Getting started

Fakaalofa lahi atu!  Greetings!  Soon it will be a new year, 2012, and during these past few days I have been thinking about trying to tackle a new language in the new year.  I made a long list of possible candidates and also looked around the web to get more information about each language and the country where it is spoken.  The area that I am interested in is Asia which has a broad range of language choices.  Narrowing down my choices based on my interests, I want to study an Austronesian language.  Once again, this group contains a huge number of languages and it is difficult to choose, but I thought about a Polynesian language since I have been studying Hawaiian for some years now and know that my knowledge of that language will be a help when learning another Polynesian language.  The obvious choices for me are:  Tahitian, Samoan, Maori, Cook Islands' Maori and Tongan.  I write obvious because I have already purchased some books and dictionaries in these languages and also there are several resources online for studying or using these languages.  I have already studied a little of each of those languages and will probably go back to study them in the future.  However, I was very much interested in Tokelau, Kiribati, Fijian and Niuean after looking around the web.  Compared to some of the other island nations in the Pacific, Fiji is massive and I was able to find so much information about the country and the culture but disappointingly, I wasn't able to get a lot of materials online about the language.  It seems that most of the books concerning Fijian are scare and very expensive.

If you are a Pacific Islander reading my blog here, you might think that I should study your language and believe me, I am extremely interested in this part of the world, but I live in Japan, although I am not Japanese, and have limited resources.  I must rely on the internet.  Even though I did find PDFs written in several languages, it is difficult for a learner of those languages to find good grammar books, dictionaries or other sources for learning.

So why did I chose Niuean?  One of the main reasons is that I found a Niuean-English-Niuean dictionary published by the University of Hawaiʻi and a book published in New Zealand for learning simple conversational skills.  Hopefully with my knowledge of Hawaiian, that dictionary and the New Zealand book, I will be able to master the extreme basics during my short winter vacation this year.  Certainly I don't expect to learn the language overnight, but I am confident that I should be able to learn the most rudiment grammar skills and can later focus on vocabulary, idioms and improving my all over skills.

I still know very little about the Niuean language, but according to my sources, there is no ʻokina (glottal stop) in the language.  Also, another interesting feature is that there is no distinction in possessions (a/o groups) like I have seen in the other Polynesian languages.

A few words about myself here.  In general, I have an overloaded work schedule.  Also, my passion in life is learning languages.  I don't necessarily have to learn them to be fluent.  That would be best, but I find great satisfaction in tearing apart a language, looking at the writing system, hearing the sounds, looking for related languages, discovering the grammar that makes the language tick and most importantly making friends who are native speakers or fellow students like myself.

How long will I study this new language?  What are my goals?  Will I soon give up and move on to another language?  Will this be a waste of my time?  I have great qualms in embarking on a new adventure like this because despite having a lot of free time for a week or so, after that I will find it difficult to squeeze in the necessary minutes, hours needed daily to dedicate to my learning.  I have no idea at all the length of my intended studies.  They could last only a week or a life time.  What are my goals?  I suppose my ultimate goal would be to find a native Niuean speaker and become friends.  Perhaps that is a selfish goal.  Thinking more globally, I realize that there is not a large number of Niuean speakers in the world.  If I could add myself to that number, I would be more than satisfied.  If I never do become fluent or even half fluent, still I will be able to inform people around me about a Niue and its people.  I guess becoming an unofficial cultural and linguistic ambassador of Niue raising the awareness of Niue to those around me would also make myself very pleased.  Will I soon give up and move on to another language?  How soon is soon?  I am certain that I will move on to another language some day.  I want to learn more Polynesian languages!  Will studying Niuean be a waste of my time.  No!  No way!  Certainly not!  Trying to perpetuate another language and culture could never be a waste of time, no matter how little I might personally accomplish in my studies.

What did I do the day before yesterday?  I spent hour after hour surfing the web looking for a language to studying.  That was my first official contact with Niuean.  So, I more or less decided on that day that I would study Niuean.  And what did I do yesterday?  Once again, I spent more time trying to get information together, bookmark homepages, think of an approach.  My biggest accomplishment was ordering the Niuean-English-Niuean Dictionary.  It should get here in two or three days.  After it arrives, I will get started learning much more than today.

And today what have I done?  I spent some time working on the alphabet and pronunciation of Niuean.  Also, I made a new mail account at Google for Niuean.  I also needed that address in order to start this blog here.  I spent an hour or so working on the basic design of this blog, but it is still very simple and I might just keep it that way and spend more time studying Niuean.  I can always change the look of things here later.

Until I get my dictionary, I plan on studying the information presented on a homepage called Niue.  If you click here, you can start to learn with me!

Let me write more later tonight or tomorrow.  Now let me think.  I want to write Goodbye in Niuean.  I learned Koe kia, but I am assuming that is for only one person.  For now, that is good enough.  Remember.  I just started with my lessons this morning!  It might be a mistake, but it will make sense to someone.

Koe kia!