LiC- 4th International Nakem Conference

From November 11-14 the 4th International Nakem Conference was held on the campus of the University of Hawaii at Manoa for the first time. The Nakem Conference is a conference held every year which talks about issues around the world concerning Ilocano people. This year's theme was “Dap-ayan: Sharing and Understanding Ethnolinguistic Worlds Towards Cultural Pluralism.” There were many attendees from the Philippines, Australia, Continental US and other regions of the world.

As a student of the Ilocano class, I got the privilege to volunteer at the conference and listen in on some presentations. Overall, there were about 50 papers presented at the conference which talked about multicultural education, heritage and other various issues. I remember listening on a paper about an Ilocano group in Australia. I found it interesting that the a majority of the conference was spoken in Ilocano. I was suprised that I could understand a good portion of the speakers. But at times it was hard to understand because these speakers were natives speakers of the language and from what I was learning in class, we are learning the "text book" version of the language, just like in one of our readings stated. Also, I got to interact and speak with the attendees which was a fun experience. They were fun to talk to because they would try to teach me new terms and concepts that I didn't learn in class. They were gladly stated to me that it's good that I'm learning my native language.