As we move into spring, the Northern Hemisphere returns to the light.

In my own world, I see light of a different type.

I'm finishing my MA thesis. Finally, after 3 1/2 years, my academic advisor, and my two other committee members, agree that I will be able to finish by late April.

My quest for a second MA began back in 1999. In order for me to file for promotion at UH-Hilo, I needed a second Master's Degree in a subject discipline of my choice. I took a sabbatical in August 2001 to attend UH-Manoa to do coursework in linguistics. I naturally thought I'd return to Hilo, and do a thesis there on some local topic. Little did I know that this would lead me to the Far West Pacific.

My life changed quite a bit since then in ways I had no way of predicting, but life is like that. Since November 2002, I've been employed full time (and then some). Squeezing in my MA research, which required me to make two visits to a faraway island in Micronesia, was no easy task, next to my accordion and drumming practice, time with my SO, and time to eat and sleep.

And then there was the writing part. I like to write - in fact, I really enjoy it. I do a lot of it, and like to think I do a fair job of it. My mother urged me for many years to continue my writing practice through "journaling" (boys simply didn't keep "diaries" back in those days). Mom thought I put together ideas pretty well - I wrote both of my parents pretty regularly when I was a kibbutznik in the 70's. I inherited those letters when my parents passed away.

Have you ever read stuff you wrote 30+ years ago? Wow. I don't remember being in that headspace, aaah, but that's another blog.

The whole purpose of doing a thesis was to do something worthy and useful in the field of linguistics. I didn't want to write some drivel that would end up on some shelf that would never get used.

My advisor suggested I work on a Chukkic language called Satawalese. He wanted me to take a snapshot of the language - the sounds, words, sentence patterns. I've blogged quite a bit about my adventures in Yap collecting Satawalese data for my paper, so I won't go into that now. It was challenging, and far from over - I've just scratched the surface really. I'm hoping the Satawalese get interested enough in their language to take this further, so their descendants, if they are no longer speaking Satawalese when they're born, will have printed materials and sound recordings of what their language used to sound like.

Language/Linguistics is having its own "global warming" event - it's called language extinction. Many languages are going 'dark' throughout the world. Languages that have been spoken for centuries and longer are disappearing - simply enter in "language extinction" into Google and you'll see what I mean.

Is Satawalese becoming extinct? One thing that is actually protecting it for the moment is that it's spoken on a small island, and the people there live mostly like they have for centuries, though that's changing - They have limited access to email and the Internet. Some language consultants I worked with on Yap told me that some of the younger kids on Satawal want to speak English and not Satawalese. Of course, they can speak BOTH, but they don't know that. Hopefully they will realize that they can use both.

If I can make some small significant impact with the work I have done, my life will have been worth it.