The Phenomenon of Language Death: Prestige Attribution of a Language
“In the biblical myth of the Tower of Babel, humans are punished by God for their arrogance in trying to build a tower that would reach heaven. Condemned to speak a babble of mutually incomprehensible languages, they are quarantined from each other’s minds. The many languages spoken on this earth have often seemed a curse to rulers, media magnates, and the person in the street.” (Evans, 2010)
As Nicholas Evans states in his book, the issue of language death has been widely discussed and researched by linguists and researchers. Some economists and politicians see the diversity of languages as a significant cause of trouble, corruption and instability in the modern world: They almost see the diversity of languages as a curse to humans, like that in the biblical myth of the Tower of Babel. According to them, people who speak different languages are not able to communicate with each other in a desirable way, and on the larger scale, that is why communities with different native languages and cultures cannot find a common ground for any healthy communication that would make way for world peace and understanding. Many economists and politicians advocate the existence of one common language that people can speak and communicate with others without any complications (Evans, 2010). Thus, they see the existence of a single language as the key that will unify the people of the world.
On the other hand, many academics and linguists are alarmed by the phenomenon of language death, because languages are assets to all humans. Languages are manifestations of many things such as human history, intellect, knowledge and the complexity of the cognitive ability of human beings. Such academics and linguists are especially alarmed as they know what humanity is missing out with the loss of every language and are aware of the direness and scope of the issue language death: As Kenneth Hale’s study predicts, during the 21st century, 3,000 of today’s 6,000 languages will disappear, and another 2,400 will come near to extinction (1998). This means that in less than 90 years, 90 percent of today’s existing languages will be endangered. It definitely requires very significant effort and resources to revive languages that have already died – and it may not even be possible to revive some of these dead languages at all, and this makes Hale’s numbers only more urging.
In the last couple of decades, linguists and researchers have been asking and trying to answer many aspects about language death, endangered languages and language revitalization. Language death is a serious and complex matter (Hale, 1998): The questions of how and why languages go extinct, the definition of language death, the consequences of language loss, how to save a soon-to-die language or how to revitalize a language that has already died are still being discussed by people in this field. One of the topics that researchers have been discussing for a long time is related to the reasons of language death such as glottocide and the prestige attribution of a language, and how these occurrences bring about the disappearance of a language.
Glottocide is the destruction of the language of a group due to causes such as genocide as well as wars and natural disasters that could wipe away an entire population with the ability of speaking a certain language (Tsunoda, 2006). Most of the earlier Aboriginal Australian languages, for instance, died as the speakers of these languages were massacred and introduced to certain diseases that they were not immune to from before, such as influenza and small pox. This was largely because of the presence of the British colony in Australia in the late eighteenth century (Tsunoda, 2006). The same phenomenon also took place with the Aboriginal Australians of Tasmania. Instead of dying from diseases that are completely foreign to them, these people were almost completely killed by genocide, and thus their languages lost their speakers. Although glotticide was a common form of language death in the past as these cases show, in today’s world it is less likely that the speakers of a language will vanish all together from genocide, disease, natural disasters or wars. In the modern world, such calamities can be addressed more quickly and efficiently than they were in the past, so today languages very rarely die as a result of glotticide.
Before going into depth to explain another particular reason why languages have been dying in the past and still die today, it is important to mention the common misconception that most people have about the reasons of language death. Even though the linguists and academicians, as mentioned above, are alarmed by the direness of this phenomenon, the wider public, especially the speakers of dominant languages, think that the reason why languages die can be explained by the idea of social Darwinism. Certain languages die while other languages spread more and have more speakers every day. The social Darwinist idea argues that the triumphant languages have more expressive power than the ones that die, so the dominant languages naturally replace the ones with the lesser power of expression and capacity. Thus, language death is seen as a perfectly natural process in which the more complex and richer language wins over the lesser one. This idea is important to note, especially because today most people still assume a correlation between the expressive capacity and spread and survival of a language (Dorian, 1998). The wider public is unaware of the fact that dominant languages such as English, Chinese or Spanish do not have to be the most complex and expressive languages. Indeed, if English were the only language within the human reach, for example, then humans would be missing out a lot of information and knowledge regarding the human intellect, history and cognitive ability (Hale, 1998). There are, for instance, languages with more than twenty different past tenses unlike any other dominant language, and these languages have a much greater expressive power regarding past events and depictions. Similar examples can be given in abundance. The wrong assumption that dominant languages are more complex and richer than other languages definitely has a negative impact on the minority and indigenous languages, as people regard them as weak languages that are doomed to disappear. In fact, most of these languages embody a great deal of expressive power, syntax, grammatical structures and rich vocabulary. Therefore, language death is not merely the product of a natural competition among languages where the winner is also the most well-adapted and competent language.
Though social Darwinism is not, despite common belief, among the reasons of language death, one of the most important reasons of this phenomenon is the level of prestige attributed to a language. Importantly, the prestige that is attributed to a language has led to the death of many languages in the past, both distant and recent, and is still one of the main reasons of language disappearance today. This is why, in my opinion, it is worthwhile to touch upon the prestige attribution of a language and its connection to the issue of language death more than the others.
The level of prestige attributed to a language is a very important topic regarding the causes of language death and should not be dismissed (Dorian, 1998). The prestige attributed to a language is usually closely associated with the social status of its speakers (Dorian, 1998). Therefore, the language of people who have significant power and high prestige in the society will also benefit from the same power and prestige. In the situation where people who speak a language have little power and low prestige, their language is unlikely to be well thought of (Dorian, 1998). With this idea, it is possible to argue that the prestige attributed to a language rarely has anything to do with the grammatical structures and complexities of the language, just like manifested in the idea of social Darwinism. Thus, the idea that a language’s prestige is an inherent attribute is illusory (Hagège, 2009). If a language’s prestige were dependent on the vocabulary, grammatical structures, phonology or syntax of that language, then today some other languages would have to be regarded as more prestigious than most dominant languages, such as English. Thus, attributing prestige to a language is not related to the structure and complexity of the language itself – it is a matter of its speakers’ prestige and their place in the social hierarchy.
Some languages become so exclusively associated with low prestige people and their socially disapproved identities that the natural speakers of the language prefer to distance themselves from it and start speaking some other language (Dorian, 1998). The power of this low level of prestige is quite significant, as it can often cause parents to make a conscious or unconscious decision to teach their children a language of high prestige rather than their own low prestige language. In the case of the Lakota language of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, for instance, the older generation of the community did not transmit their ancestral language, Lakota, to their children, and today the language faces the threat of extinction, because the speakers of Lakota are getting older, and there are not many people who speak the language other than the older generation (Gahagan, 2010). The younger generations in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, on the other hand, are speaking English instead of their native language, and for them speaking Lakota is something to be ashamed of as they see it as a language of low status (Gahagan, 2010).
The idea that the prestige of a language originates from the prestige of its speakers was manifested with the arrival of Spaniards in the Americas and their encounter with the native cultures and languages in the continent. This encounter brought about quite drastic changes in the prestige of two major New World languages that were spoken by the Aztec empire in North America and by the Inca empire in South America: Nahuatl and Quechua (Dorian, 1998). The Aztecs and Incas held great power and prestige before the arrival of the Spaniards in their region, and the prestige that the empires had did transfer to the languages that they speak. However, when the Spaniards came to the New World, their old European culture and language took over the indigenous languages and culture. In a very short period of time, the native empires were brought down by the ever-expanding Spanish power during that period, which in turn caused a decline in the number of people who speak the languages of Nahuatl and Quechua and made them socially subordinate languages (Dorian, 1998). Historical documents show that some of the native people in the New World even believed the Europeans to be Gods; thus, they most certainly viewed the Europeans of higher social ranking and more powerful than themselves. This prestige attribution was eventually transmitted to the European language and culture, and a language shift took place from Nahuatl and Quechua to Spanish. Thus, such a shift in the social standing of these two once powerful and prestigious indigenous languages of the New World stemmed from the loss of power and prestige that the speakers of these languages had to endure.
Like the indigenous languages of the Aztec and Inca empires, the decline of Irish and Scottish languages can also be linked to the prestige attribution of a language. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, although these two languages were closely associated with the popular culture, folklore and traditions of their speakers, they were hardly used for academic purposes, by people, institutions or literary works (Hagège, 2009). This decline in the usage and prestige of Irish and Scottish was followed by another negative impact as the Industrial Revolution, with English as its primary language, started showing its effects in Europe of the eighteenth century. The lowest point for these languages came about when Ireland began suffering from the infamous famine of the mid-nineteenth century. These calamities damaged not only the economy of the country, but also hurt the social well being of the people. As stated before, the prestige of a language is that of its speakers, which is based on economic, political and social factors that they live in (Hagège, 2009). The destitute condition of Ireland and of the Irish community in turn caused a further decline in the prestige of the Irish and Scottish languages and cultures, and such a severe decline in the prestige of these languages led to a significant decrease in the number of their speakers.
While noting the experience of the speakers of low prestige languages, it is also important to mention the role of the speakers of languages with high social standing and prestige. As the people of the Aztec and Inca empires gave up their native languages and started speaking the language of the rising European power in the New World, Europeans carried what some scholars call “the ideology of contempt” (Dorian, 1998). Europeans looked down on the subordinate languages of the indigenous communities, as they wrongly assumed that the primitive means of technology of these communities used was also a reflection of the primitiveness of their understanding, culture and language. Thus, Europeans too assumed a correlation between the level of prestige that a language holds and its complexity (Dorian, 1998).
