Thankful for Language Diversity

Watch We Still Live Here - As Nutayunean on PBS. See more from INDEPENDENT LENS.

We've explored the issue of endangered languages with a few books, mainly Mark Abley's Spoken Here. Travels Among Endangered Languages and Daniel Everett's Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle, recognizing language preservation as an important part of our shared cultural heritage. I recommend taking some time out from turkey and football over the long weekend to watch We Still Live Here (via PBS Independent Lens) about the efforts of a group of Wampanoag in Massachusetts working to revive their language over 100 years after the last native speakers died. The film will add new layers to your understanding of the cultural exchange between this tribe and the Pilgrims that we celebrate at Thanksgiving. Be sure also to explore the recommended Our Mother Tongues interactive website, to learn more about other Native American languages.

Hey, I'm not finished with your Thanksgiving assignment yet! Another excellent documentary available for online viewing from Twin Cities Public Television, First Speakers: Exploring the Ojibwe Language was a recent Upper Midwest Emmy winner. The film is narrated by another author, and language student, we love, Louise Erdrich (Tracks). The Ojibwe have the advantage of native elders who speak their language to guide them as they seek to develop immersion curricula for their schools. Both films are fascinating!

Kys t' ou? (How are you?)

Today is International Mother Language Day and I have a few suggestions for honoring endangered languages. First, you can review previous posts from our discussion of Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages by Mark Abley, where among other things you can find a link that will teach you how to greet everyone in Manx for the rest of the day. Then for something fresh you can visit UNESCO's fascinating new interactive Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger. Also, NPR reports on a new documentary, The Linguists (link opens with sound) which is set to air on some PBS stations Thursday. Looks good, though at least in my neck of the woods it's airing at midnight (fortunately I found I could save it in my Netflix queue).

Books and Islands

I assigned myself a little extra credit work for our discussion of Louise Erdrich's Tracks and read her Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country, a nonfiction account of her journey through Southern Ontario to visit sacred rock paintings, and other connections between the land and reading and writing. In the book she reflects on her study of Ojibwe language. You can get a taste of this from this New York Times article, Two Languages in Mind, But Just One in the Heart,

How do you go back to a language you never had? Why should a writer who loves her first language find it necessary and essential to complicate her life with another? Simple reasons, personal and impersonal. In the past few years I've found that I can talk to God only in this language, that somehow my grandfather's use of the language penetrated. The sound comforts me.

The language geeks amongst us may wish to explore this Ojibwe Language website. It will remind you of the Mohawk chapters in Mark Abley's Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages.

Of further interest to our Loyal Readers, Erdrich takes W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz, with her for pleasure reading on her travels, the novel's theme of the search for identity paralleling her own journey. Here's some of what she says about the book,

Page after page is about how history sinks into the mind, tormentingly sometimes, and what arrests and disturbances truth causes until finally the human heart can accept its sorrows, heal itself by enduring the unendurable and go on beating...

Like Austerlitz, I too feel as though I've seen the vanished people walking, felt their eyes upon me, and that when I stare down into the opaque water, they are somehow calmly looking up from their ordinary tasks, which they have carried on, below us, for thousands of years. (p. 96-7)

The traces of a vanished people evident in the photo at top come from looking up from the water to a cliff face, from a canoe actually, in Ojibwe country very close to the Minnesota/Canadian border.

Spoken Here: Australia

What's a travel book without pictures? And a travel book about languages without sound? Bear with me for a series of posts related to Mark Abley's Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages that will fill in some of the audio-visual gaps. Beginning with Australia, I encourage a visit to the Postcards From Halls Creek website, poke around for pictures and give a listen to the audio program featuring voices of residents talking about their community, including some Jaru speakers. Wadeye Aboriginal Community has a similar friendly site, while the Tiwi Islands site features tempting photographs for tourists but a less personal feel.

If you want to explore some more, Aboriginal Languages of Australia might be a good place to site or the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Studies (check out this map). For less academic wanderings, try Aboriginal Art Online.

Happy wandering!

Our November Author: Mark Abley

Here's a little background on Mark Abley, author of Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages. First, a little bit of biographical information, as well as a bit about his other books, is available here. A couple of interviews are available online, one from his publisher and one from the Montreal Review of Books. He drops hints about his next book:

It's kind of a follow-up to Spoken Here. The topic is a huge one - how English and the other major languages of the world are changing, and what the future might hold for the way we speak and write.

Finally, the Foundation for Endangered Languages shares one of his poems.

For November: Spoken Here

For November, we have selected Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages by Mark Abley. Apologies in advance for all the language geekiness that will no doubt follow in the wake of this decision.

Within the next couple of generations, most of the world’s 6000 languages will vanish, due mainly to the unstoppable tide of English. With an open mind and a well-worn passport, award-winning journalist and poet Mark Abley tells entertaining and vital stories about why languages matter. From Oklahoma to Provence, aboriginal Australia to Baffin Island, the cultures are radically different, but the problems of shrinking linguistic and cultural richness are painfully similar. Abley’s investigation provides a stunning glimpse of the beauty and intricacies of languages like Yiddish and Yuchi, Mohawk and Manx, Inuktitut and Provençal. More importantly, it offers a sympathetic and memorable portrait of the people who still speak languages under threat.

Tags: language, cultural survival, Mark Abley