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The Importance of Maintaining Native Language

The United States is often proudly referred to as the “melting pot.” Cultural diversity has become a part of our country’s identity. However, as American linguist, Lilly Wong Fillmore, pointed out in her language loss study, minority languages remain surprisingly unsupported in our education system (1991, p. 342). Although her research was conducted more than twenty years ago, this fact still rings true. Many non-minority Americans are not aware of the native language loss that has become prevalent in children of immigrant parents. While parents can maintain native language, children educated in U.S. schools quickly lose touch with their language heritage. This phenomenon, called subtractive bilingualism, was first discovered by psychologist Wallace Lambert, in his study of the language acquisition of French-Canadian children. The term refers to the fact that learning a second language directly affects primary language, causing loss of native language fluency (Fillmore, 1991, p. 323). This kind of language erosion has been integral to the narrative of this country for some time. Many non-minority Americans can trace their family tree back to a time when their ancestors lost fluency in a language that was not English. Today, due to the great emphasis on assimilation into the United States’ English-speaking culture, children of various minorities are not only losing fluency, but also their ability to speak in their native language, at all (Fillmore, 1991, p. 324).

The misconceptions surrounding bilingual education has done much to increase the educational system’s negative outlook on minority languages. In Lynn Malarz’s bilingual curriculum handbook, she states that “the main purpose of the bilingual program is to teach English as soon as possible and integrate the children into the mainstream of education” (1998). This handbook, although written in 1998, still gives valuable insight into how the goals of bilingual education were viewed. Since English has become a global language, this focus of bilingual education, which leads immigrant children to a future of English monolingualism, seems valid to many educators and policymakers. Why support minority languages in a country where English is the language of the prosperous? Shouldn’t we assimilate children to English as soon as possible, so that they can succeed in the mainstream, English-speaking culture? This  leads us to consider an essential question: does language loss matter? Through the research of many linguists, psychologists, and language educators, it has been shown that the effect of native language loss reaches far. It impacts familial and social relationships, personal identity, the socio-economic world, as well as cognitive abilities and academic success. This paper aims to examine the various benefits of maintaining one’s native language, and through this examination, reveal the negative effects of language loss.

Familial Implications

The impact of native language loss in the familial sphere spans parent-child and grandparent-grandchild relationships, as well as cultural respects. Psychologists Boutakidis, Chao, and Rodríguez, (2011) conducted a study of Chinese and Korean immigrant families to see how the relationships between the 9th-grade adolescences and their parents were impacted by native language loss. They found that, because the adolescents had limited understanding and communicative abilities in the parental language, there were key cultural values that could not be understood (Boutakidis et al., 2011, p. 129). They also discovered there was a direct correlation between respect for parents and native language fluency. For example, honorific titles, a central component of respect unique to Chinese and Korean culture, have no English alternatives (p.129). They sum up their research pertaining to this idea by stating that “children’s fluency in the parental heritage language is integral to fully understanding and comprehending the parental culture” (Boutakidis et al., 2011, p. 129). Not only is language integral to maintaining parental respect, but also cultural identity.

In her research regarding parental perceptions of maintaining native language, Ruth Lingxin Yan (2003) found that immigrant parents not only agree on the importance of maintaining native language, but have similar reasoning for their views. She discovered that maintaining native language was important to parents, because of its impact on heritage culture, religion, moral values, community connections, and broader career opportunities.

Melec Rodriguez, whose parents immigrated to the United States before he was born, finds that his native language loss directly impacts his relationship with his grandparents. Rodriguez experienced his language loss in high school. He stated that due to his changing social group and the fact that he began interacting with his family less, he found himself forgetting “uncommon words in the language.” His “struggle to process information” causes him to “take a moment” to “form sentences in [his] mind during conversations” (M. Rodriguez, personal communication, Nov. 3, 2019). Of his interactions with his grandparents, who have a limited understanding of English, he stated:

“I find very often that I simply cannot think of a way to reply while conveying genuine emotion, and I know they feel I am detached at times because of that. I also struggle to tell exciting stories about my experiences and find it hard to create meaningful conversations with family” (M. Rodriguez, personal communication, Nov. 3, 2019).

Rodriguez’s native language loss creates a distinct communicative barrier between him and his grandparents, causing him difficulty in genuine connection building. Although this is a relatively obvious implication of native language loss, it is nonetheless a concerning effect.

Personal Implications

Native language, as an integral part of the familial sphere, also has strong connections on a personal level. The degree of proficiency in one’s heritage language is intrinsically connected to self-identity. The Intercultural Development Research Association noted this connection, stating that “the child’s first language is critical to his or her identity. Maintaining this language helps the child value his or her culture and heritage, which contributes to a positive self-concept. (“Why Is It Important to Maintain the Native Language?” n.d.). Grace Cho, professor and researcher at California State University, concluded “that [heritage language] development can be an important part of identity formation and can help one retain a strong sense of identity to one's own ethnic group” (Cho, 2000, p. 369). In her research paper, she discussed the “identity crisis” many Korean American students face, due to the lack of proficiency they have in their heritage language (p. 374). Cho found that students with higher levels of fluency could engage in key aspects of their cultural community, which contributed greatly to overcoming identity crises and establishing their sense of self (p. 375).

Social Implications

Native language loss’ connections to family relationships and personal identity broaden to the social sphere, as well. Not only can native language loss benefit social interactions and one’s sense of cultural community, it has large-scale socioeconomic implication. In Cho’s study (2000) she found that college-aged participants with Korean ancestry were faced with many social challenges due to limited fluency in Korean. Participants labeled with poor proficiency remarked on the embarrassment they endured, leading them to withdraw from social situations that involved their own ethnic group (p. 376). These students thus felt isolated and excluded from the heritage culture their parents actively participated in. Native language loss also caused students to face rejection from their own ethnic communities, resulting in conflicts and frustration (p. 377). Participants that did not complain of any conflict actively avoided their Korean community due to their lack of proficiency (p. 378). Participants who were labeled as highly proficient in Korean told of the benefits this had, allowing them to “participate freely in cultural events or activities” (p. 374). Students who were able to maintain their native language were able to facilitate meaningful and beneficial interactions within their cultural community.

Melec Rodriguez made similar comments in his experience as a Spanish and English- speaking individual. Although his native language loss has negatively affected his familial relationships, he has found that, in the past, his Spanish fluency “allowed for a greater social network in [his] local community (school, church, events) as [he] was able to more easily understand and converse with others” (M. Rodriguez, personal communication, Nov. 3, 2019). As this research suggests, native language fluency has a considerate influence on social interactions. Essentially, a lack of fluency in one’s native language creates a social barrier; confident proficiency increases social benefits and allows genuine connections to form in one’s cultural community.

Benefits to the Economy

Maintaining native language not only benefits personal social spheres, but also personal career opportunities, and thereby the economy at large. Peeter Mehisto and David Marsh (2011), educators central to the Content and Language Integrated Learning educational approach, conducted research into the economic implications of bilingualism. Central to their discussion was the idea that “monolingualism acts as a barrier to trade and communication” (p. 26). Thus, bilingualism holds an intrinsic communicative value that benefits the economy. Although they discovered that the profits of bilingualism can change depending on the region, they referred to the Fradd/Boswell 1999 report, that showed Spanish and English-speaking Hispanics living in the United States earned more than Hispanics who had lost their Spanish fluency (Mehisto & Marsh, 2011, p. 22). Mehisto and Marsh also found that bilingualism makes many contributions to economic growth, specifically “education, government, [and] culture…” (p. 25). Bilingualism is valuable in a society in which numerous services are demanded by speakers of non-English languages. The United States is a prime example of a country in which this is the case.

Increased Job Opportunites

Melec Rodriguez, although he has experienced native language loss, explained that he experienced increased job opportunities due to his Spanish language background. He stated:

“Living in south Texas, it is very common for people to struggle with either English or Spanish, or even be completely unable to speak one of the languages. There are many restaurants or businesses which practice primarily in one language or the other. Being bilingual greatly increased the opportunity to get a job at many locations and could make or break being considered as a candidate” (M. Rodriguez, personal communication, Nov. 3, 2019).

Rodriguez went on to explain that if he were more confident in his native language, he would have been able to gain even more job opportunities. However, as his language loss has increased through the years, Spanish has become harder to utilize in work environments. Thus, maintaining one’s native language while assimilating to English is incredibly valuable, not only to the economy but also to one’s own occupational potential.

Cognitive and Academic Implications

Those who are losing native language fluency due to English assimilation are missing out on the cognitive and academic benefits of bilingualism. The Interculteral Development Research Association addresses an important issue in relation to immigrant children and academic success. When immigrant children begin at U. S. schools, most of their education is conducted in English. However, since these students are not yet fluent in English, they must switch to a language in which they function “at an intellectual level below their age” (“Why Is It Important to Maintain the Native Language?” n.d.). Thus, it is important that educational systems understand the importance of maintaining native language. It is also important for them to understand the misconceptions this situation poses for the academic assessments of such students.

In Enedina Garcia-Vazquez and her colleague's (1997) study of language proficiency’s connection to academic success, evidence was found that contradicted previous ideas about the correlation. The previous understanding of bilingualism in children was that it caused “mental confusion,” however, this was accounted for by the problematic methodologies used (Garcia- Vazquez, 1997, p. 395). In fact, Garcia-Vazquez et al. discuss how bilingualism increases “reasoning abilities” which influence “nonverbal problem-solving skills, divergent thinking skills, and field independence” (p. 396). Their study of English and Spanish speaking students revealed that proficiency in both languages leads to better scores on standardized tests (p. 404). The study agreed with previous research that showed bilingual children to exceed their monolingual peers when it came to situations involving “high level…cognitive control” (p. 396). Bilingualism thus proves to have a distinct influence on cognitive abilities.

Mehisto and Marsh (2011) discuss similar implications, citing research that reveals neurological differences in bilingual versus monolingual brains. This research indicates that the “corpus callosum in the brain of bilingual individuals is larger in area than is the case for monolinguals” (p. 30). This proves to be an important difference that reveals the bilingual individual’s superiority in many cognitive functions. When it comes to cognitive ability, Mehisto and Marsh discuss how bilinguals are able to draw on both languages, and thus “bring extra cognitive capacity” to problem-solving. Not only can bilingualism increase cognitive abilities, but it is also revealed to increase the “cognitive load” that they are able to manage at once (p.30). Many of the academic benefits of bilingualism focus on reading and writing skills. Garcia-Vazquez’s study focuses on how students who were fluent in both Spanish and English had superior verbal skills in both writing and reading, as well as oral communication (p. 404). However, research indicates that benefits are not confined to this area of academics. Due to increased cognition and problem-solving skills, research indicates that bilingual individuals who are fluent in both languages achieved better in mathematics than monolinguals, as well as less proficient bilinguals (Clarkson, 1992). Philip Clarkson, a mathematics education scholar, conducted one of many studies with students in Papua New Guinea. One key factor that Clarkson discovered was the importance of fluency level (p. 419). For example, if a student had experienced language loss in one of their languages, this loss directly impacted their mathematical competence. Not only does Clarkson’s research dissuade the preconceived notions that bilingualism gets in the way of mathematical learning, it actually proves to contribute “a clear advantage” for fluent bilingual students (p. 419). Clarkson goes on to suggest that this research disproves “the simplistic argument that has held sway for so long for not using languages other than English in Papua New Guinea schools” (p. 420). He thus implies the importance of maintaining the native language of the students in Papua New Guinea since this bilingual fluency directly impacts mathematical competency.

Both Garcia-Vazquez et al. and Mehisto and Marsh reveal how proficiency in two languages directly benefits a brain’s functions. Their research thus illustrates how maintaining one’s native language will lead to cognitive and academic benefits. Clarkson expands on the range of academic benefits a bilingual student might expect to have. It is important to note that,  as Clarkson’s research showed, the fluency of a bilingual student has much influence on their mathematical abilities. Thus, maintaining a solid fluency in one’s native language is an important aspect of mathematical success.

Suggested Educational Approach

The acculturation that occurs when immigrants move to the United States is the main force causing language loss. Because of the misconceptions of bilingual education, this language loss is not fully counteracted. Policymakers and educators have long held the belief that bilingual education is essentially a “cop-out” for immigrants who do not wish to assimilate to the United States’ English-speaking culture (Fillmore, 1991, p. 325). However, bilingual education is  central to the maintenance of native language. Due to the misconceptions and varied views on this controversial subject, there are two extremes of bilingual education in the United States. In Malarz’s (1998) curriculum handbook, she explains the two different viewpoints of these approaches. The first pedological style’s goal is to fully assimilate language-minority students to English as quickly and directly as possible. Its mindset is based on the idea that English is the language of the successful, and that by teaching this language as early as possible, language- minority children will have the best chance of prospering in mainstream society. However, this mindset is ignorant of the concept of subtractive bilingualism, and thus is not aware that its approach is causing native language loss. The second approach Malarz discusses is the bilingual education that places primary importance on retaining the student’s heritage culture, and thereby, their native language. This approach faces much criticism ,since it seems to lack the appropriate focus of a country that revolves around its English-speaking culture. Neither of these approaches poses a suitable solution to the issue at hand. Maintaining native language, as we have discussed, is extremely valuable. However, learning English is also an important goal for the future of language-minority students. Thus, the most appropriate bilingual educational approach is one of  careful balance. Native language, although important, should not be the goal, just as English assimilation should not be the central focus. Instead, the goal of bilingual education should be to combine the two former goals and consider them as mutually inclusive. This kind of balanced education is certainly not mainstream, although clearly needed. In Yan’s research regarding parental perceptions of maintaining native language, she found that parents sought after “bilingual schools or those that provided instruction with extra heritage language teaching” (2003, p. 99). Parents of language-minority students recognize the importance of this kind of education and educators and policymakers need to, as well.

The ramifications of native language loss should not be disregarded. Unless bilingual children are actively encouraged and assisted by parents and teachers to maintain their native language, these children will lose their bilingualism. They will not only lose their native fluency and the related benefits, but they will also experience the drawbacks associated with language loss. As the research presented in this article illustrates, there are several specific advantages to maintaining native language. The familial implications reveal that native language loss is detrimental to close relationships with parents and grandparents. Maintaining native language allows for more meaningful communication that can facilitate respect for these relationships as well as heritage culture as a whole. Native language maintenance is also an important factor in the retainment of personal identity. In regard to the social sphere, isolation and a feeling of rejection can occur if native language is not maintained. Additionally, it was found that maintaining native language allows for greater involvement in one’s cultural community. Other social factors included the benefits of bilingualism to the economy as well as the greater scope of job opportunities for bilingual individuals. A variety of studies concluded that there are many cognitive and academic benefits of retaining bilingualism. Due to the many effects of native language loss and the variety of benefits caused by maintaining native language, it can be determined that native language retainment is incredibly important.

Boutakidis, I. P., Chao, R. K., & Rodríguez, J. L. (2011). The role of adolescent’s native language fluency on quality of communication and respect for parents in Chinese and Korean immigrant families. Asian American Journal of Psychology, 2(2), 128–139. doi: 10.1037/a0023606.

Cho, G. (2000). The role of heritage language in social interactions and relationships: Reflections from a language minority group. Bilingual Research Journal, 24(4), 369-384. doi:10.1080/15235882.2000.10162773

Clarkson, P. C. (1992). Language and mathematics: A comparison of bilingual and monolingual students of mathematics. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 23(4), 417.