In a way, this “ideology of contempt” is a similar idea to that of social Darwinism as explained earlier. It is possible to argue that the social Darwinism of today might be the continuation of this ideology of contempt. Many centuries ago, the Europeans wrongly assumed that the languages of the indigenous communities were condemned to die, as they were not as complex and rich as the European languages. Likewise, the idea of social Darwinism argues that dominant languages naturally take over the minority languages, because their greater number of speakers means that they have more expressive power. Thus, this illusory correlation, which seems to be a common misconception of the dominant language speakers, has its roots in the past and that needs to be addressed.
In my opinion, the ideology of contempt still plays a major role in why dominant language speakers today are usually indifferent to the loss of minority languages. It is quite difficult for dominant language speakers to imagine themselves in the shoes of minority language speakers – that is, they have difficulty with understanding what losing a language means for the speakers of minority languages (Dorian, 1998). It is, indeed, unimaginable that dominant languages such as English, Chinese or Spanish will face the threats that Lakota, Nahuatl or Quechua faced in the past and have been facing today. This is why it is very difficult for dominant language speakers to empathize with the loss of the minority language speakers (Grenoble and Whaley, 1998). Such indifference due to the inability to empathize with people who lose their language is often exacerbated by the ideology of contempt – that is, these languages are not worth surviving, as they are not as advanced and complex as dominant languages. So, it gets even harder to get the wider public care about the loss of indigenous and minority languages, mainly because they are both indifferent and contemptuous of such languages.
Among other reasons of language death, the prestige attribution of a language, how this prestige leads to language endangerment and how minority and dominant language speakers form opinions about the issue of prestige are significant issues regarding language death. Therefore, it is important to think about ways to approach this issue in order to be able to prevent language death at least to a certain extent. There is a need for more research on the prestige attribution of languages, because it is one of the main reasons why languages still die today and will continue to die in the future. It is important to look into the following questions: Is it possible to increase the prestige attributed to a language in order to save it? Since the prestige of a language is largely dependent on the prestige of its speakers, should anything be done regarding communities that speak languages that are endangered due to the low prestige of their language? Would making such a community more visible and well known in the society help in saving their language? How can this be done? These are questions that we should think about to see whether the prestige attribution of a language can be addressed in order to save that language.
References
Dorian, N. C. (1998) Western Language Ideologies and Small-Language Prospects. In
L.A. Grenoble & L.J. Whaley (Eds.), Endangered Languages: Current Issues and
Future Prospects (pp. 3-21). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gahagan, K. (2010). Vanishing Words, Vanishing World: Generation gap strains
efforts to save Lakota Language. Rapid City Journal. Retrieved from http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/news/article_3986038e-474f-11df-be8c-001cc4c03286.html.
Grenoble, L. A. & Whaley, L. J. (1998). Endangered Languages: Current Issues
and Future Prospects. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hagège, C. (2009). On the Death and Life of Languages. (J. Glodding, Trans.). New
Haven: Yale University Press.
Hale, K. L. (1998) On Endangered Languages and the Importance of Linguistic
Diversity. In L.A. Grenoble & L.J. Whaley (Eds.), Endangered Languages: Current Issues and Future Prospects (pp. 192-216). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tsunoda, T. (2006). Language Endangerment and Language Revitalization: An
Introduction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Monday, June 7, 2010
My PWR paper about language death and why we should care
Before posting my final paper for the introsem, I wanted to share my PWR paper here. I took PWR 1: World in Crisis? Current Feature Article Writing this quarter, and I wrote my TIC and RBA on the problem of language death. Here is my RBA. I hope you enjoy reading it, and I would love to have some feedback!
REGRETTING THE LOSS
What Do Languages Have to Tell Us?
Pretty Bird, Kimimila and Lakota
“I think it’s nice, it’s a beautiful language,” Biridjianna Pretty Bird said, without raising her head from the little puddle she had been looking at for a long time, as if she were ashamed. Sitting on the pavement, the 14-year-old girl kept rolling the stones under her pink, worn-out sneakers, and mumbled her favorite word in Lakota, her native language. “Kimimila,” she said, which means butterfly. She was sweating (Gahagan).
As Kayla Gahagan narrates in her article called “Vanishing Words, Vanishing World: Generation gap strains efforts to save Lakota language,” for Pretty Bird, life at home, the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, has never been easy. Despite her love for her native language, her friends do not share the enthusiasm for learning the language of their ancestors, and feel embarrassed about being associated with Lakota. They see the ability to speak the language as a sign of being uneducated and inferior, and thus have no interest in learning it. Only Pretty Bird’s grandparents and older members of the community, can speak Lakota fluently, but they struggle with the idea of how to teach the language to their grandchildren. The language is not being passed down (Gahagan).
Most importantly, the speakers of the language are afraid of speaking it. Many of them still remember, in horror, the Catholic boarding schools where they were robbed of practicing their religion and speaking their language. They recall the pain of being forbidden to speak their mother tongue, and how this pain brought them to the resolution never to let their children suffer from the same burden of wishing to speak Lakota instead of a dominant language. “It was a violent, horrible era,” said Charles Spotted Thunder, a 90-year-old elder of the reservation, his eyes fixed on the wooden floor, shaking his head, as if to dispel the bad memories of the past years (Gahagan).
Today, around 20,000 people live in Pretty Bird’s reservation, and only five percent of the population, most of whom are the elderly, has the ability to speak the language fluently – the single key to the preservation of Lakota. They still feel “a paralyzing fear to speak the language” (Gahagan). Lakota is slipping away from their fingertips, a little bit more every day.
Do We Regret?
People of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation lament the loss, not only of their mother tongue but also of their cultural inheritance. The people are losing their connection to their past, ancestors and history, but are unable to do anything about it, and “the regret is hard to swallow” (Gahagan).
They may regret the loss, but do we regret the impending loss of the Lakota language? Does it mean anything to us or change anything in our lives? Can we do anything to save the language? Why should we be concerned? The question is a discomforting one, especially for us as speakers of the English language – a language with such great dominance that is estimated to have 450 million speakers all around the world, and that will continue to spread even faster in the near future. It is, indeed very difficult for us, and for most other people, to imagine English being in the situation of Lakota – on the verge of disappearance. English, like other dominant languages such as Spanish, Chinese or Arabic, is highly unlikely to wind up in such a tragic story of abandonment and disappearance. The idea that these languages may disappear is unimaginable, and that is exactly what makes the question troubling for us. In her research about “Western language ideologies and small-language prospects,” Nancy C. Dorian, a renowned anthropologist in Bryn Mawr College, testifies to the challenge we are faced with, and notes that:
The phenomenon of ancestral-language abandonment is worth looking at, then, precisely because a good many people, especially those who speak unthreatened languages, are likely to have trouble imagining that they themselves could ever be brought to the point of giving up on their own ancestral language and encouraging their children to use some other language instead. (3)
The gap between speakers of minority languages and us, as Dorian puts it, creates our distant and detached attitude towards the issue of language abandonment and disappearance. We read Pretty Bird’s story, and may feel sorry about her loss. “It’s too bad,” we might say, but we probably do not think it is any of our concern, because, as Dorian suggests, it is almost inconceivable for us to put ourselves in Pretty Bird’s shoes when our reality is that all over the world, half a billion people speak our language. In her research, Dorian goes on to argue that we, the speakers of dominant languages, cannot recognize any personal stake in the matter (3). This distance makes us fail to notice the consequences of language disappearance, and what all languages, from Lakota to English, Tlingit to Chinese, mean to us, and why we should be regretting the loss of every language.
The question only becomes more discomforting in light of a recent study by Kenneth L. Hale, a renowned linguistics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a dedicated activist on behalf of endangered languages. The study shows that Lakota is far from being the only language in peril: It is predicted that during the 21st century, 3,000 of the existing 6,000 languages will disappear, and another 2,400 will come near to extinction (Hale 192). Thus, in less than 90 years, 90 percent of the world’s languages will be endangered, and as Lenore A. Grenoble and Lindsay J. Whaley, two prominent linguists, note, “one might expect it to be a topic of keen interest for anyone concerned with the nature of social interaction in the not so distant future” (8). What happens to those languages today will have irreversible and drastic global consequences in the future (Dorian 3). As Tasaku Tsunoda, a renowned linguist, points out, “when a language is lost, it is lost,” and there is no turning back (162).
Why Regret the Loss?
Grenoble and Whaley emphasize this sense of urgency by stating that “the rapid loss of languages promises to reweave the social fabric of the world completely” (8). But, how exactly do languages, dominant or minority, “reweave the social fabric of the world” (8)? Other than the shock at the sheer number of languages on their way to extinction, is there anything about languages that should make us regret the loss of each and every one of them? In one of his studies, called “On Endangered Languages and the Importance of Linguistic Diversity,” Hale explains why “language loss is a serious matter,” not only for the speakers of the lost language but for everyone who cares about human intellect (155). He argues that with every language that is lost, “the enabling condition for the maximal production of intellectual wealth of all kinds and in all fields,” that is, linguistic and cultural diversity, gradually withers away (Hale 193). To illustrate how even minority languages that most of us have never heard of encompass a miraculous display of human intellect and creation, Hale analyzes the linguistic structure of a local language, Damin – “the treasure of a small group of Australian Aboriginal people” (205). The ancestors of this small group of people invented the Damin language many centuries ago. What makes the language so interesting and indicative of the unlimited human intellect is that “it is constructed in such a way that, in principle, it can be learned in one day” (Hale 207). Damin uses abstract names for “logically cohesive families of concepts” (Hale 207). Difficult enough for us to imagine, the language uses “a small inventory (less than 200 items) to accommodate the same concepts as does the much larger ordinary vocabulary of unknown size” (Hale 207). Yet, breathtaking enough for Hale, by using abstract names Damin can be used to express any idea just as any other language:
Suppose a Damin speaker saw a sandpiper in flight. “Sandpiper” was not in Damin’s lexicon. But the watcher could evoke the bird by saying ngaajpu wiiwi-n wuujpu: literally, “person-burning creature.” The phrase harks back to a creation story in which Sandpiper starts a lethal fire – a familiar tale to all speakers of Damin. Likewise an ax was “honey-affecting wood:” a wooden object used to obtain wild honey. (Abley 10)
Who would have thought that the human intellect is, in fact, capable of inventing a language that can be learned in one day, yet still functions like languages that we spend years to learn? Without minority languages like Damin, we could miss out on such amazing phenomena. Although most of us may assume a correlation between a language’s spread and its capacity, such a phenomenon, as Hale points out, is not observed in major languages such as English: “If English were the only language available as a basis for the study of general human competence, we would miss a great amount” (155). After his analysis of the Damin language, Hale then asks: “How can a lexicon be small enough to learn in one day and, at the same time, be rich enough to express all ideas? A moment’s reflection on this question can only inspire admiration, in my judgment” (207).
