Almost 4 years ago (I can't believe it's been that long), T-rav and I spent 2 months living in Guatemala doing humanitarian work. For the most part, I focused on teaching English and T-rav taught small business and square foot gardening classes, though we both worked on other projects as well. We also volunteered at a local orphanage and helped build a road in a tiny village in the mountains. It was easily one of the best times in our lives. We met fantastic people, saw amazing things and realized that we both love working in the non-profit realm.
This sounds like I'm preparing to make some kind of "we're moving back to Guatemala, never to return" type of announcement. Don't worry- I'm not (though I kind of wish I were). I've just been thinking that perhaps you might be wondering where my blogger name ixoj comes from.
Most of the people in the highlands of Guatemala (where we lived) are of Mayan descent and speak one of many Mayan languages (which, let me tell you, made it interesting when I was attempting to teach English (with the help of my Spanish) to people who didn't even speak Spanish yet). The Latino/Ladino people live mostly on the coast or in the big cities, where they
speak Spanish. Most of the villages we went to speak some form of Kaqchikel, which is closely related to K'iche and Tz'utujil. I love it because it is an ergative-absolutive language (English is a nominative-accusative language), it has a glottalized stops and affricates (b, t, k, q, tz, ch), and they conjugate every verb, and it sounds very guttural, and it's really cool! You can hear a sample of it above.
Anyway. The word ixoj is the Kaqchikel word for woman. It is pronounced "ee-shohk," where the k sound at the end is more of an airy sound rather than a hard k. Our Mayan driver used to teach us words in Kaqchikel to holler at the Mayan peeps as we drove around the villages. Imagine: 8 normal sized white people (= huge compared to the Mayans) crammed into a tiny Suzuki Sidekick, shouting things like "Good morning, man" or "thank you" or "come with me" or "I'm woman" in a language that white people aren't supposed to know. It was pretty great.
4 comments:
so...how come it took me so long to find your blog? =)
Hey...we're coming to Utah in August.... Will ya be there? Will we know where to find you???????
My blog has only been in existence for a few weeks. And assuming we haven't moved by then (we're thinking end of august), we'll still be in the same place. Stop by!!
hey smell
so i didnt understand anything about the linguistic stuff yuwrote about but whatever. It was interesting ixoj. You will have to tell me how to say it for reals sometime. You should come teach english in brasil........ :P
Moving huh...whereabouts? We flew to CA, so just imagine that I waved at you. We are coming to Orem for the 4th of July, so hopefully we can see you guys then. Are you still having a fam reunion in August? And just for fun, who are the 2 other cutest kids? I also have some TESOL questions for you...one day.
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