Fillmore, L. W. (1991). When learning a second language means losing the first. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 6(3), 323–346. doi: 10.1016/s0885-2006(05)80059-6

Garcia-Vazquez, E., Vazquez, L. A., Lopez, I. C., & Ward, W. (1997). Language proficiency and academic success: Relationships between proficiency in two languages and achievement among Mexican American students. Bilingual Research Journal, 21(4), 395.

Malarz, L. (1998). Bilingual Education: Effective Programming for Language-Minority  Students. Retrieved November 10, 2019, from http://www.ascd.org/publications/curriculum_handbook/413/chapters/Biling... n@_Effective_Programming_for_Language-Minority_Students.aspx .

Mehisto, P., & Marsh, D. (2011). Approaching the economic, cognitive and health benefits of bilingualism: Fuel for CLIL. Linguistic Insights - Studies in Language and Communication, 108, 21-47.

Rodriguez, M. (2019, November 3). Personal interview.

Why is it Important to Maintain the Native Language? (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.idra.org/resource-center/why-is-it-important-to-maintain-the... language/.

Yan, R. (2003). Parental Perceptions on Maintaining Heritage Languages of CLD Students.

Bilingual Review / La Revista Bilingüe, 27(2), 99-113. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25745785

Daryl Wade Baldwin, The Conversation Daryl Wade Baldwin, The Conversation

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Analysis: How Indigenous languages can be preserved, and why those efforts help revitalize culture

When the federal government set up boarding schools in the 19th century to assimilate Native American children into American culture, one of the objectives was to get them to turn away from the use of their native languages. In recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ Day in the U.S., The Conversation turned to Daryl Baldwin, a citizen of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma who is a leader in Native American language and cultural revitalization and a member of the National Council on the Humanities, for insight into a tribal community’s efforts working with a university to help bring languages back.

How were Indigenous languages lost?

Many actions throughout history put pressure on tribal communities to abandon the use of their languages. This included the forced assimilation that resulted from the Indian Civilization Act of 1819 . This act established Indian boarding schools to teach subjects such as math and science while suppressing the use of Indigenous languages and cultures.

Boarding schools lasted until the mid-20th century, and their effect was devastating for Indigenous communities and their languages . Linguists have estimated that prior to European settlement, there were 300 Indigenous languages spoken in what is now the United States. Communities are struggling to pass these languages on to a younger generation.

READ MORE: Analysis: How well-meaning land acknowledgements can erase Indigenous people and sanitize history

These affected communities include the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, of which I am a citizen. The Miami Tribe lost the last speakers of the Myaamia language during the mid-20th century in part due to these assimilation efforts. Additionally, the forced relocation of the Tribe from its homeland in the Ohio-Indiana region to Kansas, and eventually Oklahoma, during the 19th century caused the community to become fragmented due to some families remaining behind or being exempt from relocation.

These factors also increased the stress on the community to simply survive. Many tribal members and elders from this time have recounted how they didn’t pass the language on to their children for fear of discrimination .

Why bring the languages back?

Simply put, our languages help make us whole again. When we empower our cultural selves through speaking our languages, we begin to undo the damage caused by years of cultural and linguistic oppression.

For the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, language and cultural revitalization is a priority. We contribute significant time and financial resources into educational programs that help tribal citizens reconnect to their cultural heritage.

When we engage in revitalization activities, we are weaving strands of knowledge, cultural practices and other ways of being into our lives so we may draw on them as a source of community strength. Today, this encompasses all aspects of our lives , including art, games and food, as well as song and dance. For many of us, our Myaamia language is central to this process.

Since 1972, Miami University has been an important partner in this process of language and cultural revitalization. The Myaamia Center – the tribe’s research arm – directly supports the Myaamia Heritage Program . The program provides Miami Tribe students with tuition waivers and a unique opportunity to engage with their cultural heritage while earning a college degree.

What practical uses do these languages serve?

Language was an important aspect of my home when my four kids were young. Being able to say teepaalilaani – “I love you” – and to sing bedtime songs to my children – kiilhswa neewaki kiilhswa neewita … – “I see the moon, the moon sees me …” – in my native language was important to me.

Speaking my language connects me to our ancestral homelands of what are now parts of Ohio and Indiana. And doing so strengthens my relationship with my immediate family who also speak the language, and allows me to communicate in a way that is unique to my culture. My language may not be practical in holding a mainstream job or getting around in the world, but it is important to my identity as a Myaamia person. I feel grounded when I can speak my language with other members of my family and community.

READ MORE: States return recordings of Indigenous oral histories to tribal control

The Myaamia Center’s Nipwaayoni Acquisition and Assessment Team has evaluated programs since 2012 and found that Myaamia students regularly comment on how important speaking their language is to their identity.

Jenna Corral, a Myaamia student who graduated in 2021, described her experience: “Learning our language has been one of the best ways to make me feel connected to my identity and tribal community. Being able to learn and speak the language that was developed by my ancestors was something I never thought I would do. I am forever grateful for all I have learned about my heritage and culture and the positive impact it has had on my life.”

How do students benefit from learning these languages?

Myaamia tribal youth who participate in language and cultural revitalization programs are more engaged in tribal activities, internal assessment research shows. Participation has continually risen over the past 20 years, in part due to increased tribal enrollment encouraged by language and cultural revitalization. Engagement is increasing because people want to be involved and participate in what is happening. We have gained approximately 1,000 citizens in the last five years, boosting our enrollment to 6,780 today. This is a significant development because we view youth engagement as important to future growth of the tribal nation.

Myaamia students have been enrolled at Miami University since 1991. Students who attended before the creation of the Myaamia Heritage Course, which allows students to explore their Myaamia heritage, had a graduation rate of 56%. Since the addition of the course in 2003, our six-year graduation rate has increased to 92% – more than double the national six-year graduation rate of 41% for Native Americans – and 106 Myaamia students have earned degrees from Miami University.

We believe growth of tribal programs developed by the tribe’s Cultural Resources Office, the creation of the Myaamia Center and further development of the heritage program are at the core of what has driven this dramatic increase in our graduation rate .

How will these languages be preserved going forward?

Just as the boarding school era was designed to remove language and culture, our tribal efforts can put back what was taken.

But these efforts require financial resources. Some people feel that the federal government holds a degree of financial responsibility in the revitalization of these languages. This is because significant federal funding was used historically to eradicate these languages. The federal government spent $2.81 billion – adjusted for inflation – to support the nation’s Indian boarding schools, but only a fraction of that amount for Indigenous language revitalization today.

Partnerships between tribes and universities can be powerful in building a response to inequalities that have emerged through our recent history. Yes, language is an important part of what we do, but in the end it’s about knowledge, who holds that knowledge and how it’s expressed through our unique language and culture. Our partnership with Miami University is one such model.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .

Daryl Wade Baldwin is the executive director of the Myaamia Center at Miami University.

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Pope Francis apologizes for abuse at Indigenous schools, but the pain remains for many

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Speaking, writing and reading are integral to everyday life, where language is the primary tool for expression and communication. Studying how people use language – what words and phrases they unconsciously choose and combine – can help us better understand ourselves and why we behave the way we do.

Linguistics scholars seek to determine what is unique and universal about the language we use, how it is acquired and the ways it changes over time. They consider language as a cultural, social and psychological phenomenon.

“Understanding why and how languages differ tells about the range of what is human,” said Dan Jurafsky , the Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor in Humanities and chair of the Department of Linguistics in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford . “Discovering what’s universal about languages can help us understand the core of our humanity.”

The stories below represent some of the ways linguists have investigated many aspects of language, including its semantics and syntax, phonetics and phonology, and its social, psychological and computational aspects.

Understanding stereotypes

Stanford linguists and psychologists study how language is interpreted by people. Even the slightest differences in language use can correspond with biased beliefs of the speakers, according to research.

One study showed that a relatively harmless sentence, such as “girls are as good as boys at math,” can subtly perpetuate sexist stereotypes. Because of the statement’s grammatical structure, it implies that being good at math is more common or natural for boys than girls, the researchers said.

Language can play a big role in how we and others perceive the world, and linguists work to discover what words and phrases can influence us, unknowingly.

How well-meaning statements can spread stereotypes unintentionally

New Stanford research shows that sentences that frame one gender as the standard for the other can unintentionally perpetuate biases.

Algorithms reveal changes in stereotypes

New Stanford research shows that, over the past century, linguistic changes in gender and ethnic stereotypes correlated with major social movements and demographic changes in the U.S. Census data.

Exploring what an interruption is in conversation

Stanford doctoral candidate Katherine Hilton found that people perceive interruptions in conversation differently, and those perceptions differ depending on the listener’s own conversational style as well as gender.

Cops speak less respectfully to black community members

Professors Jennifer Eberhardt and Dan Jurafsky, along with other Stanford researchers, detected racial disparities in police officers’ speech after analyzing more than 100 hours of body camera footage from Oakland Police.

How other languages inform our own

People speak roughly 7,000 languages worldwide. Although there is a lot in common among languages, each one is unique, both in its structure and in the way it reflects the culture of the people who speak it.

Jurafsky said it’s important to study languages other than our own and how they develop over time because it can help scholars understand what lies at the foundation of humans’ unique way of communicating with one another.

“All this research can help us discover what it means to be human,” Jurafsky said.

Stanford PhD student documents indigenous language of Papua New Guinea

Fifth-year PhD student Kate Lindsey recently returned to the United States after a year of documenting an obscure language indigenous to the South Pacific nation.

Students explore Esperanto across Europe

In a research project spanning eight countries, two Stanford students search for Esperanto, a constructed language, against the backdrop of European populism.

Chris Manning: How computers are learning to understand language​

A computer scientist discusses the evolution of computational linguistics and where it’s headed next.

Stanford research explores novel perspectives on the evolution of Spanish

Using digital tools and literature to explore the evolution of the Spanish language, Stanford researcher Cuauhtémoc García-García reveals a new historical perspective on linguistic changes in Latin America and Spain.

Language as a lens into behavior

Linguists analyze how certain speech patterns correspond to particular behaviors, including how language can impact people’s buying decisions or influence their social media use.

For example, in one research paper, a group of Stanford researchers examined the differences in how Republicans and Democrats express themselves online to better understand how a polarization of beliefs can occur on social media.

“We live in a very polarized time,” Jurafsky said. “Understanding what different groups of people say and why is the first step in determining how we can help bring people together.”

Analyzing the tweets of Republicans and Democrats

New research by Dora Demszky and colleagues examined how Republicans and Democrats express themselves online in an attempt to understand how polarization of beliefs occurs on social media.

Examining bilingual behavior of children at Texas preschool

A Stanford senior studied a group of bilingual children at a Spanish immersion preschool in Texas to understand how they distinguished between their two languages.

Predicting sales of online products from advertising language

Stanford linguist Dan Jurafsky and colleagues have found that products in Japan sell better if their advertising includes polite language and words that invoke cultural traditions or authority.

Language can help the elderly cope with the challenges of aging, says Stanford professor

By examining conversations of elderly Japanese women, linguist Yoshiko Matsumoto uncovers language techniques that help people move past traumatic events and regain a sense of normalcy.

Cutting Edge | Indigenous languages: Gateways to the world's cultural diversity

Indigenous languages: gateways to the world

Language is inseparable from our way of being, our thoughts, our feelings, our joys and much more. It is through our language that we show who we are. If our language disappears, the whole socio-cultural foundation of our community of speakers is put at risk. – Maria Virginia Haoa, about the Rapa Nui language.

As we enter the International Decade for Indigenous Languages beginning in 2022, an alarming number of languages – a majority of which are Indigenous languages – are under threat worldwide . A study published in December 2021 by the Australian National University (ANU) raises the alarm on the future of linguistic diversity, underlining that of the world’s 7,000 recognized languages – 6,000 of which are Indigenous languages – around half are currently endangered, with 1,500 particularly at risk. Against that landscape, the UNESCO Atlas of Languages , unveiled last November, provides a comprehensive online instrument to monitor linguistic diversity worldwide through multidimensional indicators, track languages in danger and promote multilingualism.

Preserving Indigenous languages – as a reservoir of diversity and an essential component of collective and individual identity – stands as an ethical imperative indissociable from respect for the dignity of the individual. When an Indigenous language is lost, not only does the knowledge accumulated by the community of its speakers fade away, but also the world’s cultural and biological diversity is jeopardized. Safeguarding the diversity of languages is crucial to protecting both cultural and biological diversity, as stated by the  UNESCO 2001 Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity , which raised cultural diversity to the level of “the common heritage of humanity”, “as necessary for humankind as biodiversity is for nature”. It is through their language that people transmit cultural values to their children and fully exercise their rights and human dignity.

Inseparable from Indigenous languages, Indigenous cultures – which embody the intrinsic relation between culture and nature – are equally threatened with extinction as put forth by the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. The systemic discrimination suffered by many Indigenous communities across history together with the implementation of assimilationist cultural and educational policies in some countries, has hampered the safeguarding of their cultures and languages. The economic and social marginalization of Indigenous communities – 6.2% percent of the global population but 15 percent of the extreme poor – as well as their uneven access to education, and particularly to multilingual education, has disrupted the transmission and continued practice of their sets of knowledge and cultural expressions; reflecting this inequality, 47% of all Indigenous Peoples in employment have no education , compared to 17% of their non-Indigenous counterparts. Likewise, loss of access to land, territories, and natural resources – notably related to the insufficient regulation of collective ownership and use of Indigenous lands – has severely impacted Indigenous cultures and identities, which are deeply related to their natural and human environment. The major gap in life expectancy – which is some 20 years lower for Indigenous people worldwide – further testifies to the risk of cultural extinction – a situation particularly exemplified by the passing of many Indigenous elderly due to the COVID-19 pandemic over the past two years, carrying with them the knowledge they could not pass on to younger generations.

Knowledge, know-how and values conveyed by Indigenous languages and cultures are critical to set the world onto a more sustainable path. The contribution of Indigenous knowledge to climate action, biodiversity, food security, land and water management and health is undisputed worldwide and of paramount importance as we enter the final Decade of Action for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Speaking at the recent launch of the UNESCO Atlas of Languages , United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Francisco Cali Tzay, said that “Indigenous languages play an essential role in defining Indigenous relationship with Mother Earth, preserving Indigenous territory, transmitting Indigenous worldviews, science, history, and culture, and eradicating hunger by maintaining the integrity of Indigenous food systems.”

Anchoring Indigenous Peoples’ cultural rights across public policies

The creation of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in 2000 as an advisory body to the UN was a milestone for the recognition of Indigenous Peoples and their claims, giving particular importance to culture and education among its six core areas. Mandated to examine Indigenous issues related to economic and social development, culture, environment, education, health and human rights, the Permanent Forum provides expert advice and recommendations to the Economic and Social Council, as well as to programmes, funds and agencies of the United Nations. The Forum has issued a number of culture-related recommendations and reports over the past few years, particularly related to the documentation and repatriation of ceremonial objects and human remains, the need for tailored intellectual property frameworks to protect Indigenous knowledge and related culture-based economic opportunities, as well as the importance of traditional knowledge for resilience and disaster risk reduction.

Culture features prominently in the ILO’s 1989 Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention (No. 169) and in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) , both the main international instruments which frame Indigenous Peoples’ rights. Adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2007, pursuant to the appointment of a Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2001 by the Commission on Human Rights , UNDRIP is the most comprehensive statement of the rights of Indigenous Peoples ever developed, giving prominence to collective rights to a degree unprecedented in international human rights law. The UNDRIP has been translated into almost 60 languages, most of which are Indigenous.