We, as thinking people in a modern society, are often amazed by and in constant search of the intellectual wealth and work that surround us in today’s world. We read innumerable books, skim through newspapers and magazines whenever we have a minute to spare, and go to movies and exhibitions, because we strive to learn more about everything that the human intellect has to offer. We greatly value intellectual wealth, but we fail to recognize languages as one of the precious resources and treasures of knowledge. In fact, languages are no less valuable than the other sources of intellectual wealth that we surround ourselves with, and may even be the most precious of all. The last fluent speaker of Damin, and of many other unique languages, died several years ago, taking “an intellectual treasure of enormous worth” out of our reach (Hale 211).
While Hale frames the gravity of language loss in terms of intellectual wealth, Tasaku Tsunoda, a renowned researcher and linguistics professor at University of Tokyo, urges us to look at the issue from a different angle. To him, languages embody valuable information regarding the human condition and even hold solutions to the problems that we have been endeavoring to address. Tsunoda argues that “a given language represents the people’s beliefs, values, world-view, and ways of comprehending, understanding or perceiving the world” (149). As Tsunoda quotes his colleague, Andrew Pawley, most languages, regardless of their scope and spread, are shaped by “generations of experience” and “countless intelligences applied to problems of human condition” (qtd. in Tsunoda 149). In this sense, our language reflects the way we cope with our problems and experience our lives, and the same is true for every other language. One of the best examples in support of this argument is a group of localized African languages. African cultures and languages tend to encompass unique traditions and wealth of knowledge on topics such as various agricultural practices. Since agriculture and farming constitute an important part of the life in many parts of the continent, the people of these cultures and languages have a wider understanding of these issues than people of other cultures (Dhewa). Their remarkable knowledge of drought-resistant crop varieties, for instance, which still remains largely unknown to us today, is “embedded in the diverse local languages and cultures found in Africa” (Dhewa). In order to retain the wealth of knowledge in agriculture, these local languages have certain terms and expressions that many languages, such as English, do not possess in their lexicons. The knowledge embedded in these languages has recently been found to be “crucial in helping small farmers across the continent adapt to climate change” (Dhewa). The source indicates that the loss of these local African languages would take away a wealth of vast knowledge, which may, in fact, provide a solution to a major global problem such as climate change, which concern not only speakers of African languages, but all of us.
Tsunoda further strengthens his argument that languages encompass unique knowledge and experience by taking note of the Jaru language, the language of the Halls Creek people in Western Australia. These people have passed on their culture and extensive knowledge of stonework from one generation to the next through long-standing oral traditions, so this information has remained largely unwritten. Over years, the Jaru expertise in stonework became an integrated part of their culture and language. Tsunoda recounts that a group of English-speaking archeologists, having noticed this expertise, went to Western Australia with a linguist to work with Jaru-speaking people and to learn about the production of different stone tools:
They were asking the Jaru teachers for Jaru words to refer to the materials, to the various stages of the production, to particular techniques, even to the flakes that came off and were discarded. After the research was completed, the archeologists remarked that, by recording these Jaru terms, they obtained (i) far more information than could be obtained by means of English and (ii) the kind of information that could not have been obtained through English. (Tsunoda 149)
What the English-speaking archeologists were looking for, to our surprise, was embedded in the intricacies of the Jaru language.
Besides Hale’s and Tsunoda’s analytic and research-based arguments, Beth Ann Fennelly, a professor of English at Knox College in Illinois, presents a more poetic and aesthetic reason as to why we should regret the loss of languages. In her article called “Fruits We’ll Never Taste,” she suggests that we should regret the language loss because language diversity is important for the sake of diversity, and there is no need for any other reason. This diversity, according to Fennelly, embodies a sense of “fecundity, abundance, and escape hatch for our imaginations.“ She even goes on to dismiss the analytical arguments such as those Hale and Tsunoda present, and suggests that we in fact have ”a need for needless diversity” (Fennelly). The language loss leaves behind a world with less flavor, less vitality, less color; and every language that is lost takes away more poems, more stories, more letters, more memories from what we – all humans – have accumulated and inherited from our ancestors over centuries (Fennelly). The beauty of languages embeds itself in the countless facets that they have to offer to us.
Poet Wendell Berry urges us to care for “the unseeable animal,” even if it means we never see it. So, I would argue, must we care for the untastable vegetable, the unhearable language, which add their link, as we add ours, to nature’s still-unfolding tale. They deepen nature’s mystery even as they provide clues to help us comprehend that mystery. (Fennelly)
Fennelly concludes that it is truly impossible to know every language that exists in the world, yet all languages enrich our world and human life not only because they serve a purpose, “but also because they are.”
What Can We Do?
Hale, Tsunoda and Fennelly want to make us think about Pretty Bird’s story. They ask us, again, to think more carefully this time. They want us to realize that when Lakota disappears, not only Pretty Bird, but also we, all of us, will lose irreplaceable assets. We have to regret the loss, according to Hale, because with every language slipping away from human reach, we lose a great wealth of unique human intellect. Tsunoda, on the other hand, reminds us that every language embodies an extraordinary amount of knowledge – knowledge that we cannot afford to lose and that may not come back to our reach again once a language is lost. Finally, Fennelly offers a whole new perspective to us: With every language disappearing, the world is losing another flavor, another color. The complex beauty of the world, the diversity that it holds and the unaccountability of our choices fade away (Fennelly).
Let us say then that we do begin to regret the loss of languages. We regret what we are missing out on: human intellect, a treasure of knowledge, and a world of complexity and diversity. Even then, at the end of the day, another question remains to be answered: Even if we choose to regret the loss of languages, will regretting help to change anything? Is it going to get any better if we regret? Or is regretting only the first step of a struggle?
It is troubling to think about whether someday we will be able to save Lakota, Damin, Jaru and many other languages that have already disappeared, or are on the verge of vanishing. Is it really possible for us to save these languages without speaking them ourselves? Even though we may genuinely regret the loss of Lakota, Damin or Jaru, the first step in the struggle to save a language and help the speakers of minority languages seems to be the ability to speak it and be an inextricable part of that language. As David Crystal, a prominent professor of linguistics and author, known for his research about language death, points out in his book called Language Death, “many people would accept that there is little outsiders can or should do” (107). Regretting the loss of minority languages, then, does not seem to help us save them. We think that it is Pretty Bird’s and her community’s task to save the Lakota language, and the only thing we, as “others,” could do is to hear their stories now and then, and regret the loss of the language, of human intellect, of diversity, of the irreplaceable wealth of knowledge – and regret them all with nothing in return.
If reviving a disappearing language is in the hands of its speakers and nobody else, then why cannot Pretty Bird and her community in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation save their own language Lakota? Even though they know that their language is dying, they are unable to save it, because they are either haunted by the memories of Catholic boarding schools where they were punished for speaking Lakota, or they do not know how to save their language. They are simply afraid and distraught.
Looking back at a few examples, it is easy to recognize that the speakers of Lakota are not alone: most minority language speakers are afraid to speak and try to save their own language “after several hundred years of cultural domination” (Crystal 126). Like the speakers of Lakota, minority language speakers may still be haunted by their memories of being forced to speak another language instead of their mother tongue. Like the speakers of Nahuatl, Aztec and Quechua, they may still remember the stories of how their ancestors were forced to integrate themselves into the culture and language of the colonial powers that invaded their land (Tsunoda 4). Or, like the speakers of Scottish Gaelic, Welsh and Irish, they may still feel forced to speak English or another dominant language (Tsunoda 4). Even though the speakers of these minority languages do want to speak their own language and strengthen ties to their culture, such cultural domination, over time, crushes their belief in their own language. They feel that their language is not worth continuing with because other languages will eventually suppress it (Crystal 111). Thus, “the decision to abandon one’s own language always derives from a change in the self-esteem of the speech community” (Crystal 111). Without hope and belief in their own language, the communities of minority language speakers do not know where to start and how to bring back a language that has been subdued by dominant languages and cultures for many years:
Within the community, the size of the task can be enough to put people off. They know they don’t know enough. They know they haven’t the resources. They therefore delay making decisions, or pick at the problem, instead of approaching it systematically. They look for quick returns, and then, when they find these do not work, they are put off once again. (Crystal 126)
There is, then, something we can do for the speakers of minority languages. Even though we do not speak the language that we would like to save, there is still something very crucial for us to do: restore the self-confidence, hope and belief of minority language speakers in their language, provide them with necessary resources, help them release the burden of the memories of cultural domination and encourage them to take action for their own language. We need to make them realize their power and potential in reviving and saving their own language. Our “positive support for an indigenous language can give its speakers a feeling of worth, and boost their efforts to maintain it” (Crystal 119). Ultimately, it is the minority language speakers’ task to save their language, as “language reversal can’t be done to you [speakers of minority languages] or for you by others” (N. M. Dauenhauer and R. Dauenhauer 97). However, we have to take an active role in starting the process and assure them that their language is worth fighting for, because it is a unique embodiment of human intellect, knowledge and complexity as well as that of their heritage, identity and culture. Even though we cannot be responsible for the transmission of the language, we “can do much to encourage positive attitudes towards it” (Tsunoda 186). Maybe we cannot save their language for them, but we can, and we should, annihilate “linguistic despair“ and act as a catalyst for saving the language (Crystal 111).
