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Chris Richards / Staff
Duc Tran, 5, with his
Vietnamese textbook. The weekly language and culture class, held at St. Ambrose
Catholic School, is sponsored by the Tucson Vietnamese Cultural Community.
Chris Richards / Staff
Tam Nguyen, 11, practices
a Vietnamese dance called "Beautiful in Saigon" during a Sunday afternoon
language and culture class. 
Chris Richards / Staff
Alice Dang, 14, center,
and classmates rehearse a Vietnamese dance. Classes aim to keep students in
touch with their heritage. 
Marian Gajda
Members of Lajkonik, a Polish folk-dancing
group, include Quetzalli Szwaykowski, left, Julia Anderson, Gabriela Anderson,
Diana Gajda, Dalia Lis, Ola Stawicka and Anetka Wyzga.
Agnieszka Stawicka |
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* Groups mentioned in this article: • Lajkonik, Polish folk dancing group, home.earthlink.net/~jrschmit • Tucson Vietnamese Cultural Community, www.geocities. com/lopvntucson • Pascua Yaqui Tribe, 883-5000 • Luz Academy of Tucson, 882-6216 • Temple Emanu-El, 327-4501 • Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona, 577-9393 |
The legend of Hung Vuong teems with lessons about Vietnamese culture: respect for simple living and maintaining a strong connection with the land, to name just two.
A half-dozen kids and one adult gathered on a recent Sunday afternoon to watch a computerized version of the legend in Vietnamese and English - quickly demonstrating how they're absorbing the language and culture.
By teaching young people the language of their ancestors, Dr. Dung Nguyen believes, classes like his strengthen the connection between U.S.-born children and their non-U.S. heritage.
Hebrew schools are perhaps the archetype for community language study as part of a larger cultural education.
For Jews, according to Rabbi David Freelund, knowing Hebrew is possessing a key to opening up an entire world of Jewish life and learning.
"So much of culture is tied up in language," said Freelund, director of education at Temple Emanu-El. "A lot of what we learn about ourselves - what we understand about the world - is tied up in the language that we learn it in."
Hebrew and Vietnamese are but two of the languages being taught locally to maintain young people's ties with their ethnic roots.
The Vietnamese classes are sponsored by The Tucson Vietnamese Cultural Community, formed in 2001 by Nguyen, Thai Nguyen, Quynh Nguyen, Hung Tran and Dien Nguyen. This group of immigrants had begun teaching some of their own children the language and decided to expand the scope of their work.
"We thought, 'If we can teach our children, why not teach the community?' " Nguyen said during a recess of his weekly class. "For most of these children, English is their first tongue - we want them to preserve their heritage."
During the last year, the free language class was attended by up to 80 students - of Vietnamese descent and not - each Sunday. The teachers are volunteers; classroom space is donated.
At Temple Emanu-El, students can begin serious language instruction at 8 years old. Hebrew School classes meet once a week for two hours and focus on T'filah, or prayer Hebrew. The school has about 100 students.
The classes are the means to a religious end: being able to read the Torah and participate in Hebrew-language services.
Heritage and language study are closely related, Freelund said.
"I try and urge that connection all the time," he said.
"Kids who are living in an English-speaking country . . . wonder 'Why am I doing this?' I am always trying to reinforce in my teaching, and what my teachers do, to connect it to the real world and the way that it can inform our understanding of ourselves and God and of our people's history."
In Vietnamese culture, for example, the social hierarchy is revealed in the way people address each other. Younger people refer to their elders with words meaning "older brother" or "older sister," and a wife will call her husband "older brother."
Polish immigrant teaches dance
When Joanna Schmit teaches Polish folk dancing, her students learn more than steps.
"Everything is in Polish," said Schmit, director of Lajkonik, a Polish folk dancing group in Tucson. "All the songs - the kids have to sing them in Polish."
Lajkonik meets once a week to practice for performances throughout the year. The group's first serious gig was at the 1998 Tucson Meet Yourself festival. Schmit, who emigrated from Poland, uses the dance group to keep kids of Polish descent in touch with their ancestral home - and its language.
"I would like my kids to understand where I am coming from,"said Schmit, whose two sons are in her group.
Hispanic kids learn of heritage
Yvette Laprada, a recent graduate of Luz Academy of Tucson, is already bilingual in Spanish and English, but Spanish-language instruction has still given her a broader picture of her heritage.
"I understand more about where my grandparents came from - why they do the things they do," said the 18-year-old incoming UA freshman.
Though she hears and speaks only Spanish at home, Laprada speaks a mix of Spanish and English with her friends.
Spanish is fading among young people, according to Pepe Barrón, superintendent of Luz Academy of Tucson.
"The majority of Chicano kids here continue to lose their language," he said, "and when they lose their language, obviously they lose a big part of their identity."
Barrón sees ancestral language as necessary to teaching children about their heritage and family.
"We try to teach the value and the worth of their language, background and the family," he said. "These are the things you should be proud of so you can continue to know who you are, rather than denying the fact of who you are."
Barrón said one way the school connects Hispanic kids with their heritage and language is by bringing parents into the classroom. Presentations given by the parents, who often do not speak English, are a cross between language instruction and studies in personal cultural history.
Yaqui program decimated
The language of the Yaqui tribe also is fading despite the efforts of local educators.
A TUSD program teaching the Yaqui language has been decimated, according to Karen V. Wynn, director of the TUSD Native American Studies Department. Wynn blames a lack of qualified teachers for the absence of Yaqui language instruction in TUSD schools.
Recent federal laws have also prohibited Yaqui language instructors without a high school diploma or equivalent from teaching in some schools, according to Roxanne Begay, a TUSD resource teacher.
Lee Baltazar, who recently graduated from Cholla High School, did not take Yaqui language classes while in school, but this summer he began instruction offered through the Pascua Yaqui Tribe.
Before the class, he knew a formal greeting.
"Through the program I learned a couple more vocabulary words and learned how to put them together," the 18-year-old said. "When they speak it, I can kind of put the words together and understand what they're saying."
Baltazar said the class, which lasted from the end of May through June and had a tribal-history component, taught him about his Yaqui heritage. "The language itself made me understand that it's a unique culture - not everybody has it.
"It made me more proud of who I am and where I'm from," he said.
Pima Community College, one school that Baltazar is considering attending, offers classes in the Yaqui language, and he plans to continue learning the tongue of his ancestors.
The TUSD Yaqui language program began almost 20 years ago, according to Wynn. There were other native languages taught, but nearly half of TUSD American Indian students are Yaqui. Almost all native language instruction was in Yaqui.
"When we look at academic achievement of students," Wynn said, "I've found that kids that are very highly involved in their tribal language and their tribal culture are the kids who generally perform higher on standardized tests.
"Language and cultural influence is really pretty key when we talk about student achievement," she said.
Finally, the transferring of the connection of family, religion and geography can be fun - as the students in Nguyen's class found as they learned the legend of Emperor Hung Vuong, who held a food contest to decide which of his sons would inherit his throne. The sons all brought him rare delicacies - except for Tiet Lieu, his farmer-son, who gave him banh day (rice dough cake) and banh chung (sticky-rice cake).
Tiet Lieu, of course, wins the crown because his choice is true to the legacy his father wanted to leave behind.
* Contact reporter Anthony Broadman at 573-4124 or broadman@azstarnet.com
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