The Declaration frames in particular the notion of Indigenous Peoples’ cultural rights, both individual and collective. Cultural rights include notably the principles of non-discrimination and cultural self-determination; the right for communities to practice and transmit their traditions and languages, as well as to protect, and repatriate as necessary, their heritage and objects, including objects of worship and human remains; the protection of intellectual property over their traditional knowledge and cultural expressions; the right not to suffer forced assimilation and to access their lands and cultural sites; as well as the right to maintain cross-border cultural cooperation within communities. Seventeen of the forty-five articles of the Declaration address Indigenous culture and how to protect and promote it. Indigenous Peoples’ relationship to their lands, territories and resources is at the heart of their identity, well-being and culture, and is the subject of the latest volume of The State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples . Culture is understood as inseparable from nature and related social practices and is a pillar of Indigenous people’s rights.

"The Asia and Pacific region has the highest proportion of Indigenous Peoples (70.5 per cent), followed by Africa (16.3 per cent), Latin America and the Caribbean (11.5 per cent), Northern America (1.6 per cent) and Europe and Central Asia (0.1 per cent)."

However, national policy frameworks have not systematically domesticated international instruments to encompass Indigenous Peoples’ cultural rights, including multilingualism. For example, only about 15 per cent of Indigenous Peoples live in the 23 countries that have ratified the ILO Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention (No. 169) , meaning that a majority of Indigenous Peoples continue to fall outside the protection it provides. The constitutional recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ linguistic and cultural rights is uneven, although strong institutional models do exist. In Mexico, Indigenous Peoples’ cultural and linguistic rights are explicitly recognized not only in the national constitution but also in the regional constitutions of 28 of the 32 federal states. Likewise, the constitutions of the Plurinational State of Bolivia (2009) and Ecuador (2008) do not just recognize Indigenous Peoples but aim to build a State based on the values of all nations present in its territory. They introduce several Indigenous principles, such as “sumak kawsay” (good way of living, Ecuador) and the Bolivian constitution recognises 36 official Indigenous languages. Peru institutionalized to a significant extent the participation of Indigenous Peoples in public policy decision-making, including cultural policies, through the General Consultation Law. In Europe, the Sami people are part of the few Indigenous Peoples that have their own political body of representation and self-management before the Governments of Sweden, Finland and Norway, by means of their parliament, including cultural policies.

The Asia and Pacific region has the highest proportion of Indigenous Peoples (70.5 per cent), followed by Africa (16.3 per cent), Latin America and the Caribbean (11.5 per cent), Northern America (1.6 per cent) and Europe and Central Asia (0.1 per cent).  Implementing the ILO Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention No. 169: Towards an inclusive, sustainable and just future (2020)

In many countries, laws and policies addressing Indigenous Peoples’ cultures and languages are fragmented over several institutions, meaning that there is little impact for and limited participation of Indigenous Peoples. Just this year, Canada adopted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act as “as a key step in renewing the Government of Canada’s relationship with Indigenous Peoples.” Some Latin American countries have recently strengthened their institutional model such as the Mexican National Institute of Indigenous Peoples, established in 2018, and Chile’s has presented a bill to establish a Ministry. Meanwhile, Uganda made steps forward through the recently-enacted Code of Cultural Policies on sovereign rights.

Language and traditional knowledge: inextricably linked

Despite some incremental progress in realising Indigenous Peoples’ cultural rights, a 2012 study by the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples – which provides the Human Rights Council with expertise and advice on the rights of Indigenous Peoples – lamented the “dismal state of Indigenous Peoples’ languages”, citing, for example, the loss or near extinction of some 205 of the 250 languages that existed in Australia prior to European settlement 300 years ago. It is estimated that one of the world’s languages disappears every two weeks , which means a whole worldview and an entire system of knowledge, practices and know-how vanishes. Indigenous Peoples’ languages are usually spoken by a minority of individuals within a country and have been, historically and today, subject to assimilationist policies. Often there is a close relationship between Indigenous Peoples’ cultures and languages and their physical and spiritual environments. Furthermore, urbanization resulting from economic pressures or forced displacement can separate Indigenous Peoples from the lands where their languages and cultures are practiced. Whilst some examples exist - such as the 1987 New Zealand Maori Language Act, the 2011 Moroccan Constitution which recognises the Tamazight language as an official language alongside Arabic, the Canadian 2019 Indigenous Languages Act and Peru’s 2021 National Policy on Native Languages, Oral Tradition and Interculturality to 2040 which enshrine the notion of intercultural bilingual education – Indigenous languages are often not officially recognized in legislation and policy, or insufficient funding is available for language revitalization. The use of mainstream or national languages in education systems also hinders the transmission of Indigenous languages in schools.

The UNESCO-led International Decade for Indigenous Languages is an opportunity to step up mainstreaming cultural and linguistic diversity into sustainable development efforts. Following the advances made during the 2019 International Year for Indigenous Languages , the UN General Assembly has invited UNESCO – building on its multidisciplinary mandate – to lead this decade of action, in cooperation with the UN system, particularly the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs and the Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights. The Organization’s work is guided by its 2017 Policy on Engaging with Indigenous Peoples that aligns with UNDRIP. The decade aims to ensure Indigenous Peoples’ right to preserve, revitalize and promote their languages – notably through policy development and multistakeholder dialogue – but also to enhance the transmission and safeguarding of Indigenous cultures. The strategic directions, thematic considerations and implementation guidelines for the decade are reflected in the Los Pinos Declaration , endorsed in February 2020 in Mexico City upon the impetus of Mexico, and in the Global Action Plan .

Indigenous languages and related knowledge are intrinsically linked to the preservation of biological and cultural diversity, as they are conducive to a systemic approach to culture and nature. Many Indigenous worldviews transcend the distinctions between science and culture, or eschew the boundaries between cultural heritage, natural heritage and intangible cultural heritage. For example, in the Lakota language of North America, the word “Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ” means “all is related” or “all my relatives” – both human and non-human. These knowledge systems, on par with scientific disciplines, are critical to sustainable development. Echoing this recognition, the UNESCO Local and Indigenous Knowledge Programme has worked for the past 20 years to integrate such knowledge into international contemporary science-policy-society fora on issues such as biodiversity, climate change and disaster preparedness. Likewise, the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage recognizes the rich diversity of living heritage, and the contribution of this heritage to the vitality, strength and wellbeing of communities, also allowing Indigenous Peoples to shape the international heritage discourse and to have their experiences and needs recognized.

“The major influence on the sorry state of their languages is the fact that indigenous peoples are threatened themselves,” says Minnie Degawan (Igorot, Philippines)

Having a say: Indigenous languages in the classroom and cultural spaces

Education is at the heart of ensuring the preservation of Indigenous languages and traditional knowledge, as well as being a fundamental human right. Indigenous Peoples are entitled to rights related to education as enshrined in the UNDRIP, the 1989 UN Convention of the Rights of the Child and the UNESCO 1960 Convention against Discrimination in Education . The development of bilingual intercultural education programmes or training manuals is essential to allow systemic transmission of knowledge and safeguard Indigenous cultures. The importance of multicultural and multilingual education is expected to be further underlined as part of the ongoing revision of the UNESCO 1974 Recommendation concerning Education for International Understanding, Co-operation and Peace and Education relating to Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms . Research has demonstrated that teaching children Indigenous knowledge in traditional ways conserves the communities’ cultures , reduces school drop-out rates, helps with disciplinary problems and leads to economic growth. Indigenous education takes a holistic approach to ensuring that children can adapt and respond to the challenges and demands of the world today.

UNESCO promotes the right to education and particularly education in mother tongue, including Indigenous languages, as well as the intergenerational transmission of intangible cultural heritage through formal and non-formal education. The Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples states that quality education for Indigenous Peoples means “ education that is well resourced, culturally sensitive, respectful of heritage and that takes into account history, cultural security and integrity, encompasses human rights, community and individual development .” This has unfortunately rarely been the case. Positive examples include Paraguay’s 1994 national policy of bilingual teaching, and language nests – which operate like a nursery, with older community members providing childcare while speaking their language. Other examples can be found in New Zealand, Canada, the United States of America, Australia, Finland, and the Russian Federation. In Nicaragua, UNESCO supported Mayangna communities in the Bosawás Biosphere Reserve , using intercultural bilingual education for Indigenous Peoples to adapt curriculum to their cultural context by developing classroom materials in their language and teaching their knowledge of the environment while also building social and cultural capital. The Xtaxkgakget Makgkaxtlawana: the Centre for Indigenous Arts of the Totonac people of Veracruz, Mexico passes on traditional knowledge of pottery, textiles, paintings, art of healing, traditional dance, music, theatre and cuisine, in the Totonec language.

Museums are also key spaces for education and dialogue, both for actively engaging Indigenous Peoples in cultural institutions and for displaying Indigenous artefacts, with a view to promote an appreciation of Indigenous cultural heritage. For example, the National Museum of the American Indian displays original copies of treaties signed between the United States of America and Indigenous Peoples, whilst he Sámi Museum Siida, Finland, is an example of how museums that are managed by or in close collaboration with Indigenous Peoples play a key role in the safeguarding and transmission of cultural heritage. UNESCO is also supporting the creation of an underwater cultural heritage museum in Titicaca Lake , located in the Andes mountains between Bolivia and Peru, in benefit and cooperation with local Indigenous populations, that unveils civilizations whose vestiges are now underwater.

Museums are increasingly called to be on the frontline in tackling misappropriation of indigenous cultural heritage. Unfortunately, several museums, both private and public, hold and display indigenous cultural heritage without the consent of the peoples concerned. The UNESCO 2015 Recommendation concerning the protection and promotion of Museums and collections, their diversity and their Role in society urges Member states, when appropriate, to engage in dialogues concerning the management and possible return of heritage which can be initiated between Indigenous Peoples and museums in possession of collections relating to them. The UNESCO 1970 Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property makes reference to "tribal and Indigenous Peoples" and the 1995 UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects reinforces these provisions. In reality, it is often difficult for Indigenous Peoples to receive protection and reparation when their cultural heritage, particularly intangible heritage, is misappropriated, as noted by the Expert Mechanism. Yet in 2020 the National Museum of Finland announced the return of 28 funeral objects and human remains to four Indigenous communities in the United States under the aegis of the UNESCO 1970 Convention.

Overall, engaging Indigenous Peoples in the cultural sector in more systemic ways is critical in shaping a more comprehensive narrative and build inclusive societies. Efforts are being undertaken to engage Indigenous communities in the management of cultural sites and museums and, more broadly, the design and implementation of cultural policies, as well as to ensure equitable representation of Indigenous cultures through mainstream cultural industries. For example, Mexican actress and UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Indigenous Peoples, Yalitza Aparicio , won great acclaim for her role in Alfonso Cuarón’s film Roma. Some Indigenous groups are becoming more vocal, stressing that their cultures should not be viewed as relics of the past but instead be understood as living and dynamic.

A number of initiatives at national or local level are intended to revitalize indigenous cultural practices. As part of the EU funded initiative on Governance for Culture in Developing Countries, within the UNESCO 2005 Convention for the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, a project is being developed by Mexico to adapt public policies to support Indigenous and Community Media and incorporate indigenous content into public and commercial media. UNESCO’s International Fund for Cultural Diversity has financed projects to support Indigenous Peoples’ creative expressions, from training youth in the steel pan art in Saint Lucia and budding filmmakers in Guatemala, to supporting musicians from Namibia’s San community to access global markets and strengthening Indigenous e-books in Brazil. Furthermore, media and information technology can provide effective tools for the revitalisation of Indigenous languages. The Google search engine in the Māori language of New Zealand and the online Cree Dictionary project in Canada are among the positive examples. Recognizing the importance of community radio, UNESCO’s International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC) has funded approximately thirty Indigenous people’s projects, since 2000. In addition, two year budget period, UNESCO supports, on average, fifty community radio stations.

Earth’s unsung environmental stewards

Indigenous Peoples are on the front lines of climate change, as well as its counterpart, biodiversity loss, as its irreparable damage to the natural environment has a devastating impact on their way of life. Both issues are alarming, with a 2021 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report sounding a “ code red for humanity ” and a 2019 UNESCO Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) report signalling that around 1 million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction , many within decades. Indigenous Peoples, in particular those who live on small islands, in deserts or in the Arctic region, have been severely affected by climate change. The 2015 Paris Agreement recognises that climate action must “be based on and guided by […] knowledge of Indigenous Peoples and local knowledge systems” whilst the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity calls on States Parties to “respect, preserve and maintain knowledge, innovations and practices of Indigenous and local communities embodying traditional lifestyles relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity”. There is a recognition, however, that implementation is patchy.

Traditional knowledge understood as a living body of knowledge that is developed, sustained and passed on within a community, forms an integral part of Indigenous cultural and spiritual identity. It encompasses knowhow, skills, innovations and practices, as well as traditional cultural expressions, including dances, songs, handicrafts, designs, ceremonies, tales.

The nomadic Fulani pastoralists in the Sahel region of Chad observe the weather and flowering plants to predict the rains and to know where to move with their herds, whilst for centuries, Indigenous Andean farmers have successfully forecasted the forthcoming rainy season and El Niño conditions by observing the Pleiades star cluster . Traditional knowledge continues to innovate and adapt – the hallmarks of vibrant, living cultures. For example, fishermen in Vanuatu have incorporated nylon nets into traditional fishing techniques whilst traditional gothi tree canoes of fishermen in Solomon Islands now use a motor. Meanwhile, the Siã Shanenawa people in the Brazilian Amazon are using drones and artificial intelligence to tackle deforestation .

Indigenous Peoples are often better positioned than traditional science to observe and understand ecosystems and provide information on local biodiversity and climatic change. For example, the Vanua Navakavu in the Fiji Islands documented the vernacular names for over 1,000 species over a 50-year period. Since 1999 Mongolian pastoralists observing the “torgnii hee boroo” (silk embroidery rains) have reported the degradation of pastures due to changes in rain quality and distribution where scientific data show no significant change for the same area and period. Tongan farmers use their traditional calendar to decide when to plant and harvest and their observations of weather change are crucial for understanding climate change impacts and policy responses. In Siberia, Nenets reindeer herders have collaborated with NASA to study weather conditions: NASA provided satellite imagery, while herders provided observations of weather and pasture conditions. The ancestral voyaging knowledge of the Pacific and tradition fish weirs (stone-wall traps that rely on tides) are also being mobilized for ocean biodiversity and climate change monitoring, particularly in the context of the UN Decade for Ocean Science , whose implementation is entrusted to UNESCO. To bridge the Decades for Ocean Science and Indigenous Languages, the Pacific Community (SPC) advocates for the role of Indigenous languages in transmitting ocean knowledge as part of the Pacific Community Centre for Ocean Science – a knowledge hub on ocean science for governments and communities – and through policy advice to the Office of the Pacific Ocean Commissioner.

Indigenous Peoples own, occupy, or use a quarter of the world’s surface area, and it is estimated that at least 1.65 billion Indigenous Peoples and members of local communities live in important biodiversity conservation areas, home to 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity. A report from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Fund for the Development of the Indigenous Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean (FILAC) showed that about 45% of the intact forests in the Amazon Basin were in Indigenous territories . Within the first draft of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, human rights groups emphasize that the target to safeguard 30% of the world’s biodiversity by 2030 should not lead to the displacement of local communities.