How can we help a minority language community increase its confidence and make them believe in the future of their own language? It sounds like a very challenging and intimidating task to rebuild such confidence after many years of cultural domination, but as David Crystal points out, “arising out of the experience of working with several communities, linguists have developed a sense of which issues can be persuasive” (111). First, we need to believe, and make people like us believe in the worth of each and every language. To be able to do this, we have to regret the loss of minority languages and remember what we are missing out on when Lakota, Damin or Jaru dies away. As “knowledgeable outsiders,” we need to fulfill the role of “information-disseminator and consciousness-raiser, helping to make a wider public aware of the looming threats of to a local language survival” and the wealth, though often undiscovered, every language embodies (Dorian 21). We need to help the presence of the minority languages and their speakers felt within the wider community through cultural celebrations, festivals, awareness-raising educational programs on radio or television, or, perhaps a column in a daily newspaper (Crystal 130). These things are exactly what we do for any other crisis – for people dying from AIDS, for climate change, for world hunger. There is “no essential difference in educational programmes designed to remove ignorance about, say, water-management or pest-control, and awareness-raising designed to remove ignorance about language” (Crystal 107). As more and more people hear about what each language is worth to all of us and the dangers minority languages face, the minority language speakers will hold on to their own language – they will speak it with confidence and teach it to their children without fear but with pride.
As utopian as they may sound, cultural celebrations, public festivals, writings and educational programs did help in the past, and are likely to help in our future endeavors. The revival of the Gaelic language in Irish communities was fired by famous poems and writings that praised the language and the Irish culture (Dorian 44). In Scotland, people organized festivals called “the Mod festivals” to raise awareness about Gaelic (Crystal 113). Today, the Gaelic language has been saved and is spoken by numerous Scottish and Irish communities. Likewise, Sami people have saved their language, Sami. These people live in a territory divided by Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, and thus, over may years the Sami language has been heavily influenced by Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish and Russian (Tsunoda 25). A couple of decades ago, it was an endangered language, but through the efforts of knowledgeable outsiders, today there are websites, film festivals and cultural celebrations for the Sami culture and language. Thus, “in many villages, the Sami ethnic consciousness has recently been revitalized, so that people are eager to learn the Sami language” (Tsunoda 25). As Trond Trosterud, a linguist at University of Helsinki, points out in the following anecdote, all of these endeavors gave the speakers of Sami great optimism and confidence which was lacking a decade ago:
Attending a meeting of Sami and Norwegian officials, one of the Sámi participants was asked: do you need an interpreter? No, she answered, I don’t. But I will give my talk in Sami, so it might be that you will need one. (Crystal 126)
Such belief and confidence in speaking the Sami language eventually revived the language that was once on the verge of disappearing.
Time to Take Action
Now, we know what we are missing out on with every language dying away. Languages create a world of complexity, embody human intellect and knowledge, and thus they are all too precious to lose. Initially, it may seem like regretting the loss of such treasures is not enough to save them simply because we do not speak those languages and so do not have the power to maintain them. It is true that we cannot save a language for its speakers, but we can surely inform and encourage them to do so, and restore their belief and hope in their language, which they may have lost a long time ago.
Nevertheless, we could question whether all minority language speaking communities will gain the optimism and confidence that Gaelic speaking communities and Sami people did in their language. “There is never, of course, a guarantee that the next community will be swayed” by cultural festivals, celebrations and other awareness-raising activities (Crystal 111). It may never be possible to make a community believe in their power and encourage them to save their language. The language may vanish, and we may not be able to do anything. But, it is still worth trying – and it will always be. We could either believe that, after all, regretting the loss may not help and watch 90 percent of the world’s languages die away in less than 90 years – or, we could strive for helping other minority languages and their speakers succeed in their struggle and create new stories of success like Sami and Gaelic did.
REGRETTING THE LOSS
What Do Languages Have to Tell Us?
Pretty Bird, Kimimila and Lakota
“I think it’s nice, it’s a beautiful language,” Biridjianna Pretty Bird said, without raising her head from the little puddle she had been looking at for a long time, as if she were ashamed. Sitting on the pavement, the 14-year-old girl kept rolling the stones under her pink, worn-out sneakers, and mumbled her favorite word in Lakota, her native language. “Kimimila,” she said, which means butterfly. She was sweating (Gahagan).
As Kayla Gahagan narrates in her article called “Vanishing Words, Vanishing World: Generation gap strains efforts to save Lakota language,” for Pretty Bird, life at home, the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, has never been easy. Despite her love for her native language, her friends do not share the enthusiasm for learning the language of their ancestors, and feel embarrassed about being associated with Lakota. They see the ability to speak the language as a sign of being uneducated and inferior, and thus have no interest in learning it. Only Pretty Bird’s grandparents and older members of the community, can speak Lakota fluently, but they struggle with the idea of how to teach the language to their grandchildren. The language is not being passed down (Gahagan).
Most importantly, the speakers of the language are afraid of speaking it. Many of them still remember, in horror, the Catholic boarding schools where they were robbed of practicing their religion and speaking their language. They recall the pain of being forbidden to speak their mother tongue, and how this pain brought them to the resolution never to let their children suffer from the same burden of wishing to speak Lakota instead of a dominant language. “It was a violent, horrible era,” said Charles Spotted Thunder, a 90-year-old elder of the reservation, his eyes fixed on the wooden floor, shaking his head, as if to dispel the bad memories of the past years (Gahagan).
Today, around 20,000 people live in Pretty Bird’s reservation, and only five percent of the population, most of whom are the elderly, has the ability to speak the language fluently – the single key to the preservation of Lakota. They still feel “a paralyzing fear to speak the language” (Gahagan). Lakota is slipping away from their fingertips, a little bit more every day.
Do We Regret?
People of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation lament the loss, not only of their mother tongue but also of their cultural inheritance. The people are losing their connection to their past, ancestors and history, but are unable to do anything about it, and “the regret is hard to swallow” (Gahagan).
They may regret the loss, but do we regret the impending loss of the Lakota language? Does it mean anything to us or change anything in our lives? Can we do anything to save the language? Why should we be concerned? The question is a discomforting one, especially for us as speakers of the English language – a language with such great dominance that is estimated to have 450 million speakers all around the world, and that will continue to spread even faster in the near future. It is, indeed very difficult for us, and for most other people, to imagine English being in the situation of Lakota – on the verge of disappearance. English, like other dominant languages such as Spanish, Chinese or Arabic, is highly unlikely to wind up in such a tragic story of abandonment and disappearance. The idea that these languages may disappear is unimaginable, and that is exactly what makes the question troubling for us. In her research about “Western language ideologies and small-language prospects,” Nancy C. Dorian, a renowned anthropologist in Bryn Mawr College, testifies to the challenge we are faced with, and notes that:
The phenomenon of ancestral-language abandonment is worth looking at, then, precisely because a good many people, especially those who speak unthreatened languages, are likely to have trouble imagining that they themselves could ever be brought to the point of giving up on their own ancestral language and encouraging their children to use some other language instead. (3)
The gap between speakers of minority languages and us, as Dorian puts it, creates our distant and detached attitude towards the issue of language abandonment and disappearance. We read Pretty Bird’s story, and may feel sorry about her loss. “It’s too bad,” we might say, but we probably do not think it is any of our concern, because, as Dorian suggests, it is almost inconceivable for us to put ourselves in Pretty Bird’s shoes when our reality is that all over the world, half a billion people speak our language. In her research, Dorian goes on to argue that we, the speakers of dominant languages, cannot recognize any personal stake in the matter (3). This distance makes us fail to notice the consequences of language disappearance, and what all languages, from Lakota to English, Tlingit to Chinese, mean to us, and why we should be regretting the loss of every language.
The question only becomes more discomforting in light of a recent study by Kenneth L. Hale, a renowned linguistics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a dedicated activist on behalf of endangered languages. The study shows that Lakota is far from being the only language in peril: It is predicted that during the 21st century, 3,000 of the existing 6,000 languages will disappear, and another 2,400 will come near to extinction (Hale 192). Thus, in less than 90 years, 90 percent of the world’s languages will be endangered, and as Lenore A. Grenoble and Lindsay J. Whaley, two prominent linguists, note, “one might expect it to be a topic of keen interest for anyone concerned with the nature of social interaction in the not so distant future” (8). What happens to those languages today will have irreversible and drastic global consequences in the future (Dorian 3). As Tasaku Tsunoda, a renowned linguist, points out, “when a language is lost, it is lost,” and there is no turning back (162).
Why Regret the Loss?
