As the countdown to New Year 2020 has started, let me focus one last time on 2019 which was declared the International Year of Indigenous Languages by the United Nations. Through this post, I would like to share with my readers a list of hyperlinks pointing to thought-provoking articles or interesting podcasts related to indigenous languages.
The existence and, in many cases, the resistance of indigenous languages have never been more important indeed. The indigenous languages provide a unique understanding of the world. Most of us have probably been reminded at some point that, besides the very formatted business or political jargons that are used in the Western world nowadays, the indigenous languages are crucial to catch up with local socio-cultural peculiarities. All human beings are creatures of their culture of which aspects like language, aesthetics, religious values or moral codes lie beyond objective rating due to lack of a culture-free standard of measurement. It would definitely be an insult or a mistake to imply that because some remote areas on our little planet are sometimes technically underdeveloped their people or their cultures are in general underdeveloped.
Most of us have been directly exposed to indigenous languages at least once in our life... 25 years ago, I wrote a thesis during my translation studies at the University of Mons, Belgium. It was actually a translation from English to French of a book entitled "Tales of the South Carolina Low Country" written by Nancy Rhyne. Parts of the dialogues in the book were written in Gullah, a creole language spoken by an African-American population living in coastal regions of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Northeastern Florida in the USA. Trips to Ocean Isle Beach, Wilmington and Calabash in North Carolina as well as to Myrtle Beach, Pawleys Island and Charleston in South Carolina in the past allowed me to become immersed in the culture conveyed by the Gullah language. Last summer, my family and I went to the Italian Alps and were amazed to find many indications and signs written in Piedmontese dialect in the very small village of Moncenisio (Monsnis in Piedmontese or Moueini in Franco-Provençal). Each year around mid-September, on the occasion of the Day of the Walloon Region, the regional daily newspaper L'Avenir has one edition being written and published in Walloon... It reminds us that Walloon is the historical language of Southern Belgium where my family and I have always lived, and most of the Belgian areas where French is now spoken were Walloon-speaking in the past. Even more recently, I was asked to translate a website dealing with a musical show about Native Americans, their culture and their values. A few weeks ago, I was invited to attend the show "Indian Spirit - Chapter I: Awakening" by Wota Creation for which most lyrics have been written in Lakota, a Siouan language spoken by the Lakota people of the Sioux tribes and considered by most linguists as one of the three major varieties of the Sioux language.
Here is the list of interesting links that I want to share with you:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190320-the-man-bringing-dead-languages-back-to-life ("The man bringing dead languages back to life", by Alex Rawlings on 22nd March 2019 - BBC Future)
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140606-why-we-must-save-dying-languages ("Languages: Why we must save dying tongues", by Rachel Nuwer on 6th June, 2014 - BBC Future)
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20120531-can-we-save-our-dying-languages ("Can we save the world’s dying languages?", by Gaia Vince on 31st May, 2012 - BBC Future)
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-17081573 ("Digital tools 'to save languages'", by Jonathan Amos, Science Correspondent in Vancouver - BBC News)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/27/peru-student-roxana-quispe-collantes-thesis-inca-language-quechua ("Student in Peru makes history by writing thesis in the Incas’ language", by Dan Collins on 27th October, 2019 - The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/books/audio/2019/oct/29/one-language-dies-every-two-weeks-how-can-poetry-help-books-podcast ("One language dies every two weeks. How can poetry help?" – The Guardian Books podcast - On 29th October, 2019, Clive Boutle, who runs independent publisher Francis Boutle, came into the studio of The Guardian to talk about his mission to preserve minority languages by publishing poetry in Livonian, Kernewek, Scottish Gaelic, Catalan, Frisian and many more)
https://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/what-endangered-language ("What Is an Endangered Language?", by Anthony C. Woodbury, LSA-Linguistic Society of America)
https://www.calgaryjournal.ca/news/4504-lost-in-translation-the-lasting-effects-of-separating-indigenous-children-from-culture-and-language.html ("Lost in translation: The lasting effects of separating Indigenous children from culture and language", by Ricardo-Andres Garcia, Brian Wells and Nathan Woolridge on 26th February, 2019 - Calgary Journal)
I hope that you will enjoy the stories listed above.
All the best for 2020!
"What the survival of threatened languages means, perhaps, is the endurance of dozens, hundreds, thousands of subtly different notions of truth."
― Mark Abley, "Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages"
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