There is an expanding body of knowledge that demonstrates the contributions of Indigenous Peoples in managing land. The Dayek people of Borneo, Indonesia and the Karen of Thailand have used traditional rotational farming practices to regeneratelarge tracts of forest affected by commercial logging. A 2017 joint UNESCO publication Knowing our Lands and Resources also documents examples of Indigenous management of land in Asia, including the begnas ritual system of Sagada, Northern Philippines, forest conservation by the Kaani Indigenous community of Kanyakumari forests, India, Indigenous knowledge of Qanats (aqueducts) in the Tangsayad-Sabzkouh biosphere reserve, Iran and pastureland management in the Kailash sacred landscape, Nepal. A ruling by Panama’s Supreme Court of Justice in November 2020 led to the official creation of a comarca , or protected Indigenous territory, for the Naso Tjër Di people, a decision resting in part on evidence of the role that Indigenous groups play in protecting the environment. The 2018 UNESCO publication Indigenous knowledge and climate change documents other experiences.

Indigenous communities are increasingly central in the sustainable management of natural, cultural or mixed World Heritage sites. The inclusion of cultural landscapes as a new category of World Heritage properties back in 1992 expanded conceptions of heritage, as illustrated by the renomination of New Zealand’s “ Tongariro National Park ” in 1993 and Australia’s “ Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park ” in 1994 for their cultural values, according to the wishes of the traditional Aboriginal owners. In 2018, UNESCO launched the International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on World Heritage to strengthen dialogue with Indigenous Peoples and ensure policies respect their rights. Respect for Indigenous people’s rights is increasingly embedded in the management plans of World Heritage sites, such as the site of the Megalithic Circles in Wanar, Senegal or the Okapi Wildlife Reserve, Democratic Republic of the Congo. A recent partnership was also enacted at France’s Lagoons of New Caledonia World Heritage site as part of the Resilient Reefs Initiative , in which the customaries of eight chiefdoms across the island committed to using sustainable methods of turtle fishing in line with their customs but preserving the species threatened with extinction.

Traditional knowledge also contributes to the resilience – particularly food security – of Indigenous communities in the face of environmental degradation, as documented in a 2012 UNESCO study Weathering Uncertainty: Traditional Knowledge for Climate Change Assessment and Adaptation . The publication showed that local and indigenous farmers in Bolivia, China and Kenya who, over the centuries, have maintained different varieties of crops were able to switch to more wind-, pest- and drought-resistant varieties when the impacts from climate change began affecting their yields. The FAO Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems promote the importance of traditional management and use of resources to ensure food and livelihood security in the face of climatic variability and natural hazards. Andean agriculture in Peru is an interesting example of the adaptation and knowledge of farmers to their environment for more than 5000 years, intrinsically linked to their strong social organization with their own norms and cultural rituals as the tribute to the “Pachamama” (mother earth) and the “apus” (local gods represented by hills, mountains, rivers and atmospheric phenomena).

The World Health Organization (WHO) as well as international health studies are increasingly recognizing traditional health care and its contribution to SDG 3 (health ). During the pandemic, Indigenous communities, many without access to health centres, have a ddressed COVID-19 symptoms with traditional medicine . In Latin America, for example, Indigenous healers often combine an extensive pharmacopeia with ritual practices to jointly restore bodily and spiritual balance, as noted by the UNESCO International Bioethics Committee in a 2013 report on the ethics of traditional medicine . The Yanomamï of Venezuela, have names for 50 types of bees that provide honey for food or medicine. The Jambi Huasi (Health House) in Otavalo, Ecuador, provides such services in the Quechua language , whilst the pharmaceutical knowledge of some 980 species of the Kallawaya itinerant male healers who practice ancestral medical techniques in Bolivia is one of the richest in the world. The inscription on the UNESCO Lists of Intangible Cultural Heritage of yoga (India), Taijiquan (China), the acupuncture and moxibustion of traditional Chinese medicine or the traditions and practices associated with the Kayas (Kenya) also testify to a growing recognition of traditional health care systems.

Securing intellectual property frameworks, both individual and collective, remains critical to avoid misuse or misappropriation of Indigenous knowledge, as testified by the increasing records of exploitation of such knowledge without the consent of or benefit to the knowledge bearers, notably by the tourism, fashion, food or pharmaceutical industries. This issue was already enshrined in the UNDRIP, which states that Indigenous Peoples have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their intellectual property over cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and traditional cultural expressions. The I ntergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore , established in 2000 by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), has served as a forum to discuss intellectual property issues arising in the context of access to genetic resources and benefit-sharing, and protection of traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions; a related international legal instrument is currently being negotiated. However, while this legal instrument does recognize Indigenous intellectual property, it focuses on individual intellectual property and product-related patents, rather than community-owned collective property. Tailored regulatory frameworks are needed to encompass the specificity of Indigenous cultures and tackle misappropriation. The UNESCO 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, whose concepts and operational tools focus on bearers and communities, explicitly promotes the communities’ ownership of their cultural expressions.

Indigenous Peoples – as repositories of knowledge, practices, worldviews, wisdom, and heritage – play a fundamental role in sustainable development as guardians of vast swathes of biological and cultural diversity. But they can only do so when their rights are protected. The UNDRIP calls for Indigenous Peoples’ participation in all decisions that will affect their lives through their “free, prior and informed consent”, for States to provide effective measures to combat and eliminate discrimination against Indigenous Peoples, as well as their right to remain distinct and to pursue their own visions of economic and social development, thus safeguarding their cultures.

The protection and promotion of Indigenous Peoples’ languages and cultures requires States to fully engage them, and recognize them in their constitutions, laws and policies . At the national level, addressing cultural policies for the benefit of and together with Indigenous Peoples requires a comprehensive and multi-layered approach, encompassing a broad spectrum of dimensions, from the preservation and use of Indigenous languages to the safeguarding of living heritage practices, the protection of Indigenous cultural heritage (including territories and artefacts) to the promotion of Indigenous cultural expressions. While some regions have made progress, recognising cultural and ethnic diversity within countries, including through harmonizing legal and institutional frameworks, policies are still lagging behind to adequately address policy concerns with regard to the safeguarding of Indigenous cultures, which is detrimental to the sustainable development of these communities. Participatory approaches should be developed to support cultural self-determination, notably by including Indigenous practices, protocols and ethical standards in heritage safeguarding mechanisms, supporting participatory inventories of cultural heritage, as well as cross-border cooperation within the same community.

There is an urgent need to enhance the intergenerational transmission of Indigenous knowledge, alongside and within formal education through more systemic educational systems and instruments . Efforts are being made to bring Indigenous language and knowledge into school curricula, as well as to move learning back into the community, thus reaffirming the importance of transmission. Effectively including Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge, holistic worldviews and cultures in the development of education policies, programmes, projects and practices and promoting their perspectives, would provide meaningful learning opportunities that are equally accessible and appropriate for all Indigenous people, as advocated in the recently-launched UNESCO Futures of Education report . Particular attention should be given to priority groups that are critical for transmission, particularly women, youth and the elderly.

Indigenous Peoples have expressed concerns over existing international intellectual property mechanisms as being inadequate to protect Indigenous knowledge and cultural expressions from over-commercialization, misuse and appropriation, including in the digital environment. Concerns identified include the fact that intellectual property systems are focused on protecting the intellectual property of individuals rather than collectives, the view that intellectual property as alienable, and that they are not consistent with Indigenous Peoples’ customary laws and policies related to their knowledge. An expanded view of intellectual property protection could make it possible to protect indigenous cultures against misappropriation and enable communities to control and benefit collectively from its commercial exploitation.

UNESCO Culture Conventions should be further harnessed to support the effective recognition and contribution of Indigenous cultures and languages within their national legal and policy frameworks. As recommended at the webinar on Cultural policies and Indigenous Peoples organised on 30 November 2021 by UNESCO, Culture Conventions should provide a platform to enhance dialogue between Member States and Indigenous Peoples, on the example of the International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on World Heritage , established in 2018. Specific provisions focusing on Indigenous peoples' participation, as already introduced in the 1972 and 2003 UNESCO Conventions, may also be strengthened within other Conventions. The impact of the Culture Conventions on Indigenous Peoples and cultures should be further assessed, notably as regards intellectual property, forced displacement, systematic consultation and participation.

The International Decade of Indigenous Languages is also the occasion to strengthen UNESCO’s work, to reinforce the rights of Indigenous Peoples, particularly cultural rights. Thirty years after being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the words of K'iche' Maya (Guatemala) human rights activist, Rigoberta Menchú continue to ring true: “Peace cannot exist without justice, justice cannot exist without fairness, fairness cannot exist without development, development cannot exist without democracy, democracy cannot exist without respect for the identity and worth of cultures and peoples.” This includes the precious identity and rich cultures of all Indigenous Peoples.

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Geolinguistics: Language on the Land

At the intersection of geography, linguistics and culture, language is identity: a case for indigenous language revitalization, november 9, 2018 rebekah ingram.

Many thanks to Melanie Lefebvre (@theoriginalmel on Twitter) for this week’s blog post. This paper, “Language is Identity:A Case for Indigenous Language Revitalization” was written for Concordia University’s course INDI 620/2 Language, Land, Identity, taught by Professor Elizabeth Fast. Melanie’s glorious artwork, a watercolour painting of buffalo anatomy is also presented here.

Maarsi for your work, Melanie!

By: Melanie Lefebvre   Concordia University

October 31, 2018

êkoni ê-kî-kiskinohamâkot tâpiskôc onipâwinihk ohci.

it was as if the porcupine had taught her in her sleep.

Sarah Whitecalf Lac La Ronge Lectures

I sat in the James Bay Cree class at Native Montreal feeling a sense of peace. I was among other Natives, we laughed easily together, nothing needed explaining, least of all the context of colonization. We introduced ourselves to each other, shared where we are from and our Nations, and what we do. Although we came from different communities and at varied stages in our lives, we were all there for one reason: Reconnection to our Cree identity.

During the class, I was surprised that more than half of its participants, including myself, expressed that although they are Plains Cree, this was the only access to any Cree dialect available in Montreal. James Bay Cree or iiyiyuu ayimuun as its originally called is spoken by almost 20,000 people in the Eeyou Istchee region (Cree Nation Government, 2018). The fact that we Plains Cree were willing to learn another dialect for lack of access speaks volumes to our desperation to find ourselves and our ancestors.

The Colonizer’s Language

Martiniquais psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary, and writer Frantz Fanon says, “Every colonized people—in other words, every people in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local cultural originality—finds itself face to face with the language of the mother country” (Fanon, pg. 18). For Indigenous peoples in what some call Canada, this could not be truer. Although built on Indigenous land, Canada’s two official languages are those of the settler colonizers: English and French. With 60 Indigenous languages in so-called Canada and many under threat with as few as a half dozen native speakers (Leavitt, 2018), it is shocking that Indigenous languages remain unofficial. It is estimated that before European contact, the Plains Cree language had 600,000 words – today there are approximately 15,000 (Leavitt, 2018).

Canadian schools have not been required to teach Indigenous languages and as such, most Indigenous children have grown up with a colonizer language being their first. For Indigenous peoples whose languages are steeped in oral history and storytelling since esko togihk aski – time immemorial, their ties to the Land, community and indeed themselves have been abruptly severed. When both language and land are under threat, and in some cases lost forever, this interruption spreads like cracked glass with loss of culture slowly and insidiously erasing entire nations.

Indigenous peoples have faced this erasure since first contact through government policy, residential schools, abrogation of Treaty rights, banning of tradition, restriction and murder of Native bodies, the child welfare system, and genocide (Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Vol. 1). Similarly, landscapes have changed since Europeans first arrived in the 15 th century with the rise of capitalism, resources industries and eventually, petro-capitalism “founded on the extraction, distribution, and consumption of petroleum” (Oxford, 2018). The success of petro-capitalism is so exploitive of the Land and Indigenous peoples, and so prosperous that it has created an entirely new progeny: the Plastisphere – a community of microbes that live exclusively on plastics (Davis, 2016).

The Link between Language and Land

The Cree worldview, as with other Indigenous Nations, holds that everything that comes from the Land is related: Wahkohtowin – kinship. Cree epistemology, cosmology and kinship systems are reflected in the Medicine Wheel, a representation of the life journey and the values that the Cree live by in relation to all things. The oldest being on the Land is the rock grandfather. The moon is grandmother. The older brother is the bison. The stories told by Elders and Knowledge Holders include these beings and what they have to teach in order to live miyo pimâtisiwin , the good life (Makosis, pg. 14)

(Nehiyawewin Cree Language and Culture Guide to Implementation, 2006)

The Cree language, as with other Indigenous Languages, developed orally over millennia, passed down in stories and experience from generation to generation. As a dynamic language with verbs at its core, each word forms an experience. Words are created by consulting Elders who decide the word to create to best express a particular experience. For example, in Plains Cree, mostosonâhk means in the buffalo country ; nâcipahâw means s/he rounds up buffalo to lead to a buffalo jump ; tastâpasikêw means s/he makes smoke to drive off insects using buffalo grass . (Plains Cree Dictionary, 2018)

In the process of naming, one can get a full sense of the Indigenous relationship to the Land. Consider the original name for Lake Manitoba: Manitowapow , the strait of the spirit or manitobau . This name refers to the roaring sound produced by pebbles on a beach on Manitoba Island in Lake Manitoba. The Cree believe the noise sounds like a manito, a spirit, beating a drum. It has also been suggested that the name comes from the Assiniboine words mini and tobow , meaning lake of the Prairie . An additional source is Manitoo Ahbee , from the Ojibway meaning Where the Creator sits . Direct experience on the land shapes Cree words and thus, the

Cree worldview (Sinclair, M., Storm, K., & Forman, K., 2008).

If we compare Anishnaabemowin words with those of Plains Cree for specific occurrences throughout the seasonal year, we can see that language is directly affected by the location, landscape, animals, plants, solar system: universe.

(BigCanoe, Ingram, Manitowabi, 2017)

What happens if an animal or plant is forced into extinction, or disconnection from the Land occurs as in the case of urban Natives, the words for those relationships to animals and plants become lost, and thus culture and specific social and behavioral knowledge: essentially, nêhiýâwiwin – ᓀᐦᐃᔮᐃᐧᐃᐧᐣ – Creeness.

At the end of the first James Bay Cree class, one Plains Cree student mentioned how unlike this dialect is from that of the Plains and that was unsettling. The Plains Cree students looked around at each other, unsure of what to do. At this very moment, the centre’s coordinator informed us that a Plains Cree person living in Montreal had offered to create a talking circle and although not a teacher, she could offer what she had learned in her first Plains Cree classes. We all jumped at the chance to be part of the talking circle and invited other Nêhiyawak (Plains Cree people) to join. In the first class we were three; by the fourth we were eight.

ohcitaw ~   ᐅ ᐦᒋᑕᐤ ~   destiny

Forced Assimilation & Language Loss

Disconnection from language/culture due to colonization has affected Indigenous peoples in all aspects of their lives leading to loss of identity, addiction, mental illness, disease, the disintegration of family, community and nations (Kirmayer, Simpson, & Cargo, 2003). Colonization is thus a significant determinant of Indigenous health and well-being. Without language/culture, Indigenous peoples experience “disruption or severance of ties… to their land,

weakening or destroying closely associated cultural practices and participation in the traditional economy essential for health and well being” (Mowbray, 2007).