Grenoble and Whaley emphasize this sense of urgency by stating that “the rapid loss of languages promises to reweave the social fabric of the world completely” (8). But, how exactly do languages, dominant or minority, “reweave the social fabric of the world” (8)? Other than the shock at the sheer number of languages on their way to extinction, is there anything about languages that should make us regret the loss of each and every one of them? In one of his studies, called “On Endangered Languages and the Importance of Linguistic Diversity,” Hale explains why “language loss is a serious matter,” not only for the speakers of the lost language but for everyone who cares about human intellect (155). He argues that with every language that is lost, “the enabling condition for the maximal production of intellectual wealth of all kinds and in all fields,” that is, linguistic and cultural diversity, gradually withers away (Hale 193). To illustrate how even minority languages that most of us have never heard of encompass a miraculous display of human intellect and creation, Hale analyzes the linguistic structure of a local language, Damin – “the treasure of a small group of Australian Aboriginal people” (205). The ancestors of this small group of people invented the Damin language many centuries ago. What makes the language so interesting and indicative of the unlimited human intellect is that “it is constructed in such a way that, in principle, it can be learned in one day” (Hale 207). Damin uses abstract names for “logically cohesive families of concepts” (Hale 207). Difficult enough for us to imagine, the language uses “a small inventory (less than 200 items) to accommodate the same concepts as does the much larger ordinary vocabulary of unknown size” (Hale 207). Yet, breathtaking enough for Hale, by using abstract names Damin can be used to express any idea just as any other language:
Suppose a Damin speaker saw a sandpiper in flight. “Sandpiper” was not in Damin’s lexicon. But the watcher could evoke the bird by saying ngaajpu wiiwi-n wuujpu: literally, “person-burning creature.” The phrase harks back to a creation story in which Sandpiper starts a lethal fire – a familiar tale to all speakers of Damin. Likewise an ax was “honey-affecting wood:” a wooden object used to obtain wild honey. (Abley 10)
Who would have thought that the human intellect is, in fact, capable of inventing a language that can be learned in one day, yet still functions like languages that we spend years to learn? Without minority languages like Damin, we could miss out on such amazing phenomena. Although most of us may assume a correlation between a language’s spread and its capacity, such a phenomenon, as Hale points out, is not observed in major languages such as English: “If English were the only language available as a basis for the study of general human competence, we would miss a great amount” (155). After his analysis of the Damin language, Hale then asks: “How can a lexicon be small enough to learn in one day and, at the same time, be rich enough to express all ideas? A moment’s reflection on this question can only inspire admiration, in my judgment” (207).
We, as thinking people in a modern society, are often amazed by and in constant search of the intellectual wealth and work that surround us in today’s world. We read innumerable books, skim through newspapers and magazines whenever we have a minute to spare, and go to movies and exhibitions, because we strive to learn more about everything that the human intellect has to offer. We greatly value intellectual wealth, but we fail to recognize languages as one of the precious resources and treasures of knowledge. In fact, languages are no less valuable than the other sources of intellectual wealth that we surround ourselves with, and may even be the most precious of all. The last fluent speaker of Damin, and of many other unique languages, died several years ago, taking “an intellectual treasure of enormous worth” out of our reach (Hale 211).
While Hale frames the gravity of language loss in terms of intellectual wealth, Tasaku Tsunoda, a renowned researcher and linguistics professor at University of Tokyo, urges us to look at the issue from a different angle. To him, languages embody valuable information regarding the human condition and even hold solutions to the problems that we have been endeavoring to address. Tsunoda argues that “a given language represents the people’s beliefs, values, world-view, and ways of comprehending, understanding or perceiving the world” (149). As Tsunoda quotes his colleague, Andrew Pawley, most languages, regardless of their scope and spread, are shaped by “generations of experience” and “countless intelligences applied to problems of human condition” (qtd. in Tsunoda 149). In this sense, our language reflects the way we cope with our problems and experience our lives, and the same is true for every other language. One of the best examples in support of this argument is a group of localized African languages. African cultures and languages tend to encompass unique traditions and wealth of knowledge on topics such as various agricultural practices. Since agriculture and farming constitute an important part of the life in many parts of the continent, the people of these cultures and languages have a wider understanding of these issues than people of other cultures (Dhewa). Their remarkable knowledge of drought-resistant crop varieties, for instance, which still remains largely unknown to us today, is “embedded in the diverse local languages and cultures found in Africa” (Dhewa). In order to retain the wealth of knowledge in agriculture, these local languages have certain terms and expressions that many languages, such as English, do not possess in their lexicons. The knowledge embedded in these languages has recently been found to be “crucial in helping small farmers across the continent adapt to climate change” (Dhewa). The source indicates that the loss of these local African languages would take away a wealth of vast knowledge, which may, in fact, provide a solution to a major global problem such as climate change, which concern not only speakers of African languages, but all of us.
Tsunoda further strengthens his argument that languages encompass unique knowledge and experience by taking note of the Jaru language, the language of the Halls Creek people in Western Australia. These people have passed on their culture and extensive knowledge of stonework from one generation to the next through long-standing oral traditions, so this information has remained largely unwritten. Over years, the Jaru expertise in stonework became an integrated part of their culture and language. Tsunoda recounts that a group of English-speaking archeologists, having noticed this expertise, went to Western Australia with a linguist to work with Jaru-speaking people and to learn about the production of different stone tools:
They were asking the Jaru teachers for Jaru words to refer to the materials, to the various stages of the production, to particular techniques, even to the flakes that came off and were discarded. After the research was completed, the archeologists remarked that, by recording these Jaru terms, they obtained (i) far more information than could be obtained by means of English and (ii) the kind of information that could not have been obtained through English. (Tsunoda 149)
What the English-speaking archeologists were looking for, to our surprise, was embedded in the intricacies of the Jaru language.
Besides Hale’s and Tsunoda’s analytic and research-based arguments, Beth Ann Fennelly, a professor of English at Knox College in Illinois, presents a more poetic and aesthetic reason as to why we should regret the loss of languages. In her article called “Fruits We’ll Never Taste,” she suggests that we should regret the language loss because language diversity is important for the sake of diversity, and there is no need for any other reason. This diversity, according to Fennelly, embodies a sense of “fecundity, abundance, and escape hatch for our imaginations.“ She even goes on to dismiss the analytical arguments such as those Hale and Tsunoda present, and suggests that we in fact have ”a need for needless diversity” (Fennelly). The language loss leaves behind a world with less flavor, less vitality, less color; and every language that is lost takes away more poems, more stories, more letters, more memories from what we – all humans – have accumulated and inherited from our ancestors over centuries (Fennelly). The beauty of languages embeds itself in the countless facets that they have to offer to us.
Poet Wendell Berry urges us to care for “the unseeable animal,” even if it means we never see it. So, I would argue, must we care for the untastable vegetable, the unhearable language, which add their link, as we add ours, to nature’s still-unfolding tale. They deepen nature’s mystery even as they provide clues to help us comprehend that mystery. (Fennelly)
Fennelly concludes that it is truly impossible to know every language that exists in the world, yet all languages enrich our world and human life not only because they serve a purpose, “but also because they are.”
What Can We Do?
Hale, Tsunoda and Fennelly want to make us think about Pretty Bird’s story. They ask us, again, to think more carefully this time. They want us to realize that when Lakota disappears, not only Pretty Bird, but also we, all of us, will lose irreplaceable assets. We have to regret the loss, according to Hale, because with every language slipping away from human reach, we lose a great wealth of unique human intellect. Tsunoda, on the other hand, reminds us that every language embodies an extraordinary amount of knowledge – knowledge that we cannot afford to lose and that may not come back to our reach again once a language is lost. Finally, Fennelly offers a whole new perspective to us: With every language disappearing, the world is losing another flavor, another color. The complex beauty of the world, the diversity that it holds and the unaccountability of our choices fade away (Fennelly).
Let us say then that we do begin to regret the loss of languages. We regret what we are missing out on: human intellect, a treasure of knowledge, and a world of complexity and diversity. Even then, at the end of the day, another question remains to be answered: Even if we choose to regret the loss of languages, will regretting help to change anything? Is it going to get any better if we regret? Or is regretting only the first step of a struggle?
It is troubling to think about whether someday we will be able to save Lakota, Damin, Jaru and many other languages that have already disappeared, or are on the verge of vanishing. Is it really possible for us to save these languages without speaking them ourselves? Even though we may genuinely regret the loss of Lakota, Damin or Jaru, the first step in the struggle to save a language and help the speakers of minority languages seems to be the ability to speak it and be an inextricable part of that language. As David Crystal, a prominent professor of linguistics and author, known for his research about language death, points out in his book called Language Death, “many people would accept that there is little outsiders can or should do” (107). Regretting the loss of minority languages, then, does not seem to help us save them. We think that it is Pretty Bird’s and her community’s task to save the Lakota language, and the only thing we, as “others,” could do is to hear their stories now and then, and regret the loss of the language, of human intellect, of diversity, of the irreplaceable wealth of knowledge – and regret them all with nothing in return.
If reviving a disappearing language is in the hands of its speakers and nobody else, then why cannot Pretty Bird and her community in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation save their own language Lakota? Even though they know that their language is dying, they are unable to save it, because they are either haunted by the memories of Catholic boarding schools where they were punished for speaking Lakota, or they do not know how to save their language. They are simply afraid and distraught.
