Malagasy Paragraph

Things have been moving along smoothly. Nothing too exciting has happened. On Tuesday we went to visit the offices of Midi Madagasikara, the oldest newspaper in Madagascar, and yesterday there were 2 big pictures of our group in the paper! Crazy! I have a copy so hopefully I won't lose it and will be able to bring it home.

To show you an example of Malagasy, here is a short paragraph I wrote yesterday in class about my family in the US:

Ny Fianakaviako any Etats-Unis

I Rachel no anarako. Roapolo taona aho. Manana ray sy reny. I Jim no anaran'ny raiko. I Suzy no anaran'ny reniko. Manana rahavavy iray aho. I Hannah no anarany. Dimy amby folo taona izy. Mpianatra izy. Manana alika koa aho. I Papi no anarany. Efatra taona izy.

Translation:

My family in the US

My name is Rachel. I am 20 years old. I have a dad and a mom. My dad's name is Jim. My mom's name is Suzy. I have 1 sister. Her name is Hannah. She is 15 years old. She is a student. I also have a dog. His name is Papi. He is 4 years old.

Weird language, right? All regular verbs start with an M, and there are no conjugations, which is nice, but can be confusing. To change a tense, you just change the first letter of the verb (n=past, h=future) and to make a very into a noun, you had a p after the first m.