A 2007 study of 150 Indigenous B.C. communities with at least half of citizens at a conversational level of their traditional language, suicides among youth were so low that in some cases it was zero. This is compared to communities with less than 50% of citizens having traditional language knowledge: Youth suicide is six times higher on average (Hallett, Chandler, & Lalonde, 2007).

Like Cree peoples, many Indigenous worldviews hold the individual as an extension of the Land, community, animals, plants and the elements. The ongoing colonial project has always endeavored to cut the ties Indigenous individuals have with their communities, to weaken them through violence and oppression, so each individual succumbs to assimilation within the larger urban body politic. Capitalist entities like governments and corporations have forced Indigenous peoples into unnatural settled conditions to claim geographic sovereignty in the arctic (Watson, 2009), to exploit the earth’s resources (Sandlos & Keeling, 2016), as well as “employ security forces to “protect” the extractive projects, and in doing so often commit various human rights abuses including sexual violence as a silencing strategy against Indigenous women” (Simmons, 2016).

As a tool of continued colonization, stereotypes masquerading as identities of Indigenous peoples are perpetuated throughout colonial society (think the noble savage and the drunken Indian; medicine men, warriors). Racism is a constant challenge in the face of efforts to reclaim or at least maintain identity (Durie, Milroy, & Hunter, 2009) and the representation of Indigenously-healthy identities is at a major deficit within mainstream media.

Challenges to Language Revitalization

The need and desire to learn Indigenous languages is alive, however the challenges are real.

Older people within Indigenous communities were subjected to the horrors of residential schools and socio-economic racism, erasing and forcing their languages and identity underground. For elders who link their identity to shame and fear, passing language/culture on to younger generations may feel harmful. However, bridging the gap between generations is necessary to revive languages as well as instill pride in Native youth (Saba, 2017).

Anishinaabe scholar Leanne Simpson sees Indigenous middle-agers as having the opportunity to build this bridge, helping Elders understand the contemporary world to better connect with the Indigenous youth of today (Simpson, 2018).

Of course, nurturing Indigenous languages requires money and chronic underfunding of Indigenous children is no secret. At the ­federal level, the combined annual budget for all Indigenous language programs in Canada is $9.1 million, compared to funding for the promotion of English and French was $348.2 million 2014–2015. As official languages of Nunavut, Inuktitut and ­Inuinnaqtun language programs received approximately $44 per person, per year. Contrast this with the province’s francophone minority receive about $4,000 per person every year (Besner, 2016).

Statistics provided by the Assembly of First Nations show that the cost of incarcerating one Aboriginal person for one year is $100,000 – almost ten times the amount of what it costs to send an Indigenous person to university for one year: $13,200 (AFN, 2010). Mi’kmaq lawyer, scholar and activist Pamela Palmater points out that First Nation post-secondary education funds have been capped since 1996 and if these were raised to $20,000 per person per year, equal to what other Canadian children receive, even a four-year degree would be cheaper than one year of prison (Palmater, 2011).

If we are serious about Indigenizing the academy and supporting language revitalization, funding and access must be part of the approach as well as settler responsibility and accountability: Actively supporting and making space for Indigenous content creators and educators, recognizing the value of and implementing Indigenous lifeways and systems of governance, and championing Indigenous learners.

Perhaps developing urban reserves, like those of Peguis First Nation (Santin, 2010), will provide important links to community for Indigenous peoples, particularly youth – the future of Indigenous languages. With more Indigenous language classes, software applications, websites, recordings, online dictionaries and language learning books, access to languages is broader than in the past, which provides hope.

The larger Canadian settler society needs to recognize that Indigenous language learning is not simply learning a second language as a past-time, for travel or business, but it is instead to find what is lost, to heal that which is broken, and to nurture those who are to come.

In Plains Cree class, a student who recently joined the talking circle is a direct descendant of Pîhtokahanapiwiyin, Chief Poundmaker. Pîhtokahanapiwiyin was named “Poundmaker” because of his skill in hunting bison and making buffalo pounds used to trap bison and bring food to the people – one of the most important people in the community. Pîhtokahanapiwiyin was also known as a great orator. I wonder if his descendent who sits before me will one day be able to read his words and know the true meaning within the context of a vibrant, thriving Nîhiyaw Tâpisinowin – Cree worldview (Napoleon & Saxon, 2011).

Diorama of a buffalo pound at the  Royal Alberta Museum

Indigenous communities are working hard to maintain and revitalize their languages. In Kahnawake, Kanienkehaka territory, local language immersion programs are well underway as well as a five-year strategic plan for language revitalization (Deer, 2018). Kwi Awt Stelmexw is an arts & education organization on traditional Sḵwx̱wú7mesh territory built to foster a society of culturally and artistically fluent Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Kwi Awt Stelmexw, 2015). Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning in Yellowknife is a community-led initiative giving access to land-based experience rooted in Indigenous knowledge, values and laws (Dechinta, 2018). Native Montreal, founded by Indigenous people for Indigenous people supporting the holistic health, cultural strength and success of Montreal’s Indigenous community, offers traditional Indigenous language courses, at no cost, with priority given to Indigenous students (Indigenous language classes, 2018).

These are just a few examples among many of Indigenous communities taking the reins to provide their peoples a way to return home, to find their songs, stories, and ceremonies. Through this, they will once again be free to live miyo pimâtisiwin , the good life (Makosis, pg. 14). Western civilization is young and thought of in terms of years, decades, centuries, whereas Indigenous lifeways have been here since esko togihk aski . And so, perhaps Indigenous peoples would benefit from remembering: Natives have a much longer time frame and we know that the one thing we have to do as Native peoples is to keep our communities alive long enough, keep our peoples alive and thriving long enough, and we will win (Jago, 2018).

It is time, she said, we have strayed far enough and need a light to guide us home,

will you hold up your life so we can see?

(Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux, 2013)

Bibliography

Ahenakew, F., & Wolfart, H. (1993).  The Cree Language Is Our Identity . Winnipeg, MB: The University of Manitoba Press.

Besner, L. (2016, March 25). In Their Own Words: The Fight to Preserve Our Cree Language.  The Walrus .

BigCanoe, R., Ingram, R., & Manitowabi, B. (2017).  Situated Revitalization Theory [Scholarly project].

Davis, H. (2018, January).  The Queer Futurity of Plastic . Lecture presented at Heather Davis: The Queer Futurity of Plastic, De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/158044006

Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning – Arm Yourself With Knowledge. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://dechinta.ca/

Deer, J. (2018, May 04). Skátne Enionkwaió’ten For Kanien’kéha Survival.  The Eastern Door . Retrieved from https://www.easterndoor.com/2018/05/04/skatne-eionkwaioten-for-kanienkeha-survival/

Diorama of a buffalo pound, Royal Alberta Museum [Digital image]. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Royal_Alberta_Museum_(8724641368).jpg

Durie, M., Millroy, H., & Hunter, E. (2009). Mental health and the indigenous peoples of Australia and New Zealand.  Healing Traditions: The Mental Health of Aboriginal Peoples in Canada, 36-55.

Fanon, F. (., & Frantz Fanon ; translated from the French by Richard Philcox. (2008).  Black skin, white masks . New York: Grove Press.

Hallett, D., Chandler, M. J., & Lalonde, C. E. (2007). Aboriginal language knowledge and youth suicide.  Cognitive Development,22 (3), 392-399. doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2007.02.001

Holm, T., Pearson, J. D., & Chavis, B. (2003). Peoplehood: A Model for the Extension of Sovereignty in American Indian Studies.  Wicazo Sa Review,18 (1), 7-24. doi:10.1353/wic.2003.0004

Indigenous language classes. (2018). Retrieved from http://www.nativemontreal.com/en/programs-and-services/indigenous-language-classes.html

Jago, R., Brown, J., & Graham, A. (Writers). (2018, February 12).  Robert Jago: Decolonizing Canada In His Spare Time [Television broadcast]. In  Canadaland . Montreal. Retrieved from http://www.canadalandshow.com/podcast/robert-jago-decolonizing-canada-spare-time/

Kirmayer, L., Simpson, C., & Cargo, M. (2003). Healing Traditions: Culture, Community and Mental Health Promotion with Canadian Aboriginal Peoples.  Australasian Psychiatry,11 (1_suppl). doi:10.1046/j.1038-5282.2003.02010.x

Kwi Awt Stelmexw. (2015). Retrieved from https://www.kwiawtstelmexw.com/

Laboucan, B., Cardinal-Collins, M., & MacLean, A. (2006).  Nehiyawewin Cree Language and Culture Guide to Implementation (Working paper). Edmonton, AB: Alberta Education.

Language. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.cngov.ca/community-culture/language/

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson In Conversation With Moe Clark . (2018, September 29). Lecture presented at Leanne Betasamosake Simpson in Conversation With Moe Clark at the POP Montreal Symposium in Rialto Theatre, Montreal.

Leavitt, K. (n.d.). Racing against time to bring Indigenous languages back from the brink.  The Toronto Star . Retrieved from https://www.thestar.com/edmonton/2018/08/02/will-the-governments-indigenous-languages-law-save-endangered-tongues.html

Makosis, L. (2010).  Mâmawi-nehiyaw iyinikahiwewin (Master’s thesis, Blue Quills First Nations College). Social Science and Humanities Research Council Project.

Mowbray, M. (2007).  Social determinants and Indigenous health: The International experience and its policy implications (Rep.). Commission on Social Determinants of Health.

Napoleon, A., & Saxon, L. A. (2011).  Key terms and concepts for exploring Nîhiyaw Tâpisinowin the Cree worldview (Unpublished master’s thesis). University of Victoria.

Palmater, P. (2011). Stretched Beyond Human Limits: Death By Poverty in First Nations.  Canadian Review of Social Policy,65-66 .

Petrocapitalism. (2018, September 07). Retrieved from http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199599868.001.0001/acref-9780199599868-e-1390

Mostosonâhk; nâcipahâw; tastâpasikêw. (2018). In  Plains Cree Dictionary . Retrieved from dictionary.plainscree.atlas-ling.ca

Saba, R. (2017, August 23). Bridging the Gap.  The Globe and Mail . Retrieved from https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/relationships/indigenous-youth-bridging-generation-gap-with-elders-to-help-savecultures/article36068068/

Sandlos, J., & Keeling, A. (2016). Aboriginal communities, traditional knowledge, and the environmental legacies of extractive development in Canada.  The Extractive Industries and Society,3 (2), 278-287. doi:10.1016/j.exis.2015.06.005

Santin, A. (2010, May 1). Peguis breaks ground on urban reserve.  Wind Speaker . Retrieved October 20, 2018, from http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-226809310.html?refid=easy_hf

Simmons, P. (2016, November 21).  Unsustainable International Law: Transnational Resource Extraction and Violence Against Women . Lecture presented at Rapoport Center’s Fall 2016 Colloquium in University of Texas, Austin.

Sinclair, M., Storm, K., & Forman, K. (2008).  Aboriginal Peoples Contributions to Place Names in Canada (24th ed., Publication). Retrieved from http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/pr/info106_e.html

Watson, P. (2009, November 29). Inuit were moved 2,000 km in Cold War manoeuvring.  The Toronto Star . Retrieved October 18, 2018, from https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2009/11/29/inuit_were_moved_2000_km_in_cold_war_manoeuvring.htm l

Wesley-Esquimaux, C. (2013). Mining Our Lives for the Diamonds.  First Peoples Child & Family Review,8 (2). Retrieved from http://journals.sfu.ca/fpcfr/index.php/FPCFR/article/view/210/205

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Why is it Important to Maintain the Native Language?

• by National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education • IDRA Newsletter • January 2000 • 

Children who speak a language other than English enter U.S. schools with abilities and talents similar to those of native English-speaking children. In addition, these children have the ability to speak another language that, if properly nurtured, will benefit them throughout their lives. In school, children who speak other languages will learn to speak, read and write English. However, unless parents and teachers actively encourage maintenance of the native language, the child is in danger of losing it and with that loss, the benefits of bilingualism. Maintaining the native language matters for the following reasons.

The child’s first language is critical to his or her identity. Maintaining this language helps the child value his or her culture and heritage, which contributes to a positive self-concept.

When the native language is not maintained, important links to family and other community members may be lost. By encouraging native language use, parents can prepare the child to interact with the native language community, both in the United States and overseas.

Intellectual:

Students need uninterrupted intellectual development. When students who are not yet fluent in English switch to using only English, they are functioning at an intellectual level below their age. Interrupting intellectual development in this manner is likely to result in academic failure. However, when parents and children speak the language they know best with one another, they are both working at their actual level of intellectual maturity.

Educational:

Students who learn English and continue to develop their native language have higher academic achievement in later years than do students who learn English at the expense of their first language.

Better employment opportunities in this country and overseas are available for individuals who are fluent in English and another language.

Collier, V. “Acquiring a Second Language for School,” Directions in Language and Education (1995) 1(4).

Cummins, J. Bilingualism and Minority-Language Children (Toronto, Ontario: The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 1981).

Cummins, J. et.al. Schooling and Language-Minority Students: A Theoretical Framework (Los Angeles, California: California State University, School of Education, 1994).

Wong-Fillmore, L. “When Learning a Second Language Means Losing the First,” Early Childhood Research Quarterly (1991) 6, 323-346.

Reprinted with permission from the National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education’s “AskNCBE” web site (www.ncbe.gwu.edu/askncbe/faqs). NCBE is funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Languages Affairs (OBEMLA) and is operated by the George Washington University, Graduate School of Education and Human Development, Center for the Study of Language and Education.

Comments and questions may be directed to IDRA via e-mail at [email protected] .

[©2000, IDRA. This article originally appeared in the January 2000  IDRA Newsletter by the Intercultural Development Research Association. Permission to reproduce this article is granted provided the article is reprinted in its entirety and proper credit is given to IDRA and the author.]

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The ethnologist Frances Densmore, working for the Bureau of American Ethnology, and Mountain Chief, a Blackfoot leader. Photo from 1916 . Courtesy the Library of Congress

Our language, our world

Linguistic relativity holds that your worldview is structured by the language you speak. is it true history shines a light.

by James McElvenny   + BIO

Anyone who has learned a second language will have made an exhilarating (and yet somehow unsettling) discovery: there is never a one-to-one correspondence in meaning between the words and phrases of one language and another. Even the most banal expressions have a slightly different sense, issuing from a network of attitudes and ideas unique to each language. Switching between languages, we may feel as if we are stepping from one world into another. Each language seemingly compels us to talk in a certain way and to see things from a particular perspective. But is this just an illusion? Does each language really embody a different worldview, or even dictate specific patterns of thought to its speakers?

In the modern academic context, such questions are usually treated under the rubrics of ‘linguistic relativity’ or the ‘Sapir-Whorf hypothesis’. Contemporary research is focused on pinning down these questions, on trying to formulate them in rigorous terms that can be tested empirically. But current notions concerning connections between language, mind and worldview have a long history, spanning several intellectual epochs, each with their own preoccupations. Running through this history is a recurring scepticism surrounding linguistic relativity, engendered not only by the difficulties of pinning it down, but by a deep-seated ambivalence about the assumptions and implications of relativistic doctrines.