Looking back at a few examples, it is easy to recognize that the speakers of Lakota are not alone: most minority language speakers are afraid to speak and try to save their own language “after several hundred years of cultural domination” (Crystal 126). Like the speakers of Lakota, minority language speakers may still be haunted by their memories of being forced to speak another language instead of their mother tongue. Like the speakers of Nahuatl, Aztec and Quechua, they may still remember the stories of how their ancestors were forced to integrate themselves into the culture and language of the colonial powers that invaded their land (Tsunoda 4). Or, like the speakers of Scottish Gaelic, Welsh and Irish, they may still feel forced to speak English or another dominant language (Tsunoda 4). Even though the speakers of these minority languages do want to speak their own language and strengthen ties to their culture, such cultural domination, over time, crushes their belief in their own language. They feel that their language is not worth continuing with because other languages will eventually suppress it (Crystal 111). Thus, “the decision to abandon one’s own language always derives from a change in the self-esteem of the speech community” (Crystal 111). Without hope and belief in their own language, the communities of minority language speakers do not know where to start and how to bring back a language that has been subdued by dominant languages and cultures for many years:
Within the community, the size of the task can be enough to put people off. They know they don’t know enough. They know they haven’t the resources. They therefore delay making decisions, or pick at the problem, instead of approaching it systematically. They look for quick returns, and then, when they find these do not work, they are put off once again. (Crystal 126)
There is, then, something we can do for the speakers of minority languages. Even though we do not speak the language that we would like to save, there is still something very crucial for us to do: restore the self-confidence, hope and belief of minority language speakers in their language, provide them with necessary resources, help them release the burden of the memories of cultural domination and encourage them to take action for their own language. We need to make them realize their power and potential in reviving and saving their own language. Our “positive support for an indigenous language can give its speakers a feeling of worth, and boost their efforts to maintain it” (Crystal 119). Ultimately, it is the minority language speakers’ task to save their language, as “language reversal can’t be done to you [speakers of minority languages] or for you by others” (N. M. Dauenhauer and R. Dauenhauer 97). However, we have to take an active role in starting the process and assure them that their language is worth fighting for, because it is a unique embodiment of human intellect, knowledge and complexity as well as that of their heritage, identity and culture. Even though we cannot be responsible for the transmission of the language, we “can do much to encourage positive attitudes towards it” (Tsunoda 186). Maybe we cannot save their language for them, but we can, and we should, annihilate “linguistic despair“ and act as a catalyst for saving the language (Crystal 111).
How can we help a minority language community increase its confidence and make them believe in the future of their own language? It sounds like a very challenging and intimidating task to rebuild such confidence after many years of cultural domination, but as David Crystal points out, “arising out of the experience of working with several communities, linguists have developed a sense of which issues can be persuasive” (111). First, we need to believe, and make people like us believe in the worth of each and every language. To be able to do this, we have to regret the loss of minority languages and remember what we are missing out on when Lakota, Damin or Jaru dies away. As “knowledgeable outsiders,” we need to fulfill the role of “information-disseminator and consciousness-raiser, helping to make a wider public aware of the looming threats of to a local language survival” and the wealth, though often undiscovered, every language embodies (Dorian 21). We need to help the presence of the minority languages and their speakers felt within the wider community through cultural celebrations, festivals, awareness-raising educational programs on radio or television, or, perhaps a column in a daily newspaper (Crystal 130). These things are exactly what we do for any other crisis – for people dying from AIDS, for climate change, for world hunger. There is “no essential difference in educational programmes designed to remove ignorance about, say, water-management or pest-control, and awareness-raising designed to remove ignorance about language” (Crystal 107). As more and more people hear about what each language is worth to all of us and the dangers minority languages face, the minority language speakers will hold on to their own language – they will speak it with confidence and teach it to their children without fear but with pride.
As utopian as they may sound, cultural celebrations, public festivals, writings and educational programs did help in the past, and are likely to help in our future endeavors. The revival of the Gaelic language in Irish communities was fired by famous poems and writings that praised the language and the Irish culture (Dorian 44). In Scotland, people organized festivals called “the Mod festivals” to raise awareness about Gaelic (Crystal 113). Today, the Gaelic language has been saved and is spoken by numerous Scottish and Irish communities. Likewise, Sami people have saved their language, Sami. These people live in a territory divided by Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, and thus, over may years the Sami language has been heavily influenced by Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish and Russian (Tsunoda 25). A couple of decades ago, it was an endangered language, but through the efforts of knowledgeable outsiders, today there are websites, film festivals and cultural celebrations for the Sami culture and language. Thus, “in many villages, the Sami ethnic consciousness has recently been revitalized, so that people are eager to learn the Sami language” (Tsunoda 25). As Trond Trosterud, a linguist at University of Helsinki, points out in the following anecdote, all of these endeavors gave the speakers of Sami great optimism and confidence which was lacking a decade ago:
Attending a meeting of Sami and Norwegian officials, one of the Sámi participants was asked: do you need an interpreter? No, she answered, I don’t. But I will give my talk in Sami, so it might be that you will need one. (Crystal 126)
Such belief and confidence in speaking the Sami language eventually revived the language that was once on the verge of disappearing.
Time to Take Action
Now, we know what we are missing out on with every language dying away. Languages create a world of complexity, embody human intellect and knowledge, and thus they are all too precious to lose. Initially, it may seem like regretting the loss of such treasures is not enough to save them simply because we do not speak those languages and so do not have the power to maintain them. It is true that we cannot save a language for its speakers, but we can surely inform and encourage them to do so, and restore their belief and hope in their language, which they may have lost a long time ago.
Nevertheless, we could question whether all minority language speaking communities will gain the optimism and confidence that Gaelic speaking communities and Sami people did in their language. “There is never, of course, a guarantee that the next community will be swayed” by cultural festivals, celebrations and other awareness-raising activities (Crystal 111). It may never be possible to make a community believe in their power and encourage them to save their language. The language may vanish, and we may not be able to do anything. But, it is still worth trying – and it will always be. We could either believe that, after all, regretting the loss may not help and watch 90 percent of the world’s languages die away in less than 90 years – or, we could strive for helping other minority languages and their speakers succeed in their struggle and create new stories of success like Sami and Gaelic did.
Friday, May 28, 2010
English learners struggle with the language
An article by Teresa Watanabe called "Many English learners still struggle with the language, study shows" on Los Angeles Times talks about the fact that nearly 60% of students in Californian high schools are not proficient in the language despite the fact that they have been getting English education for at least 6 years. The study says that besides many other important factors, the problem also lies within the current English education system in the US - and I would like to tackle this issue a little bit more.
English is my second language, and I have been learning the language at school since I was seven years old. One thing about foreign language education is that instead of practicing and speaking the language, students usually learn a lot about grammatical rules and structures of the language. That is what happened with me, as well.
I think that I have a good understanding of essential grammar rules in English. For example, there is a major difference between "your" and "you're." Saying "your dog" is very different than "you're dog." However, it is still very shocking to me that a lot of native English speakers, even the highly educated ones, cannot distinguish between the two. Sometimes, I receive email full of such mistakes in my inbox from a native English speaker, and I ask myself: "Is this that person's fault, or is there a serious flaw with the language education here in the US?"
It is a difficult question to answer, because there are many factors in language education such as the person's background, ability, willingness or age. However, I still think that there must be something wrong with the English language education if a surprising number of native speakers are making the mistake that I, as a non-native speaker, have been warned against numerous times. That is why I am not surprised with the study that Teresa Watanabe wrote about.
I would love to hear from native English speakers who received English language education in the US. Is there really a flaw with the system? Is this something unique to California, or does it happen in other states as well?
Link to article: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0528-english-20100528,0,2808835,full.story
English is my second language, and I have been learning the language at school since I was seven years old. One thing about foreign language education is that instead of practicing and speaking the language, students usually learn a lot about grammatical rules and structures of the language. That is what happened with me, as well.
I think that I have a good understanding of essential grammar rules in English. For example, there is a major difference between "your" and "you're." Saying "your dog" is very different than "you're dog." However, it is still very shocking to me that a lot of native English speakers, even the highly educated ones, cannot distinguish between the two. Sometimes, I receive email full of such mistakes in my inbox from a native English speaker, and I ask myself: "Is this that person's fault, or is there a serious flaw with the language education here in the US?"
It is a difficult question to answer, because there are many factors in language education such as the person's background, ability, willingness or age. However, I still think that there must be something wrong with the English language education if a surprising number of native speakers are making the mistake that I, as a non-native speaker, have been warned against numerous times. That is why I am not surprised with the study that Teresa Watanabe wrote about.
I would love to hear from native English speakers who received English language education in the US. Is there really a flaw with the system? Is this something unique to California, or does it happen in other states as well?
Link to article: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0528-english-20100528,0,2808835,full.story
Monday, May 24, 2010
"Evolving language? Or just falling standards?"
Susan Schwartz, in her article called "Evolving language? Or just falling standards?" on Times Colonist, touches on an important dilemma regarding the evolution of languages. Most of us must have heard from our parents or grandparents that they sometimes have a difficult time understanding us even though we are speaking the same language. For example, when I talk to my grandmother in Turkish, I sometimes say that something is "wickedly beautiful" if I want to describe an exceptional beauty. She turns to me with a confused gaze in her eyes and asks whether what I am describing is wicked or beautiful. These two words have opposite meanings, but my generation has started long ago to use the words "wicked" and "beautiful" together in order to emphasize the beauty even more. The same phenomenon is true for English, too.
Similarly, a couple of months ago, I heard one of my English-speaking friends describing something as "stupidly beautiful." He did not mean that the beauty was stupid - he actually meant that something was stupefyingly beautiful. When I told him that the phrase "stupidly beautiful" does not really work, he said that stupidly and stupefyingly sounded very similar, so they could as well mean the same thing, he argued.
Why do we need to use the word "wicked" to express an exceptional beauty, or why are we fine with using the word "stupidly" instead of "stupefyingly," then? Is our language evolving to a point where words can be used interchangeably, or are we losing the essence of our language? In her article, Schwartz asks the same question whether this is a case of evolving language or falling standards due to sloppy use of language.
I would argue that there is a fine line with evolving language and falling standards. It is greatly promising to know that every year hundreds of thousands of new words are added to the lexicon of English. As our lives change, the words and phrases we frequently change do transform as well. We look for better ways to communicate through our language. However, I believe that we arrived at a point where the evolution of language became very spontaneous and arbitrary. There is no need to describe something as "wickedly beautiful" - "exceptionally beautiful" would definitely suffice. As Susan Schwartz mentions in her article, there is a "danger inherent in allowing standards to relax to the point where they no longer do the work of standards, so that words and phrases are so routinely overused or misused that they lose their meaning."
