Diving into the study of language this semester was amazing! After several weeks of concentrated phonetics classes we had learned almost every sound the human mouth can produce. We also practiced the phonetic alphabet, so we can write down any sound we hear- which will help us immensely, when we move into a tribe and begin learning a language that has never been written.
Phonetics will also help us sound less “foreign.” As we attempted some of the more unusual sounds, we felt as though we had regressed back to elementary school and were learning to talk and write all over again!
We also took a linguistic aptitude test in October. New Tribes offers an extra semester of focused linguistics study for people who have an aptitude for it. Ends up, Lael scored perfect on the test, so we’re planning to stick around one more semester for her to go through the program.
They say it is invaluable to have a trained linguist on the team going into a tribe, so we are excited for Lael to gain these tools! The extra semester of classroom work will be followed by a 6-week practicum living among the Cherokee indians in Oklahoma to apply all the linguistics knowledge she’ll have gained.
During this time, I plan to take the technology specialist course. I’ll learn more about all the technology surrounding life in the bush like: assembling and wiring solar panels, rebuilding engines and installing water filtration systems. This knowledge will not only help our team
but will be a blessing to surrounding teams in nearby tribes.
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