While visiting a relative of one the grandpas, the conversation turned to the spiritual. Pa Kam Pan (man in white shirt in photo), started to share about Jesus being the fifth reincarnation of the Buddha. He said that Pra-aa-li-ya-met-tai, whom Buddha said would give salvation when he appeared on earth, is the person you should seek. Pa Kam Pan then said, “He has come already. The Westerners call him by the name of Jesus.”
I need to study this out further to see what correlations there are between Pra-aali-ya-met-tai and Jesus. I have never heard of this person before so it definitely sparked my curiosity.
Yesterday I went to a next-door province to find Lue villages as possible locations for my family to move into next year. This was just an initial survey to see which villages still had Lue as their mother tongue.
My good friend Praphan went with me to help decipher which dialect of Lue we would hear. We ending up going to 8 villages, but only three of them still spoke Lue as their heart language. We found that in several communities the Lue have intermarried with other ethnic groups or have moved off to live in the big cities. The villages that spoke Lue used three different dialects from the one I’m learning. Geographically they were varied too. One village was located in the mountains, one was in a wide valley and another was tucked in some hills near the Thai-Laos border.
I switched from using my voice recorder to my trusty notepad and pen. I have a digital recorder (and I use it regularly) but lots of times there is so much background noise (lots of people chattering, engines, radios, etc) that it makes it almost impossible to get a quality recording. It also helps to have a visual (seeing the words) when I review captured terminology. When I explore the utterances at a later time and if it is quieter, I’ll then have an opportunity to use my recorder.
The purpose of this blog is to give glimpses into my studies, trials and triumphs as I study the culture of the Lue people. The topics could range from events I participated in to discourse analysis.
I encourage all who visit my site to critique or comment on any articles that I post. My hope is that you’ll participate in my learning.
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