Unfortunately, the misuse of language does not seem to concern young people. It is usually the older generations who complain about the misuse of language, because they are able to witness the changes in the use of language over years. For us, young people, though, it is not the same situation. We usually feel proud when we realize that the words and phrases we use are unknown to our parents and grandparents, because that gives us a sense of progression and improvement. However, we should realize that language evolution and misuse are not the same things, and we have been confusing the two for a long time.
Link to article: http://www.timescolonist.com/life/Evolving+language+just+falling+standards/3063113/story.html
Similarly, a couple of months ago, I heard one of my English-speaking friends describing something as "stupidly beautiful." He did not mean that the beauty was stupid - he actually meant that something was stupefyingly beautiful. When I told him that the phrase "stupidly beautiful" does not really work, he said that stupidly and stupefyingly sounded very similar, so they could as well mean the same thing, he argued.
Why do we need to use the word "wicked" to express an exceptional beauty, or why are we fine with using the word "stupidly" instead of "stupefyingly," then? Is our language evolving to a point where words can be used interchangeably, or are we losing the essence of our language? In her article, Schwartz asks the same question whether this is a case of evolving language or falling standards due to sloppy use of language.
I would argue that there is a fine line with evolving language and falling standards. It is greatly promising to know that every year hundreds of thousands of new words are added to the lexicon of English. As our lives change, the words and phrases we frequently change do transform as well. We look for better ways to communicate through our language. However, I believe that we arrived at a point where the evolution of language became very spontaneous and arbitrary. There is no need to describe something as "wickedly beautiful" - "exceptionally beautiful" would definitely suffice. As Susan Schwartz mentions in her article, there is a "danger inherent in allowing standards to relax to the point where they no longer do the work of standards, so that words and phrases are so routinely overused or misused that they lose their meaning."
Unfortunately, the misuse of language does not seem to concern young people. It is usually the older generations who complain about the misuse of language, because they are able to witness the changes in the use of language over years. For us, young people, though, it is not the same situation. We usually feel proud when we realize that the words and phrases we use are unknown to our parents and grandparents, because that gives us a sense of progression and improvement. However, we should realize that language evolution and misuse are not the same things, and we have been confusing the two for a long time.
Link to article: http://www.timescolonist.com/life/Evolving+language+just+falling+standards/3063113/story.html
Thursday, May 20, 2010
"The English Language and Freedom"
Paul Johnson, in his very interesting article called "The English Language and Freedom" on Forbes, argues that the English language is the language of freedom, democracy and progress, and that nations who are not embracing the English language are doomed to fall behind those who do. For instance, he argues that China is not making any effort to spread the English language and very few mainland Chinese people speak English. By not speaking English, Chinese people do not have "any conception of the liberal tradition that the language enshrines." The Chinese government is striving to spread the Chinese traditions, language and culture in other places such as Africa, and is distancing itself from the advanced Western traditions and English language, Johnson claims. Thus, China is doomed to stagnate because it does not make any effort to learn the English language and embrace its ideals, such as the liberal tradition.
Johnson goes on to contrast China with India, because today most Indian people are learning English, giving them the key "to all the vast intellectual wealth, which all the wisest nations of the Earth have created and hoarded in the course of 90 generations." Johnson argues that India will soon surpass China, and the primary reason for Indian dominance will be India's close relationship with the English language.
I find Johnson's argument very difficult and fallacious to believe. First, claiming that English is the language of democracy, liberal tradition and freedom is far-fetched, as these ideals were first born in France - a French-speaking population. The ideals of "liberté, égalité, fraternité" were born in French, so if we have to find a language that embraces such ideals more than other languages, then it must be French, and not English.
Still, it is arguable whether embracing a certain language or not can determine the future of a country. In the article, Johnson argues that India is becoming a more advanced and democratic country because Indian people are learning English, while China is doomed to fall behind and become unable to follow liberal and democratic ideals since it promotes the Chinese language and culture instead of English and Western ideals. Today, Chinese language is one of the most dominant languages in the world, and the number of people who learn and can speak the language, especially Mandarin, is increasing every day. China is steadily rising as a global power, and Chinese culture, especially Chinese food, has many fans all around the world. I am not championing Chinese culture or language, but I disagree with the notion that promoting their own language instead of English language makes them disadvantageous in any capacity.
Even if one argues that China is falling behind in terms of democracy and liberal ideals, the reason is not likely to be their promotion of Chinese culture instead of Western ideals. Even if that is the case, there must be other reasons, such as the governmental structure or the ideas of the society.
Johnson's argument also brings up another point. English language embodies democratic and liberal ideals whereas other languages, such as Chinese language, does not. This is why China will fall behind unless it starts embracing the English language. What is implicit in this argument, from how I understand it, is that languages are static entities, and they never change. I disagree, because over centuries people have always shaped their language, added new words or phrases to communicate better or to express a certain idea. If China wants to embrace democratic and liberal ideals, the government and the society can make their own language embrace such ideals as well. Languages do not develop on their own - it is the people who construct, shape, use and destroy the language.
Link to article: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0607/opinions-paul-johnson-current-events-english-language.html
Johnson goes on to contrast China with India, because today most Indian people are learning English, giving them the key "to all the vast intellectual wealth, which all the wisest nations of the Earth have created and hoarded in the course of 90 generations." Johnson argues that India will soon surpass China, and the primary reason for Indian dominance will be India's close relationship with the English language.
I find Johnson's argument very difficult and fallacious to believe. First, claiming that English is the language of democracy, liberal tradition and freedom is far-fetched, as these ideals were first born in France - a French-speaking population. The ideals of "liberté, égalité, fraternité" were born in French, so if we have to find a language that embraces such ideals more than other languages, then it must be French, and not English.
Still, it is arguable whether embracing a certain language or not can determine the future of a country. In the article, Johnson argues that India is becoming a more advanced and democratic country because Indian people are learning English, while China is doomed to fall behind and become unable to follow liberal and democratic ideals since it promotes the Chinese language and culture instead of English and Western ideals. Today, Chinese language is one of the most dominant languages in the world, and the number of people who learn and can speak the language, especially Mandarin, is increasing every day. China is steadily rising as a global power, and Chinese culture, especially Chinese food, has many fans all around the world. I am not championing Chinese culture or language, but I disagree with the notion that promoting their own language instead of English language makes them disadvantageous in any capacity.
Even if one argues that China is falling behind in terms of democracy and liberal ideals, the reason is not likely to be their promotion of Chinese culture instead of Western ideals. Even if that is the case, there must be other reasons, such as the governmental structure or the ideas of the society.
Johnson's argument also brings up another point. English language embodies democratic and liberal ideals whereas other languages, such as Chinese language, does not. This is why China will fall behind unless it starts embracing the English language. What is implicit in this argument, from how I understand it, is that languages are static entities, and they never change. I disagree, because over centuries people have always shaped their language, added new words or phrases to communicate better or to express a certain idea. If China wants to embrace democratic and liberal ideals, the government and the society can make their own language embrace such ideals as well. Languages do not develop on their own - it is the people who construct, shape, use and destroy the language.
Link to article: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0607/opinions-paul-johnson-current-events-english-language.html
Monday, May 17, 2010
Turkish and language death - ambivalent thoughts
Lately, I have been doing a lot of research and writing about language death, disappearing languages, the reasons and consequences of language loss for my PWR class. In one of my papers for this class, I argue that there is a great tension between dominant language speakers and minority language speakers, and that this tension makes the dominant language speakers indifferent to the death of minority languages.
Most of us speak languages that are spoken by millions of people, such as English, Spanish, Chinese or Arabic. The idea that these languages might disappear anytime soon is beyond imagination - they are so widely spread that their disappearance may not even be possible. On the other hand, though, in class we talked about a lot of languages that have already disappeared or are on the verge of disappearing. Some of these languages are only spoken by 200 people, whereas today the number of English speakers is estimated to be 450 million people. Looking at these numbers, it is reasonable to argue that English, like any other dominant language, is not going to disappear anytime soon. So, it is difficult for dominant language speakers to empathize with people who are losing their own language. It is difficult for them to put themselves in shoes of minority language speakers. Thus, dominant language speakers may indeed feel indifferent to the problem of language loss.
In my paper, I acknowledge the reasons that lead to this indifference, but I also argue that these should not stop us, dominant language speakers, from realizing how important each and every language is to us and how much they mean for humanity - no matter how widely spread they are. I personally believe and argue that each language is a manifestation of human intellect and embodies ideas that humans have been inheriting and developing for centuries.
Although I felt very passionate about the topic, advocated the importance of every language and strongly argued that the loss of any language means a greater loss for humanity, an article that I have recently read showed me that I may have, after all, ambivalent thoughts on the issue of language death. I have recently read an article called "Turkey's fading linguistic heritage" by Anita McNaught in which the writer mentions the linguistic diversity in Turkey and how it is disappearing at an alarming rate. According to the article, UNESCO recently reported that there are 15 endangered languages and dialects in Turkey. The Turkish government and the Turkish society, however, are not concerned about the decline of language diversity, as "many Turkish speakers view any diversification of Turkey's 'Turkishness' as a threat to the integrity of the nation state."
After I read the article, I realized that I am one of those many Turkish speakers threatened by the language diversity in Turkey. There are many ethnic groups in Turkey, and in the past few years, a couple of them caused a great amount of tension in the country, such as the Kurdish population. Kurds, for instance, now have a national channel in their language, Kurdish, and this channel is endorsed by the Turkish government. Like many people in Turkey, I refuse to see this as an action to preserve the Kurdish language. I actually think of this as a threat to the national unity of Turkey and as an action to undermine the official language of the country, Turkish. Thus, sadly enough, I personally do not see any problems with ethnic languages in Turkey disappearing and the Turkish language being the only language spoken in the country. I am doing the exact opposite of what I am arguing in my paper: ignoring the richness and wealth of knowledge and intellect that every language possesses, and advocating for one common language in the case of Turkey.
