Perpetuating the native tongue

At Issue: The increasing number of local kids who can’t speak their native tongue with decency.

Our View: The teaching of spoken Chamorro must begin at the home front, not in our classrooms.

In school classrooms and playground, at home or other social gatherings, we hear young local pupils brave their new mixed Chamorro with English or some other language.

All these while experts say students must first learn their native tongue in order to be successful in learning the English Language.
It’s a see-saw debate among linguistic experts and advocates of the local tongue to which the truth has yet to be proven.

Perhaps the onus is on the side of experts to satisfy the assertion that there’s in fact a direct relationship in a student’s success in English because he or she knows her native tongue, both spoken and written.

If you recall, some 30 years ago, students were penalized for speaking their native tongue in classrooms and playgrounds. At then Hopwood Sr. High School, there’s even a student court where students go through trial and given punishment for speaking their native tongue.

It may be well and good to reverse this punitive approach given that a lot of local students don’t speak their native tongue with decency, muchless, write their thoughts and views in written Chamorro.

Even the educated elite among locals find reading the Chamorro column that is printed in this newspaper on Tuesdays and Thursdays an ordeal. It need not be a struggle if only you can decide to have a starting point–the actual reading of what’s presented.

Why the need to speak our native tongue beginning at the home front? A language of any groups of people grants them the opportunity to perpetuate their peoplehood.
It is the last aspect in a culture holds them together with all its peculiarities and uniqueness as a people.

Either we teach it at the home front and primary level or forever suffer the indignities like other ethnic groups across the country who don’t have a language of their own over the last 200-plus years under the republic.

Definitely, all local students must learn the business language of the global community–English. A well honed skill in English will get you through college entrance exams and in all that you pursue in life after campus as a technical or professional. But learn to speak and write in your native tongue. It’s your native tongue. Si Yuus Maase`!