
ReplyDeleteThis article is really intersting. Politics always have great impact on the language spoken in that area. It is obviously easy to undersand that first generation females are more conservative in the ethic language use. I think it was due to social roles between males and females at that time. Females always stayed at home to take care of kids and husbands. They did not have many access to other language, while males must go out to make a living for the family. In the society, they had chances to have contacts with different people and different languages. In order to survive, they must be open to learn languages used in the society. New genration females were liberated long time ago. They did not need to stay at home and they could have more access to the new things and society. In the meanwhile, new generation was easy to accept new things. What was the most important was bilingual or multilingual represented high prestige in the society. New generation females would like to stand out amongst males, I think.
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