Papiamentu Language Books, Curaçao Bookstore, Travel and More - #9

Hi guys!

I'm back with a random little vloggish video about a couple of things — sort of tying up loose ends.

So, this spring break I had the opportunity to travel to Curaçao, in the Caribbean ABC Islands. It was a lovely trip; the island and its beaches, towns, and other attractions are beautiful.

The language that is spoken in the ABC Islands (Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao and others), or the now-diffused Netherlands Antilles, is Papiamentu (also spelled Papiamento in Aruba).

Papiamentu is a cute little creole, spoken by the around 330,000 in the region, based on Romance languages and the English and Dutch influence on the history of the islands. (More at Wikipedia and more at Omniglot)

So anyway, I had become interested in this not-widely-known-but-very-cool language about 3 years ago (as I do...), and had always thought it would be cool to learn it, let alone go to Curaçao.

When I found out earlier that our family had decided on Curaçao as a destination, I was so thrilled and did kind of a crash course on Papiamentu using the Papiamentu Textbook by E. R. Goilo (here and here on Amazon) that I had purchased awhile back.

I also started a blog called iPapiamentu, which I began to write in eagerly up until and through the majority of my trip to Curaçao.

However, as fun Internet projects often do, the blog kind of died down and I never got to do my close-up post on the trip, or the post on the books I had purchased while there.

Long story short, I really wanted to kind of bring my blog back to life, and also talk about the lovely language books I got at the bookstore, so I figured it would be awesome to make a vid here at Brian on Language.

By the way, I was inspired by R. K. Harrison of Papiamentu-Tur-Dia to not only make the blog, but to make this video tonight, from the comment sent to me.

Hope you guys enjoy it; I know it's long, but, I do a little review on the books :D! Fun, right?

Remember to comment, rate and subscribe!

Feel free to email me here as always.

Below is the video or you can watch it at this link. Enjoy!



P.S. - Again, shout out to R. K. Harrison for the comment and for reading my blog before! You're awesome!

P.P.S. - I'm posting this vid down at iPapiamentu! Be sure to check it out! Thanks guys.

Review - Kiribati (Gilbertese) Peace Corps Language Handbooks by Steven Trussel - #8

Hi guys! Back, sorry for the long delay. Thanks to all new subscribers and readers.

Today I have some exciting new library books to share.

I was fortunate to get the opportunity to access these hard-to-find Peace Corps Language Handbooks for the Kiribati (Gilbertese) language.

Kiribati (pronounced Kiribahss) is a cute little island nation in the center of the Pacific Ocean comprised of atolls and a coral island.

Their language, spoken by around 100,000 people, is of the Nuclear Micronesian branch, and is VSO.
(More at Wikipedia and Omniglot)

In this video I share about how I was able to loan these handbooks via the Interlibrary Loan of a local university. A reminder to anyone involved in an academic institution to really take advantage of the library access you have.

Usually I would put a link to buy these, but they really can't be purchased.

Instead, here is the website of the author Steven Trussel, who has the Grammar and Communication handbooks up to view online free.

The site also has a ton of great info on Kiribati and other topics as well (including Nauru).

Shout out and thank you to Steven Trussel for his work with Kiribati and for the insight over email! :)

Remember to comment, rate and subscribe!

Feel free to email me here as always.

Below is the video or you can watch it at this link.

Sorry that this video is a bit odd. I recorded it kind of split-up and was a little out of it...haha, enjoy!