There is quite a bit at stake in entertaining the possibility of linguistic relativity – it impinges directly on our understanding of the nature of human language. A long-held assumption in Western philosophy, classically formulated in the work of Aristotle, maintains that words are mere labels we apply to existing ideas in order to share those ideas with others. But linguistic relativity makes language an active force in shaping our thoughts. Furthermore, if we permit fundamental variation between languages and their presumably entangled worldviews, we are confronted with difficult questions about the constitution of our common humanity. Could it be that there are unbridgeable gulfs in thinking and perception between groups of people speaking different languages?

T he roots of our present ideas about linguistic relativity extend at least as far back as the Enlightenment of the late 17th to the 18th century. Enlightenment discussions were often couched in terms of the ‘genius’ of a language, an expression first coined in French as le génie de la langue . The term was used in a wide variety of senses, to the point where it was often not clear what precisely was meant. One contemporary commentator remarked: ‘[W]e often ask what is the genius of a language, and it is difficult to say.’ What we can say is that the genius of a language was understood as representing its distinct character, the je ne sais quoi that constitutes the idiomatic in each idiom. This unique character was frequently taken to embody something of the national mentality of the speakers of a language.

A classic – and highly influential – formulation came in 1772 with the Treatise on the Origin of Language by the German philosopher and poet Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803). In opposition to contemporaries who saw the ultimate origins of human language in animal cries, Herder insisted that there is a difference in kind between human and animal communication. Human language, so Herder argued, rests on the irreducible human capacity for ‘reflection’ ( Besonnenheit ), our ability to recognise and think about our own thoughts. In coining our words, we reflect on the properties of the things they name, and choose the most salient of these. Different peoples will have focused on different properties, with the result that each language with its characteristic forms will encapsulate a slightly different perspective on the world. As languages are passed on from generation to generation, the differences between them accumulate, making the languages and the worldviews they contain more and more distinct. In order to understand the unique perspective of each language, we must trace the forms of words back to their etymological origins.

The Herderian thread was picked up in the early 19th century and woven most expertly into a broader account of language and literature by Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835). Humboldt endorsed an element of linguistic determinism – that is, that language not only reflects a particular worldview but is actively involved in shaping it: ‘Language,’ he wrote , ‘is the forming organ of thought.’ The relationship he envisaged, however, was not one-way but dialectic. Between language and thought there inheres an endless feedback loop: our thoughts shape our words, and our words shape our thoughts. His account was not restricted to individual words – more important were the grammatical structures exhibited in the languages of the world. But even the study of grammar was only a preliminary to the real task, according to Humboldt. Grammar and vocabulary merely represent the ‘dead skeleton’ of a language. To capture its character, to see its ‘living structure’, we must appreciate its literature, the use made of the language by its most eloquent speakers and writers.

The inner form of a language, Steinthal believed, was the perfect window to the national mind

Despite Humboldt’s exhortations to seek the life of language in literature, his successors in the 19th century concentrated on devising classifications of languages revolving around their grammatical features. The goal was often described as identifying the ‘inner form’ of each language. ‘Inner form’ was a term used by Humboldt (although only fleetingly) to refer to the underlying structure and organisation of a language, as opposed to its ‘outer form’, the externally perceptible features of its words, grammar and sound system. Humboldt’s inner form carries forward the concerns of the Enlightenment’s genius of a language, while the outer form consists of the pedantic details of noun declensions, verb conjugations, regular sound substitutions and so on.

Many scholars working in Humboldt’s wake adopted his ‘inner form’ and developed it in different directions, although the most prominent version of this notion was that elaborated by Heymann Steinthal (1823-99). Inner form served as the centrepiece of Steinthal’s classification of languages, which in turn lay at the heart of his Völkerpsychologie , the ‘psychology of peoples’ or ‘ethnopsychology’. The overarching aim of Völkerpsychologie was to describe the supposed shared mentality of each nation. The inner form of a language, so believed Steinthal, was the perfect window to this national mind.

But during the course of the 19th century, talk of national minds and the character of languages fell out of fashion in the academic study of language. In this period, comparative-historical grammar became established as the premier field of linguistics. This is the approach that carefully compares words and grammatical forms across languages in order to chart their historical changes and identify their putative genealogical relations. Comparative-historical linguistics tells us, for example, that French, Italian and Spanish are all descended from Latin; that Hindi-Urdu, Bengali and Punjabi can trace their ancestry to Sanskrit; and that all these languages, along with many others traditionally spoken from western Europe to northern India, are part of the extended Indo-European family.

The hypothetical progenitor of this great family, Proto-Indo-European, has been lost to time, but elements of its vocabulary, grammar and sound system can be reconstructed from the traits of its descendants. Crucially, these are all aspects of the ‘outer form’ of languages – and the linguists who investigated these outer forms preferred to describe the historical transmutations they studied in terms of ‘sound laws’. Sound laws are mere statements of fact, that a sound attested in a certain phonetic environment in a parent language changes into other sounds in its descendants. Such accounts avoid invoking any hidden, underlying explanatory principles. Most comparative-historical grammarians believed that, for linguistics to be considered a serious science, it must limit itself to solid, objectively observable data. Uncovering the inner life of languages, capturing their characters and connections to thought and culture, were at best seen as future tasks for a thoroughly grounded science of language. At worst, they were taken to be nothing more than idle metaphysical speculation.

In what was the last gasp of the Humboldtian tradition in academic linguistics of the 19th century, the sinologist and general linguist Georg von der Gabelentz (1840-93) proposed a new subfield of ‘typology’, which would exhaustively survey the grammatical features of the world’s languages in order to discover the ‘typical traits, the ruling tendencies’ that determine linguistic structure. This undertaking would provide an empirical foundation for the ‘highest task’ of linguistics, explaining such structural tendencies as manifestations of the national mind. Gabelentz’s call for the new field fell on deaf ears in this age dominated by historical-comparative grammar. Typology would re-emerge as a mainstream pursuit in linguistics only in the early 20th century.

I n this same period, on the other side of the Atlantic, questions of mind and language did enjoy currency in a Humboldtian-inflected anthropology. Franz Boas (1858-1942), the ‘father’ of American anthropology, set out to compile the definitive compendium of the Indigenous languages of North America in his multi-volume Handbook of American Indian Languages , the first volume of which appeared in 1911. The grammatical descriptions contained in Boas’s handbook were to ‘depend entirely upon the inner form of each language’. ‘In other words,’ Boas elaborated, ‘the grammar has been treated as though an intelligent Indian was going to develop the forms of his own thoughts by an analysis of his own form of speech.’

But Boas was beset by an ambivalence about the implications of the mind-language nexus. Nineteenth-century discourse on the differences between nations was all too often predicated on an assumed hierarchy of humanity. There was a widespread belief that the peoples extant in the world today had reached different stages of evolution in their societies and cultures – and that this was attributable to differences in their cognitive abilities. At the top of the hierarchy was 19th-century European man, who had unfolded his mental powers in all directions, while at the bottom were the various Indigenous peoples of the world, usually believed to be stuck in an eternal childhood of humanity or to have degenerated from a previous state of ‘civilisation’.

Attitudes were not monolithic: there were many different schemes of human social, cultural and cognitive evolution in this period, admitting of many nuances. But even such figures as Humboldt, Steinthal and Gabelentz, who revelled in human diversity and praised the uniqueness of each language, were more partial to some languages than to others. American languages, argued Steinthal, actually have no inner form. The indisputably complex constructions attested in their grammars are merely mash-ups of concrete conceptual material without any underlying formal structure. Attitudes at the time among the leading anthropologists and linguists in the United States were even more extreme.

Anthropologists continued to consider possible connections between language and mind

Boas pushed back against such prejudiced schemes. He actually agreed with his opponents about the existence of some alleged deficits in Indigenous languages, but refused to see these as an index of mental development. Many American languages lack abstract terms and indefinitely large numbers, conceded Boas, but this is not because their speakers are incapable of grasping such concepts. It is simply the case that they have never had need to talk in abstract terms or count to higher numbers, and so have never had occasion to produce such forms in their languages. If this need arose, their languages would soon adapt.

Boas’s views were largely inspired by the teachings of his former mentor in Berlin, the ethnographer Adolf Bastian (1826-1905). Bastian advocated the principle of the ‘psychic unity of mankind’, the idea that all humans, no matter what their ancestry or their present cultural condition, have at base the same mental faculties and abilities. The apparently differing ‘ethnic thoughts’ of the various peoples of the world are merely different arrangements of the same ‘elementary thoughts’ common to all humanity. The human mind is essentially the same everywhere.

We therefore see in the 19th century a clear arc in the development of academic attitudes towards linguistic relativity. At the beginning of the century, linguistic relativity was a respectable position in the study of language, buoyed by the writings of such figures as Herder and Humboldt. But as the century wore on, academic linguistics became increasingly dominated by the school of comparative-historical grammarians, whose approach was highly technical and empirical in character. In this intellectual environment, linguists gradually turned away from the seemingly nebulous questions about the underlying conceptual apparatuses of languages. Anthropologists, by contrast, continued throughout the 19th century to consider possible connections between language and mind, but the hierarchical terms in which their discussions were often framed came under criticism towards the end of the century, in a movement spearheaded by Boas.

T he latter-day ‘Sapir-Whorf hypothesis’ is in many respects a continuation of the 19th-century debates. Edward Sapir (1884-1939) and his student Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941) were heirs to the Humboldtian tradition. Sapir was steeped in German language scholarship: his Master’s thesis was on Herder’s Treatise on the Origin of Language . He was also one of Boas’s most talented and devoted pupils, and perpetuated his teacher’s positions. ‘Language and our thought-grooves are inextricably interwoven,’ wrote Sapir in 1921, ‘are, in a sense, one and the same.’ But, like Boas, he insisted that there are no ‘significant racial differences’ in thought across the human species, and no direct connections between culture and language. It is therefore impossible to infer alleged evolutionary stages from language structure: ‘When it comes to linguistic form, Plato walks with the Macedonian swineherd, Confucius with the head-hunting savage of Assam.’

Despite the desire to extricate his research from the prejudices of past scholarship, Sapir was still invested in the project of analysing the grammatical ‘processes’ and ‘concepts’ attested in the languages of the world in order to identify the ‘type or plan or structural “genius”’ of each language. But this endeavour was tempered by a belief in the at least partial autonomy of linguistic form. On Sapir’s account, every language possesses an ‘inner phonetic system’ and ‘a definite feeling for patterning on the level of grammatical formation’, both of which ‘operate as such, regardless of the need for expressing particular concepts or of giving external shape to particular groups of concepts.’ Language, it would seem, was not quite so stuck in those thought-grooves.

Treating linguistic form as in some way autonomous was implicit in the 19th-century comparative-historical grammarians’ postulation of sound laws. In the 20th century, an explicit move was made by many linguists to hive off language structure as their private domain, an object they could investigate independently of any broader questions of cognition or the physical production and reception of speech. In these years, the Genevan linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) introduced a distinction between la langue (language) and la parole (speech), a distinction that has become fundamental to much subsequent linguistic scholarship. La langue is the abstract, self-contained system of each language, while la parole is the use of la langue to create actual utterances. Linguists, argued Saussure, should describe the properties of each langue without worrying about how it is instantiated in the minds and mouths of speakers. These are problems for the neighbouring sciences of psychology, physiology and physics. Sapir’s avowal of the formal autonomy of languages can be understood as part of this trend, even though at the same time he clearly did not wish to entirely relinquish his Humboldtian heritage, with its psychological and anthropological concerns.

There was a desire to break the spell of language, to revolt against its tyranny

But what about the linguistic determinism of the so-called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? Although neither Sapir nor Whorf ever formulated any precise, testable proposition postulating the influence of language on thought, they certainly envisaged such effects. In 1929, Sapir wrote:

The fact of the matter is that the ‘real world’ is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group … The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached … We see and hear and otherwise experience largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.

Sapir and Whorf’s rhetoric answered to a contemporary moral panic about the use and abuse of language. The young 20th century saw public discourse perverted by new forms of propaganda, disseminated by such new technologies as radio and film, all of which accompanied and facilitated the catastrophic upheavals of the First World War and the political polarisation that resulted in the rise of totalitarian governments across Europe. There was a desire to break the spell of language, to revolt against its tyranny supporting irrationality and barbarity, and make it the servant of enlightened thought. This sentiment found expression in, among other places, the linguistic turn taken by the incipient analytic philosophy of this period. At the popularising end of the spectrum, innumerable manuals on meaning appeared, such as The Meaning of Meaning (1923) by C K Ogden and I A Richards, Science and Sanity (1933) by Alfred Korzybski, and The Tyranny of Words (1938) by Stuart Chase. This is the world of Orwell’s Newspeak, in which language is the master of mind.

Sapir and Whorf eagerly advertised the contribution their field of linguistics could make to solving these problems. In revealing the diversity of realities created by languages, linguistics could help to expose how language misleads us. In 1924, Sapir wrote:

Perhaps the best way to get behind our thought processes and to eliminate from them all the accidents or irrelevances due to their linguistic garb is to plunge into the study of exotic modes of expression. At any rate, I know of no better way to kill spurious ‘entities’.

B y the mid-20th century, language-critical discourse had died down and academic linguistics largely returned to the dispassionate scientism familiar from the end of the previous century. Assessing several claimed cases of links between language structure and culture across a diverse range of languages, the US linguist Joseph Greenberg (1915-2001) declared mid-century: ‘[O]ne does not find any underlying semantic patterns such as would be required for the semantic system of a language to reflect some over-all world view of a metaphysical nature.’

Greenberg was inspired by the work of Boas and Sapir, and reignited the torch of linguistic typology that had been raised up by Gabelentz at the end of the 19th century. Greenberg’s continuation of the old Humboldtian project of investigating the structural diversity of the world’s languages while disavowing any connection between structure and cognition or culture was decisive for the later development of typological theory. What for Gabelentz had been the ‘highest task’ of language research was now officially off limits in the last corner of linguistics concerned with capturing and comparing the grammatical character of languages.

Interest in diversity was in any case at a low point in the mid-20th century. In his pursuit of ‘universal grammar’, Noam Chomsky (1928-) strove to re-establish a kind of psychic unity of mankind. The differences between individual languages, on Chomsky’s account, are mere phantoms, superficial variations on the same underlying system produced by an innate faculty of language shared by all humans. The linguist’s task should not be to meticulously catalogue these variants, but to factor them out and discover the universal principles governing all languages. Following Chomsky’s lead, received opinion in most quarters of academic research maintained this fastidious separation of language and thought until the end of the 20th century.

But linguistic relativity would not suffer banishment. Linguists and psychologists who could not ignore these questions have brought relativity back into the academic mainstream and delivered solid results. To name just one example, in ongoing, cutting-edge work, researchers have shown that certain languages may allow their speakers to unlock senses that are the common possession of all humans but remain unutilised by most people. In English and many other languages, spatial location is usually described in egocentric terms. If a fly were to land on my leg, I might say: ‘A fly has landed on the right side of my leg.’ Right is an egocentric spatial term that orients objects in the world according to an imaginary left-right axis projected from my body.

