Lesson #5

Recently I have been experiencing some frustration with my Yaqui language learning. I do not have many resources nor a native or heritage speaker to practice with. Having limited resources- that is, nothing resembling a textbook or guide for language learners- has left me with an even more limited proficiency level.

However, I have not given up! The website "Vachiam Eecha" (http://hemi.nyu.edu/cuaderno/yoeme/content.html) has been an incredible resource not just for culture, video clips, and history, but it has provided me an opportunity to test my hypotheses about Yaqui. A few pages have the same description/text in Yaqui (or Yoeme) and English and/or Spanish. I decided to take a look at both texts and attempt to find common words and identify them in Yaqui.

Using these texts, I thought I had found the words for "commentary" and a few other phrases, like "welcome." To determine this, I looked a frequent words in the Yaqui text and tried to identify them with frequent words in either the Spanish or English text. Unfortunately, I found out I was wrong in many of my hypotheses. The word "enchim," which I thought was the plural for "commentary," turned out to be the plural for "you."

The link above also has more information on the language basics, like tense markers, subject and object pronouns, and vocabulary lists. I have been studying those lists (including vocabulary for numbers, emotions, question words) but I still lack knowledge of verbs. I do know that Yaqui is a verbal final language, however, it has been difficult to figure out either the meaning of the verb and if it is really the final element of the phrase (that is, it is final in the S-O-V phrase, but what about adverbs, adjectives, etc?). Once I receive my dictionary, my first task is to compile a list of necessary verbs (want, be, have, etc) and attempt to create sentences using the vocabulary I already have and the new verbs.

Lesson #5: Hypotheses Testing: while it is a great way to experiment and explore the language, be sure to have a way to test or check your hypotheses! Otherwise, you just might go around saying something incorrect, impolite, and possibly stigmatizing.