Rotuman language

The Rotumon language is vulnerable to becoming endangered. This language exists on the Islands of Rotuma, Fiji. There are 3,000 known speakers of the language and it is only known by the native people of Rotuma. Only 2,500 people currently reside on the island of Rotuma and about 3/4 of native Rotuman's now are living off the island in other more urbanized areas. This is causing a rapid decrease in speakers of the language because children who do not grow up in Rotuma are not being taught the native Rotuman language.The Rotuman people themselves have a strong emphasis on communal sharing and also grow their own staples such as yams, tapioca, and bananas and they also grow fruits including pineapple, watermelons, and papayas. They also are known for hard work and diligence and provide for themselves. This is an important language to save because it is very similar to other languages around the area such as Fijan however it is also a very unique language in some ways and it is very interesting as well. Also, it is important to preserve the unique culture. One way to help this language from going extinct would be to make the natives from the island who now live in other cities teach their children the language in order to make sure it keeps going and keeps being passed down from generation to generation. This would be very helpful and would contribute both to saving the language itself and to saving the culture of the Rotuman people as well.

Identifying Myself as a Knower

One Area of Knowledge that well reflects me is History because throughout everyday life i look at things that have happened in the past to try to figure out whether things may be true or not. An example of this would be if someone told me that a war was being started between the U.S. and England i would assume that this was a false statement because aside from the Revolution in the 1700's the U.S. and England have always been allies. In this example I use my knowledge of history to evaluate a knowledge claim made by another person. One personal experience that I've had where i used History to assess a knowledge claim is 9-11 where I was so young that I hadn't known about any recent conflicts with U.S. and other countries so therefore i did not believe what I was told had happened at first. Although, this is more of a lack of history that caused me to make an incorrect knowledge claim myself but it depicts the way in which History influences the way in which i decide whether a statement is true or not. Also, one example from being an IB student is that in English class yesterday we read a poem that contained references to many important historical accomplishments of mankind and if I had not already known the history of humans and many significant events in that history, I would not have been able to understand what the poem was about. Therefore history was a help to me because it allowed me to understand certain things in a completely different subject.

The Way of Knowing that best reflects me as a knower is reason because I always use reason when both making and assessing knowledge claims. One experience that I've had where I used reason is when someone told me that they were going to see a snowboarding competition called "Dew Tour" in Vermont at Mount Snow. I used reason to figure out that this was a false claim because I had recently watched the Dew Tour on tv the weekend before this person made their claim and because the Dew Tour only stops places for three days at a time I knew the statement must be false. As an IB student I've come across many instances where I had to use reason to make a decision or to find out what went wrong in a lab or in many other cases. One experience in particular was when I had to use reason to determine why my groups lab results were not consistent during a lab in HL Chemistry. After carefully using reason and examining why our results were different we found out that we had done a step incorrectly and we re did our lab correctly in order to fix our mistake. Therefore using reason helped me to find out what went wrong in our lab and fix our mistake.

Glossary of TOK terms:

Knowledge claim-A statement proposed by a person as being true.

Knower- Someone who assesses beliefs and ideas presented to them.

Way of Knowing- A way in which a person can come about deciding whether a statement is true or false.

Area of Knowing- A certain area of knowledge that is distinguished by certain characteristics from other areas.