We are all, in a sense, compasses. English speakers are, mostly, not consciously aware of this

However, this is not the only way we can conceptualise space. In the Gurindji language, spoken in northern Australia – as in many other languages of the world – locations are usually described using the cardinal directions north, south, east and west. Assuming that I am sitting so my right leg is oriented towards the west, the equivalent sentence in Gurindji would be: ‘ Karlarnimpalnginyi nyawama wurturrjima, walngin ngayinyja wurturrjila .’ Literally: ‘This is the outer upper west of (my) leg. The fly landed here on my leg.’ If I were to turn around and face the opposite direction, the fly would still – in egocentric terms – be on the right side of my leg, but a Gurindji speaker would point out that – in cardinal terms – the fly is now on the eastern part of my leg. While my private left-right axis might follow me around dutifully, the earth will always stand still.

The cardinal directions are not unknown in English, but they are typically employed only when talking on a geographical scale. By contrast, in Gurindji, even parts of the speaker’s body are located in a world-spanning co-ordinate system. Most English speakers would be at a loss to even identify the cardinal directions without the aid of a compass. How do Gurindji speakers do it? It would seem that they draw on a number of environmental cues, chief among these the course of the sun through the sky. But human neurophysiology is also sensitive to the magnetic field of Earth: the human brain responds in measurable ways to ambient magnetic fields. We are all, in a sense, compasses. English speakers are for the most part not consciously aware of this, even though their brain activity changes when surrounding magnetic fields are manipulated under experimental conditions. Recent experiments by the Australian linguist Felicity Meakins and her collaborators have shown that some Gurindji speakers can reliably report on shifts in ambient magnetic fields.

Gurindji speakers’ habit of using cardinal directions would seem to have opened up their powers of perception. At least some Gurindji speakers may be able to consciously feel Earth’s magnetic field. But do English speakers and Gurindji speakers live in ‘distinct worlds’, as Sapir would have it? Having greater sensitivity to some features of the environment still seems like something less than the all-encompassing, incommensurable worldviews of the Humboldtian tradition.

This is perhaps the chief source of the continuing scepticism regarding linguistic relativity in many academic quarters. We start with a feeling, an ineffable je ne sais quoi , that our language shapes our world. But to assess the truth of this claim, the scientist wants a hypothesis – a rigorous, experimentally testable statement of precisely how language shapes our world. Quasi-mystical meditations on my life in language are not the stuff of modern scientific journals. But any properly formulated hypothesis will necessarily be reductive and deflationary – devising empirical tests of the supposed differences in our worldviews inevitably means transforming our innermost feelings into detached, foreign objects that we can observe and analyse from the outside. Such tests can arguably never capture the totality and primordiality of the original feeling.

Does this mean that the scholarship of previous centuries has no place in today’s world or, alternatively, that modern science simply cannot fathom the philosophical depths explored by earlier work? Past and present scholarship are complementary. The writings of earlier scholars – however speculative they may seem to us now, and whatever problematic assumptions they may be built upon – undeniably capture something of our human experience and can inform the investigations of present-day researchers. In turn, the hypotheses and experiments of latter-day linguists and psychologists provide another perspective – shaped by the scientistic worldview of our own era – on these enduring questions of the connections between mind and language. In all these cases, we cannot even make sense of the questions without understanding something of the specific intellectual contexts in which they have arisen.

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Make it awkward!

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Alexandra Plakias

Metaphysics

Desperate remedies

In order to make headway on knotty metaphysical problems, philosophers should look to the methods used by scientists

Political philosophy

Citizens and spinning wheels

For Indians to be truly free, Gandhi argued they must take up traditional crafts. Was it a quixotic hope or inspired solution?

Benjamin Studebaker

Psychiatry and psychotherapy

For those who hear voices, the ‘broken brain’ explanation is harmful. Psychiatry must embrace new meaning-making frameworks

Justin Garson

C L R James and America

The brilliant Trinidadian thinker is remembered as an admirer of the US but he also warned of its dark political future

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Progress and modernity

The great wealth wave

The tide has turned – evidence shows ordinary citizens in the Western world are now richer and more equal than ever before

Daniel Waldenström

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Article 6 – The Importance of Indigenous Language

by Darrell Lathlin

Our Aboriginal languages are our identities. They are the most common artifact that make our Indigenous cultures distinct. Our Cree language makes our Cree people different from other peoples. Not speaking our language will result in the death of our culture because our future generations will not be able to relate with their roots, ancestors, past, and traditions. The United Nations Organization (UNO) has declared Aboriginal languages as the agent of the Aboriginal culture.

As the common saying goes, “if we don’t remember the past, we are bound to repeat it.” However, we would never want to have the past abuses to the natives repeated. The Canadian Government’s attempts to assimilate the Aboriginal people with the white should never be repeated because the long lasting legacy of the residential school system still has its effects on the current Aboriginal people. Students in residential schools were forced to give up their mother tongues, which is one of the major reasons majority of Aboriginal people don’t use their mother tongues. Moreover, “Sexual, emotional and physical abuse was pervasive, and it was consistent policy to deny children their languages, their cultures, their families, and even their given names” (Nagy, R., and Sehdev, K., 2012, p. 67).

“On June 11, 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in the House of Commons: First Nations, Inuit, Metis languages and cultural practices were prohibited in these schools. Tragically, some of these children died while attending residential schools and other never returned home. The government now recognizes that the consequences of the Indian Residential Schools policy have had a lasting damaging impact on Aboriginal culture, heritage, and language…. We now recognize that it was wrong to separate children from rich and vibrant cultures and traditions that it created a void in many lives and communities, and we apologize for having done this” (Galley, V. 2009, p. 38).

The apology signifies government’s wrongdoing in trying to assimilate the Canadian Aboriginal culture and attempts to destroy it as well. The apology opens an avenue of healing with past students.

The signing of the treaties was an advantage to the government because the treaties were signed with people who did not have full grasp of the English language. Ironically speaking, not knowing the English language was a downfall for the Indigenous people in the past. This downfall has led to some of our people acquiring proficiency in the English language more than our own mother tongue nowadays. I am a living testimony to this situation; I was moved from the reserve to the city at an early age; thus, I lost any level of proficiency in my mother tongue, Cree. That is why I want to reiterate the importance of Native language. It would be right for the Neo-conservatives to say that I have been assimilated into the main stream culture. Fortunately, my attempt to repossess my own language have been successful. Now my own children understand more Cree than I do, which makes me proud; otherwise, it would have left a hole in my cultural heart.

However, I strongly feel that the government does not treat us equally in terms of language and culture: “The official languages Act has ensured the equality of the English and French languages, but remained silent on championing diversity which could be achieved by ensuring the survival of the some fifty-five Indigenous languages in Canada” (Galley, V., p.39). This is the typical policy when it comes to native languages. Native languages have existed in Canada far way longer than English and French, but they do not have equal status with both European languages. Today, there are about 60 Aboriginal languages spoken in Canada. Sadly, the 60 native languages have been relegated to reserves, with none of them having an elevated status like English and French. Could I write this essay in Cree? I wish I could answer the question in the affirmative. I am limited in my Cree vocabulary; it will therefore be impossible for me to perform a task like this in Cree.

Even though the loss of our languages happened in the past, its effect is still felt today among our youth. The English language is prevalent in every aspect of our daily lives such as in social media, television, gaming system, and the internet. Many games on Playstation, Xbox, and other systems also use English and French to communicate with individuals who play them. The story is also the same with the internet, which completely ignores our native languages. We, as Aboriginal people, would not be able to function without the knowledge of English or French. There is therefore the constant demand for us to abandon our Indigenous languages for the prestigious European languages.

The Canadian government introduced the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network on September 1, 1999, giving Aboriginal people a chance to use their own languages. APTN gives natives a voice in local, provincial and national news. Shows such as “APTN Investigates” gives compelling reviews of the injustices that natives have to deal with, whether it is the problem of the government or of their own band leadership. The highlight of APTN is that all the programs use native languages or interpret English to native languages including Inuit. French is used for the natives in the Quebec Region and French-speaking Aboriginals. Programs used in Aboriginal languages are accessible anytime of the day.

APTN is looking to open a sister channel to the native people in U.S. Surprisingly, the Americans do not have an Aboriginal channel. The markets that open Aboriginal channels in the states are bigger than in Canada. One positive effect is that not just Aboriginals watch APTN. People who want to learn the native culture also have an avenue to learn it as well. The educational programs can help both native and non-native learn various aspects of native culture on the television.

The Facebook culture has great effect on native youth as well. As a social media platform, communications on Facebook is mostly in English. People can communicate among themselves from different continents of the world. Facebook remains a veritable communication tool world wide. People who want to speak or chat with Aboriginal people can find them on Facebook. People can also learn about native culture or protests through networking and texting. With a social media platform like Facebook, more people can learn about Aboriginal movements and help the Aboriginal people with their movements or protests. “Searching using specific cultural groups yields additional results: using the keyword ‘Cree’ yields 76,200 videos, again across a broad range of topics and organizations. There is clearly a substantial Indigenous presence on the new medium” (Newhouse, D., p.10). However, social media can also lead to some negative comments and abuse of Aboriginal people.

Besides social media, the film industry also embraces more and more Indigenous contents and languages. In 2015, Leonard DiCaprio won golden globe best actor for the movie, The Revenant. He said to his Indigenous audience, “I want to share this award with all the First Nations peoples represented in this film and all the Indigenous communities around the world…. It is time that we recognize your history and that we protect your Indigenous lands and Corporate interests” (Narine, S. 2016, p.11). The film was an eye-opener that a high-profile actor accepts Aboriginal culture. In the movie, DiCaprio performed as an Aboriginal language speaker. In Dances with Wolves (1990), Kevin Costner speaks a native language. These Indigenous content movies would not be believable with actors speaking only French or English, with no Aboriginal language.

With more Indigenous contents and languages coming into social media and film industry, the future is bright for the revival and revitalization of Aboriginal culture and languages. Many educational institutions on reserves and urban centres are designing Aboriginal culture curriculums. Native language classes are becoming more prevalent on reserves. “The framework for this recommendation has already been established in the United Nations Organization’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Resolution. Article 14 states that Aboriginal languages should be treated as a fundamental right that the government has an obligation to protect” (Prodanovic, K., 2013 n.p). The United Nations has even noted that Aboriginal languages are needed to help our culture continue with the future generations. This puts more pressure on the Canadian government to create appropriate steps to support cultural education programs.

On Opaskwayak reserve where I am currently a resident, a school program of taking school children to trap lines and showing them the Aboriginal way of life forms part of the land-based education curriculum, reflecting the Cree culture. This program is also designed to take the school children fishing, hunting, traditional medicine gathering, and practicing other assorted Aboriginal traditions. These are all to be conducted in Cree language. Hopefully, this program will be providing the children with more education in culture and learning Cree words that may not be spoken at home. Personally, I remember taking the children on a trap-line exploration, and the program went as follows: the children started by saying the Lord’s Prayer in Cree; they skinned a moose; they gave thanks to the moose with tobacco, thanking it for giving its life for the sustenance of the people. This helps to promote the Cree language. All these are done as explained: “For a given language to thrive in a community it must have the social infrastructure to do so; a community of people can only exist where there is a viable environment for them to live and in turn, they must practice their language in solidarity. Ultimately, languages are considered at risk of dying when they are no longer transmitted to younger generations” (Prodanovic, K., 2013 n.p).

More and more publications are coming in a variety of Aboriginal languages, which helps Indigenous people who want to learn their mother tongue and anyone who wants to learn an Aboriginal language as well. UCN has Cree language courses and there are two texts books for Cree language learners: one is a multitude of words and the other one has basic Cree words for learners. Cree language also depends on oral culture to continue, “Still, Indigenous survivors and intergenerational survivors persevere, trying to pick up the pieces of our linguistic past and reassemble our cultures and identities” (Aboriginals have passed legends orally in Cree for generations; otherwise, these traditions would have been lost due to the moribund situation of most Aboriginal languages.

Statics also show the necessity of reviving Indigenous languages. The following statistics are taken from the Statistics Canada website. The information gathered is from the 2011 consensus. Looking at the highlights from the statistics, I feel an urge to contribute my quarter to the discussion on reviving Aboriginal languages. “Over 60 Aboriginal languages in 2011, the largest Aboriginal language family is the Algonquian family. In 2011 of all people reporting an aboriginal mother tongue in Canada, the highest proportions lived in Quebec (20.9%), Manitoba (17.7%) and Saskatchewan (16.0%). Nearly 213,400 people are reported as speaking an Aboriginal language most often or regularly at home. However, not all of the 213,400 people speak their mother tongues at home; 17.8% of the reported number speak a different language such as English or French. The main Aboriginal mother tongues that were reported in Manitoba are Cree, Ojibwa, and Oji-Cree languages. In Saskatchewan, the Cree languages and Dene were the most used languages.

People of age 34 and under were reported as speaking an Aboriginal language at home which was not their mother tongue. More specifically, it was more common among school age children (5 to 14), who may have been learning an Aboriginal mother language as a second language at school. (http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/cencsus, 2011).

These numbers reflect the problem of native people as they move to urban centres or out of their reserves. Trying to improve one’s life in the city is okay, but it is detrimental to the survival of the Indigenous languages which the children are expected to speak. Unless one speaks one’s mother tongue constantly at home and finds a school that helps teach the language, otherwise, outside of home and school, the children will find speaking their native tongue more challenging. Children who have non-aboriginal friends have to speak English to catch up with their friends. Expanding educational programs make learning Aboriginal language learning easier for children to learn, irrespective of whether the children are Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal.

In 2016, we found that technology, media outlets, and other communications in English can negatively affect our culture. Even residential schools that try to culturally destroy the Aboriginal in Canada and in the U.S. disappeared. Here, we are still fighting on the issue of displaying our cultures, and maintaining our languages. Adapting the technologies for our advantage such as using Indigenous languages is an on-going protest on Facebook. Enhancing relationships on internet is needed to educate non-Aboriginal populations on Aboriginal cultures and misconceptions such as using the ski-doo to trap faster. Adapting to their surroundings has made the Aboriginal people stronger and wiser. NCI radio and APTN opens more channels for people to get a taste of Aboriginal languages on radio and television.

Conclusion In conclusion, United Nations Organization’s designation of first nation languages as an inherent right, and the apology from the Canadian government for Residential Schools has further helped to champion the cause of Aboriginal languages and cultures. The growing Aboriginal culture programs in education and the growing rate of children learning Aboriginal language is very positive. Aboriginal cultures continue to adapt with technology and media, giving hope to the continual survival of Indigenous languages in the digital world.

References Brown, J., & Fraelich, C. (2012). Assets for Employment in Aboriginal Community-Based Human Services Agencies. Adult Education Quarterly , 62(3) 287-303. Fontaine, L. S. (2017). Redress for linguicide: residential schools and assimilation in Canada. British Journal of Canadian Studies, 30(2), 183–204. https://doi.org/10.3828/bjcs.2017.11 Galley, V. (2009). An Aboriginal Languages Act: Reconsidering Equality on the 40Th Anniversary of Canada’s Official Languages Act. Canadian Diversity / Canadian Diversité, 7(3), 35–41 Langlois, S., & Turner, A. (2011, March 1). Aboriginal languages in Canada. Retrieved from www.statcan.gc.ca Nagy, R., & Sehdev, R. K. (2012). Canadian Journal of Law & Society Truth, Reconciliation and Residential Schools Introduction: Residential Schools and Decolonization. Canadian Journal of Law & Society, 27(1), 67–74. Narine, S. (2016, February 1). APTN looking south for opportunity. Windspeaker. Prodanovic, K. (2013, October 16). The Silent Genocide; Aboriginal Language Loss. Retrieved from www.terry.ubc.ca.

