Thoughts on Endangered Languages

1 thought on “Thoughts on Endangered Languages”

1. Kate Taluga

   February 22, 2012 at 11:07 am

   Banning languages is not a good thing. There is a lot of mistrust in the Indigenous world for that. It was at the heart of the Boarding Schools. And you will find that another hideous American history to read.

   Islands cannot stand alone in this global world. what is needed is support for the re-emergence of native languages not as foreign languages on the land that they were spoken on originally, but as a world language. What Oklahoma folks have been battling about was having teachers in the classroom who were fluent first language speakers (but not necessarily college trained language teachers) to be the teachers. This has been a true struggle for recognition of those languages as counting for the “foreign language” requirements of high school graduation. I know of several adults who went to college in the 60s and clepped foreign language because English was a second language for them. Nowadays our Elders don’t necessairly want to step into classrooms to teach. They are old and don’t want to put up with all those children crowded in a room. When they teach they want to do it as it has always been done–knee to knee. So the scramble is on to retain or re-emege languages.

   To date, there has been no real fluent second language speakers to emerge from all the different language methods tried. Master/Apprentice comes the closest. And when I say no real fluent speakers, there are many speakers who are nearly fluent in several languages. But, most of them admit to not being completely fluent. TPRS offers hope to those of us using it.

   so, what is happening now is finding and training second language speakers in the native languages who can also qualify as foreign language teachers to meet the system’s requirements. This does not necessairly make for the best teachers of a language. Missing from a lot of these teachers are the subtlities of the “whole word.”

   The word oketv in Mvskoke–to speak also means time. This came up in a question from a student to my elder. Why? What does speaking and time have in common? But we speak for an allotted time do we not? said the Elder. And that sort of made the tie for us. But when you use the dictionary to look up time, it references many other ways of seeing time and therefore some other words that describe it.

   Hecetv-to see also has this place as it wanders about with words that seem unrelated until you know the culture as it WAS. Our word for tobacco comes directly from hecetv. Heces-it sees. In the culture, to smoke tobacco was a ritual used with inward seeing–comtemplation and prayer. Now, tobacco is abused when it is not used in a correct manner. It does have an addictive nature but that also taught in the story we have of how tobacco came to the people. That it is sacred is taught in that story as well. Who will teach those stories when the Elders have journeyed the Sky Path?

   Fluency is a hard thing to achieve. Yes, it is important to speak the words. Knowing as much about the word and its meanings and stories creates fluency to me. And it is all worth the effort to be able to carry forward an understanding of the evolution of our languages, our cultures and geographic spaces in which we live. Is it not important to know that Okeefenokee means “trembling waters” and not to trust the swampy place you are about to put your foot as secure?

   Okis Ci! (I have spoken–it is done)

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