Why Save A Language:
The Link Between Culture and Language
The video
“Why Save a Language?” (link in references) displays multiple generations of
Native Americans from different tribes discussing how their languages are
endangered and the implications of this conundrum. The first aspect I noticed
in the video is the passion many of the speakers had for their native
languages; some speakers were even getting choked up. Some of the speakers
(primarily the younger individuals) were not taught their native languages and
this made them feel like they are not as connected with their culture as they
could be.
Particularly
in Native Americans, their ancestors passed on stories primarily orally and
once a language dies, with no one to speak it these stories die with the
language. “It’s like dropping a bomb on the Louvre” (Kenneth Hale). Imagine if numerous
nursery rhymes you knew growing up were no longer accessible to your children
and grandchildren because they were not taught your language. The culture you
experienced growing up would be completely different from that of you children
and grandchildren and this would make it harder for you to relate to the
younger generations. Since family is extremely important to most people, not
being able to connect with older family members is a severe effect of a
language dying.
It is
evident that many young Native Americans want to learn the language and culture
of their ancestors, however, the ability to learn a language becomes difficult
the further away an individual gets from infancy. First, the best time to learn
a language and all the associated sounds is during infancy, up until the age of
3. Furthermore, if you were to learn a language in your older years, the best
method would be to completely immerse yourself in the language and speak it in
everyday situations. A third way to teach a language would be to straight up
teach it in school. The problem with my first method is that teaching a child a
language requires the parent to be a fluent speaker of the language and with
the current generation not being able to speak the language, this is an issue.
Potentially, if the grandparent is a speaker of the language, they could teach
the baby by only speaking that language around the kid. This creates a problem
because if the child only speaks the Indigenous language, then they can only
interact with the grandparent and not the parent. As for the second method, it
is nearly impossible to immerse yourself in the language if almost every
individual in your generation are not speakers of the language. Finally, we
come to teaching the language in school. This seems like a great idea, but
there’s a huge issue with teachers actually being able to teach the language. Sure,
you can get anyone that is fluent in the language to teach a class, but do they
really know how to teach? Teaching a language is a difficult task, especially
to a group of people who have a different primary language. You can’t just talk
at the students in the language, a teacher must teach grammar mechanics which
is difficult especially if the teacher hasn’t received any formal training in
the language. Here’s a question: Assuming you speak Spanish, could you teach a
Spanish speaker English? Sure, you’ve learned English in school, but they skip
out on everything you should have learned growing up speaking the language.
Things that seem intuitive to you are not to the non-native speaker. The
potential solutions I presented to you are only a few of the many possible
answers to reviving a dying language and it is more complex than I have
presented. It must be a community effort and only by reviving a dying language
can all of the culture of the ancestors be passed on to future generations.
References:
Why Save a Language? (2006) https://youtu.be/x7BLBUS1IXc
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