I am not sure whether I am falling prey to a nationalistic sentiment, thereby having no problem with having languages that threaten my native language disappear. My reaction might also be a way to respond to the recent tensions we have had in Turkey regarding several ethnic groups, their cultures and languages. Still, while I can talk about why languages, especially minority and different ethnic languages, should be preserved, I see no problem with letting those that threaten Turkish go. I certainly see the minority languages as a threat to the Turkish languages, unity and culture.
How can I be alarmed by the loss of languages, and at the same time have no problem with the death of minority languages in Turkey? Do I confuse my ideas regarding the loss of languages with a strong sense of nationalism? Or is it actually not entirely possible to isolate ourselves from the society we live in or the language we speak and think about language death objectively? Is there a way to think objectively about language death when we are already influenced by particular languages and cultures?
Link to article: http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/05/201051695350717990.html
Link to map: http://lingvarium.org/maps/18-turkey.gif
Most of us speak languages that are spoken by millions of people, such as English, Spanish, Chinese or Arabic. The idea that these languages might disappear anytime soon is beyond imagination - they are so widely spread that their disappearance may not even be possible. On the other hand, though, in class we talked about a lot of languages that have already disappeared or are on the verge of disappearing. Some of these languages are only spoken by 200 people, whereas today the number of English speakers is estimated to be 450 million people. Looking at these numbers, it is reasonable to argue that English, like any other dominant language, is not going to disappear anytime soon. So, it is difficult for dominant language speakers to empathize with people who are losing their own language. It is difficult for them to put themselves in shoes of minority language speakers. Thus, dominant language speakers may indeed feel indifferent to the problem of language loss.
In my paper, I acknowledge the reasons that lead to this indifference, but I also argue that these should not stop us, dominant language speakers, from realizing how important each and every language is to us and how much they mean for humanity - no matter how widely spread they are. I personally believe and argue that each language is a manifestation of human intellect and embodies ideas that humans have been inheriting and developing for centuries.
Although I felt very passionate about the topic, advocated the importance of every language and strongly argued that the loss of any language means a greater loss for humanity, an article that I have recently read showed me that I may have, after all, ambivalent thoughts on the issue of language death. I have recently read an article called "Turkey's fading linguistic heritage" by Anita McNaught in which the writer mentions the linguistic diversity in Turkey and how it is disappearing at an alarming rate. According to the article, UNESCO recently reported that there are 15 endangered languages and dialects in Turkey. The Turkish government and the Turkish society, however, are not concerned about the decline of language diversity, as "many Turkish speakers view any diversification of Turkey's 'Turkishness' as a threat to the integrity of the nation state."
After I read the article, I realized that I am one of those many Turkish speakers threatened by the language diversity in Turkey. There are many ethnic groups in Turkey, and in the past few years, a couple of them caused a great amount of tension in the country, such as the Kurdish population. Kurds, for instance, now have a national channel in their language, Kurdish, and this channel is endorsed by the Turkish government. Like many people in Turkey, I refuse to see this as an action to preserve the Kurdish language. I actually think of this as a threat to the national unity of Turkey and as an action to undermine the official language of the country, Turkish. Thus, sadly enough, I personally do not see any problems with ethnic languages in Turkey disappearing and the Turkish language being the only language spoken in the country. I am doing the exact opposite of what I am arguing in my paper: ignoring the richness and wealth of knowledge and intellect that every language possesses, and advocating for one common language in the case of Turkey.
I am not sure whether I am falling prey to a nationalistic sentiment, thereby having no problem with having languages that threaten my native language disappear. My reaction might also be a way to respond to the recent tensions we have had in Turkey regarding several ethnic groups, their cultures and languages. Still, while I can talk about why languages, especially minority and different ethnic languages, should be preserved, I see no problem with letting those that threaten Turkish go. I certainly see the minority languages as a threat to the Turkish languages, unity and culture.
How can I be alarmed by the loss of languages, and at the same time have no problem with the death of minority languages in Turkey? Do I confuse my ideas regarding the loss of languages with a strong sense of nationalism? Or is it actually not entirely possible to isolate ourselves from the society we live in or the language we speak and think about language death objectively? Is there a way to think objectively about language death when we are already influenced by particular languages and cultures?
Link to article: http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/05/201051695350717990.html
Link to map: http://lingvarium.org/maps/18-turkey.gif
Thursday, May 13, 2010
How languages shape the way we think about racial issues
The other day we had a discussion about how the language used in Census forms, and more broadly, classifying people according to races create bigger problems. An article called "Time to Change the Language Paradigm: A Tool for Promoting Social Progress" by Skywalker Payne extensively talks about this issue - how languages shape the way we think about racial issues, and how we come to accept a certain model of social structure because of the language we use.
Payne starts off mentioning "the oxymoronic expression minority-majority." She argues that when people say "I am a minority," they are actually admitting that they are less than what they define as "the majority." The first definition of minority in most dictionaries qualifies the word as a term that describes a group smaller in the number of its members. However, over years the word minority assumed a more different meaning than that. Today, when we define a group of people as minority, we do not really take into account the number of members of that group compared to those of other groups. The word minority defines a group that is inferior to a majority, and that remains lesser in significance, importance or seriousness. And this makes minority a pejorative term instead of a quantitative one.
A compelling example that Payne presents stems from this question: Would we ever call a group of white people minority? When, for example, a few white students are getting education in a university with a black population much greater in number, would anyone consider the group of white people minority? Considering how we use the term today, it is highly unlikely. Even though in that case the white people are much lesser in number, not many people would define them as minority. Similarly, although black people are more in number, not many people would call them majority.
So, there is definitely a major shift in what the words minority and majority imply. The definition shifted from quantitative to qualitative. If these words do not refer to the number anymore, then what do they actually mean in our language? I agree with Payne that now minority is a pejorative term and puts the defined group to a lesser level than "the majority." These two words are difficult to deal with in the sense that there are many implications in them: In most dictionaries, major is defined as important and significant, whereas minor is defined as lesser in importance, seriousness or significance. It is quite difficult to separate the adjectives, major or minor, from the nouns, majority or minority. When the adjectives are defined like this, it is, I believe, difficult for us to think of these nouns as mere descriptions of numbers. They definitely imply the meaning of the adjectives - that is, majority is more important and significant than a minority.
I wonder if we are aware of this shift in the definition of minority and majority. As a white person who is a member of the so-called "majority," I find these words degrading and not representative of the individuals. I believe that the language we use today is putting people into little packages for the sake of conciseness. We forgo the intricacies and uniqueness of each individual and put them in groups. And when the way we refer to a particular group changes, as in the case with minority and majority, we actually change a whole lot - we change the way how we see those individuals. In our language, they are not less in number anymore, but rather they are less in significance and importance.
I do not think that we are aware of this change. We define a group of people as minority, but we don't really know what we mean by that. Do we really mean that this group of people is less in number, or less in importance? Language is an inextricable part of our daily lives, and we often tend to ignore the shifts in our language, and what we really mean by certain words.
Link to article: http://www.opednews.com/articles/Time-to-Change-the-Languag-by-Skywalker-Payne-100507-522.html
Payne starts off mentioning "the oxymoronic expression minority-majority." She argues that when people say "I am a minority," they are actually admitting that they are less than what they define as "the majority." The first definition of minority in most dictionaries qualifies the word as a term that describes a group smaller in the number of its members. However, over years the word minority assumed a more different meaning than that. Today, when we define a group of people as minority, we do not really take into account the number of members of that group compared to those of other groups. The word minority defines a group that is inferior to a majority, and that remains lesser in significance, importance or seriousness. And this makes minority a pejorative term instead of a quantitative one.
A compelling example that Payne presents stems from this question: Would we ever call a group of white people minority? When, for example, a few white students are getting education in a university with a black population much greater in number, would anyone consider the group of white people minority? Considering how we use the term today, it is highly unlikely. Even though in that case the white people are much lesser in number, not many people would define them as minority. Similarly, although black people are more in number, not many people would call them majority.
So, there is definitely a major shift in what the words minority and majority imply. The definition shifted from quantitative to qualitative. If these words do not refer to the number anymore, then what do they actually mean in our language? I agree with Payne that now minority is a pejorative term and puts the defined group to a lesser level than "the majority." These two words are difficult to deal with in the sense that there are many implications in them: In most dictionaries, major is defined as important and significant, whereas minor is defined as lesser in importance, seriousness or significance. It is quite difficult to separate the adjectives, major or minor, from the nouns, majority or minority. When the adjectives are defined like this, it is, I believe, difficult for us to think of these nouns as mere descriptions of numbers. They definitely imply the meaning of the adjectives - that is, majority is more important and significant than a minority.
I wonder if we are aware of this shift in the definition of minority and majority. As a white person who is a member of the so-called "majority," I find these words degrading and not representative of the individuals. I believe that the language we use today is putting people into little packages for the sake of conciseness. We forgo the intricacies and uniqueness of each individual and put them in groups. And when the way we refer to a particular group changes, as in the case with minority and majority, we actually change a whole lot - we change the way how we see those individuals. In our language, they are not less in number anymore, but rather they are less in significance and importance.
I do not think that we are aware of this change. We define a group of people as minority, but we don't really know what we mean by that. Do we really mean that this group of people is less in number, or less in importance? Language is an inextricable part of our daily lives, and we often tend to ignore the shifts in our language, and what we really mean by certain words.
Link to article: http://www.opednews.com/articles/Time-to-Change-the-Languag-by-Skywalker-Payne-100507-522.html
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