About the Author: Tansi, my name is Darrell Lathlin. Currently, I am taking courses in the Bachelor of Arts program, and I will hopefully finish with a Bachelor of Education Degree as well. I am 45 years old and have three beautiful girls, and fostering another three beautiful children. I hope to someday be a teacher and show my future students that I am a caring teacher who will support their learning and growing as a person. This will hopefully be my last dream to accomplish. I like drawing, writing songs, and watching sports. I hope to sing on the NCI talent-singing contest with one of my original songs in hope of making a CD one day. My essay is on the importance of Indigenous language. My children will be proud to be Cree talking people if they read my essay. Ekosi

Instructor’s Remarks: Darrell Lathlin is an adult student in the course Indigenous Women and Literature 1, which is a third-year literature course. As the only male student in this class, he contributes his insight into Indigenous women and culture from a perspective different from his peers. In Spring 2017, he and his daughter took a second-year literature course with me, Contemporary Canadian Literature 2: Poetry and Drama. He was keen on learning and practicing poetry writing. His poems were published in the third issue of Muses from the North. I witness his improvement in academic learning and am proud of his achievements at university – Dr. Ying Kong.

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The Importance of Native Language and Why We Should Preserve It

What is the importance of languages and why should we preserve them.

A language is a universal way for a community to communicate with each other. It is developed in due course of time and changes due to certain popular trends. The development of language explains why it is important for communication.

To understand the importance of language , we need to understand what it is first. We need to find what comprises a language and how it evolves as a unique medium of communication among a particular community or a population.

What is a Language?

If you observe a newborn, it does not know a language but learns to communicate with the family members. The toddler uses the basic method of communicating during the early years. It is discrete sign language. In fact, the only emotion it shows is crying. They start laughing and smiling months later.

Hence, there is a need for communication to express our emotions, feelings, thoughts, ideas, etc. We, thus, make unique sounds and use a dialect that another person understands while communicating. It is called a language. A language may or may not have a set of alphabets but will surely have a dialect.

You will be surprised to know that there are over 7100 languages spoken in the world. How did those languages evolve and differ from each other? A unique language is developed based on traditions, culture, trends, and practices. In fact, the same language is spoken in a different way. This is how a native language evolves and varies from another one even if the communities live closer.

What is the Importance of Language?

We can easily jot down the importance of languages in the following points.

1. It is the Primary Method of Communication

A language is the easiest way to communicate with others in a community. Sign languages take more time to communicate and they are not clear all the time. Hence, uttering certain sounds that have particular meaning constitutes a proper method of communicating with others. This is why a language is important.

2. Unity in Diversity

As mentioned earlier, there are over 7100 languages spoken across the world. It proves that even if we belong to the same species, we are so different from each other. It also proves that we are united through languages irrespective of our differences.

3. Cultural Link with Languages

A culture can be defined as the collection of shifting beliefs, trends, practices and traditions. Language thus becomes a vital part of a culture. It is how people transform their beliefs and share their ideas.

4. Weaponising Languages

Languages can be weaponised as they can be used to spread one language or eradicate others. For example, the Canadian Government had once mandated English to be learnt as the prime communication language. If anyone was found practising other languages, they were punished. This step caused the eradication of many native languages.

5. Languages Reflect Significant Cultural Differences

The differences in languages also reflect the differences in cultures and traditions. The effect of other languages can also be seen when a common language is used by people from different communities.

We can clearly understand the importance of language from these points. Let us find out what native languages are and why it is necessary to preserve them.

What is Native Language?

A language that a person learns and acquires from his/her surroundings during childhood from the people around him/her is called a native language. It is the language spoken by the native people. It can also be considered as the first language or the mother tongue we learn first.  If a person learns and uses two languages at the same time, he is called a linguist. If he knows how to speak more than two languages, he is called a multilinguist.

Why is it Important to Preserve Native Languages?

Why should we preserve languages? What is the benefit of doing so? Languages do go extinct like species in an ecosystem. It is a natural process. Isn’t it better to have one single language and remove the barrier to communication?

Languages, as mentioned earlier, are directly linked to the culture of a community. Losing a language has a direct effect on cultural and traditional practices. It is important to preserve indigenous languages to preserve the different forms of such valuable cultures across the world.

Imposing a language to eradicate the use of indigenous languages has ill effects on society. It is the diversity in the population that makes us different and sustainable. Languages define who we are and it has a direct impact on the personality of an individual. Hence, someone losing his native language will make him a whole new person. We will certainly lose the old one.

Importance of Native Languages

How Language Preservation Can Be Done?

There are various organisations that work to identify endangered languages and define ideas to preserve them. These organisations gather information on such languages. They design educational material to keep the communities aware of their languages. They also cater to raising the awareness of the importance of native languages to the common people.

The changes in the economical conditions of a community also lead to the slow eradication of native languages. People migrate from one place to another in search of a better life. They settle down and the generations start assimilating their native language with the local one. It results in the formation of a new language or the eradication of the old one.

In a Nutshell

According to the United Nations, there are more than 6000 languages that fall on that endangered list. In India, we have over 600 languages on the verge of extinction. To increase awareness regarding native languages, International Mother Language Day has been celebrated on the 21 st day of February since 1999. This is how languages are important and why it is necessary to preserve them.

Native Language and Its Role in a Person’ Life Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Introduction

Native language, works cited.

Language is not just the means for expressing ideas and sharing information. It is something bigger. Speaking specific languages people acquire particular culture, they become the part of it. That is why, when people have to leave the places they were born in, they keep language they got used to speak as something the most valuable and sacred. It is impossible to take all the things when leaving to the strange culture, but it is possible to have native language and use it whenever one wants.

Reading Agosin’s article Always Living in Spanish: Recovering the Familiar, through Language I faced a quote, “I miss that undulating and sensuous language of mine, those baroque descriptions, the sense of being and felling that Spanish gives me” (Agosin 203) and I have understood that it is about me. Spanish is not my native language, but it seems that the author speaks about Russian, my native language.

I want to say that even though my English is good, I can express ideas and people understand me in a proper way, I feel like I am singing when I speak my native language. It is easier for me to speak Russian when I want to express emotions. I sometimes feel that I really miss my native language, the one which I have been using for many years before I moved here, to the USA.

I do not want to say that I have problems with reading or communicating in English, it is just different. It seems to me that when I speak my native language, I recollect the memories about my childhood. Furthermore, there are a lot of different poems in English which touch my heart, but when I read poetry in my native language, it seems to me that each word is full of emotions, traditions and culture I used to.

Turning the discussion to the literature and tradition, it is impossible to deny that such notions are closely connected. For example, the poetry of Sergei Yesenin is the description of the pastoral Russia. Each word in his poems is full the smell of meadows, fields, trees, flowers, rivers, etc. Yesenin’s poems are not only about Russia, they are for Russia, the place he was born and died. Alexander Pushkin is another representative of Russian literature.

I would like to say that asking foreigners about Russian poets and writers they know, they will definitely remember Pushkin. The works of these poets remind me what Russia is. It does not matter for me that Pushkin wrote during Romantic era and Yesenin was a representative of 20 th century literature. The nature they describe has not changed (if not to take into account raised cities), as the villages and the forests they describe are full of Russian spirit.

Reading these poets in English translation I cannot experience these feeling of national identity. Only using Russian books for reading, it seems to me that I appear in my native country. Close connection between books and culture cannot be denied as they have been written by the people who were brought us by the same social norms and traditions. Thus, it is possible to conclude that language and traditions are closely connected and even these notions are a part of the culture of the whole nation.

Touching the issue of tradition and language, it is possible to provide an example using the following words, “Let me explain why we haven’t adopted English as our official family language. For me and most of the bilingual people I know, it’s a matter of respect for our parents and comfort in our cultural roots” (Marquez 207). Isn’t the phrase perfectly explains the reasons why living in a foreign country people still try to use their native language for communication?

Myriam Marquez is speaking about Spanish, her native language, but these words may be related to any language in the world. Language is not just the collection of sounds which combination comprises words, it is the storage of the traditions and culture. It is possible to notice that when people communicate with the help of their native language (living for a long time in another country and speaking strange language) they become happier as it is an opportunity to touch their culture even staying in a strange country.

Speaking my native language it seems that I show respect to my native culture. It is really easy to refuse from the native roots if you live in the country which gives you more. Still, I cannot do this. I cannot refuse from my native land as I love it with the whole my heart.

Respect to culture roots is something more that speaking the language of the native country, but living in a foreign state it can be the only possible variant to give credit for the native land, relatives and other ancestry who had lived there before and had made all possible that we, modern generation, could be born and grow up in a free country with remained customs and traditions.

I live in the USA not so long, but, still, the desire to speak my native language is always too high. The inability to see my relatives, communicate face-to-face with my school friends increases the desire to use native language in the everyday life. I always try to use the slightest possibility to speak Russian as it makes me feel closer to the country I have grown up in.

Cultural roots have always been important even for those who had to leave their country because of the inability to find job there or just for searching better life. When I speak my native language, I always remember my parents and relatives, some specific situations connected with them.

Sometimes I feel that the communication with the help of my native language does not allow me to forget my native country, my customs and traditions, my personal and cultural identity. No matter how long I am going to live in this country, how often I am going to communicate in English, I will always remain Russian in my soul. Once I met a woman.

She was about 75-80 years old. Her English was perfect and I thought that she was a born American, but when she heard me speaking over the telephone in Russian (I talked to my parents), she said that Russian was her native language as well. She had been living for 50 years in the USA, but she still tried to speak her native language as it helped her remain Russian in her heart. That chance meeting made me think about my personal life and the place of my native culture in present me.

I would like to say that culture and language are essential parts of every person. No matter where life can bring a person, how far from the native country he/she may appear, language is always the reminder about the culture and traditions one has been growing up in.

Communicating in English, I always felt that it is not my native language, that I am far from my relatives and friends and when the feeling of miss fulfills my heart I ring up my parents and communicate with them in my native language, the one I got used to from the cradle and the one I am going to carry with me for a length of time.

Agosin, Marjorie. “Always Living in Spanish: Recovering the Familiar, through Language.” Multilingual USA : 201-206.

Marquez, Myriam. “Why and when we speak Spanish in public.” Multilingual USA : 207-209.

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• Russian Composers Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky and Sergei Prokofiev
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• Protagonists of the Novel “Eugene Onegin”: The Changes of the Views
• Languages: Translation Impacts on Culture in the Middle East
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• Literature Studies of the Book “Author” by Donald E. Pease
• "You are What you Speak" by Guy Deutscher
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Essays About Language: Top 5 Examples and 7 Prompts

Language is the key to expressive communication; let our essay examples and writing prompts inspire you if you are writing essays about language.

When we communicate with one another, we use a system called language. It mainly consists of words, which, when combined, form phrases and sentences we use to talk to one another. However, some forms of language do not require written or verbal communication, such as sign language. 

Language can also refer to how we write or say things. For example, we can speak to friends using colloquial expressions and slang, while academic writing demands precise, formal language. Language is a complex concept with many meanings; discover the secrets of language in our informative guide.

5 Top Essay Examples

1. a global language: english language by dallas ryan , 2. language and its importance to society by shelly shah, 3. language: the essence of culture by kelsey holmes.

• 4.  Foreign Language Speech by Sophie Carson
• 5. ​​Attitudes to Language by Kurt Medina

1. My Native Language

2. the advantages of bilingualism, 3. language and technology, 4. why language matters, 5. slang and communication, 6. english is the official language of the u.s..

“Furthermore, using English, people can have more friends, widen peer relationships with foreigners and can not get lost. Overall, English becomes a global language; people may have more chances in communication. Another crucial advantage is improving business. If English was spoken widespread and everyone could use it, they would likely have more opportunities in business. Foreign investments from rich countries might be supported to the poorer countries.”

In this essay, Ryan enumerates both the advantages and disadvantages of using English; it seems that Ryan proposes uniting the world under the English language. English, a well-known and commonly-spoken language can help people to communicate better, which can foster better connections with one another. However, people would lose their native language and promote a specific culture rather than diversity. Ultimately, Ryan believes that English is a “global language,” and the advantages outweigh the disadvantages

“Language is a constituent element of civilization. It raised man from a savage state to the plane which he was capable of reaching. Man could not become man except by language. An essential point in which man differs from animals is that man alone is the sole possessor of language. No doubt animals also exhibit certain degree of power of communication but that is not only inferior in degree to human language, but also radically diverse in kind from it.”

Shah writes about the meaning of language, its role in society, and its place as an institution serving the purposes of the people using it. Most importantly, she writes about why it is necessary; the way we communicate through language separates us as humans from all other living things. It also carries individual culture and allows one to convey their thoughts. You might find our list of TOEFL writing topics helpful.

“Cultural identity is heavily dependent on a number of factors including ethnicity, gender, geographic location, religion, language, and so much more.  Culture is defined as a “historically transmitted system of symbols, meanings, and norms.”  Knowing a language automatically enables someone to identify with others who speak the same language.  This connection is such an important part of cultural exchange”

In this short essay, Homes discusses how language reflects a person’s cultural identity and the importance of communication in a civilized society. Different communities and cultures use specific sounds and understand their meanings to communicate. From this, writing was developed. Knowing a language makes connecting with others of the same culture easier. 

4.   Foreign Language Speech by Sophie Carson

“Ultimately, learning a foreign language will improve a child’s overall thinking and learning skills in general, making them smarter in many different unrelated areas. Their creativity is highly improved as they are more trained to look at problems from different angles and think outside of the box. This flexible thinking makes them better problem solvers since they can see problems from different perspectives. The better thinking skills developed from learning a foreign language have also been seen through testing scores.”

Carson writes about some of the benefits of learning a foreign language, especially during childhood. During childhood, the brain is more flexible, and it is easier for one to learn a new language in their younger years. Among many other benefits, bilingualism has been shown to improve memory and open up more parts of a child’s brain, helping them hone their critical thinking skills. Teaching children a foreign language makes them more aware of the world around them and can open up opportunities in the future.

5. ​​ Attitudes to Language by Kurt Medina

“Increasingly, educators are becoming aware that a person’s native language is an integral part of who that person is and marginalizing the language can have severe damaging effects on that person’s psyche. Many linguists consistently make a case for teaching native languages alongside the target languages so that children can clearly differentiate among the codes”

As its title suggests, Medina’s essay revolves around different attitudes towards types of language, whether it be vernacular language or dialects. He discusses this in the context of Caribbean cultures, where different dialects and languages are widespread, and people switch between languages quickly. Medina mentions how we tend to modify the language we use in different situations, depending on how formal or informal we need to be. 

6 Prompts for Essays About Language

In your essay, you can write about your native language. For example, explain how it originated and some of its characteristics. Write about why you are proud of it or persuade others to try learning it. To add depth to your essay, include a section with common phrases or idioms from your native language and explain their meaning.

Bilingualism has been said to enhance a whole range of cognitive skills, from a longer attention span to better memory. Look into the different advantages of speaking two or more languages, and use these to promote bilingualism. Cite scientific research papers and reference their findings in your essay for a compelling piece of writing.

In the 21st century, the development of new technology has blurred the lines between communication and isolation; it has undoubtedly changed how we interact and use language. For example, many words have been replaced in day-to-day communication by texting lingo and slang. In addition, technology has made us communicate more virtually and non-verbally. Research and discuss how the 21st century has changed how we interact and “do language” worldwide, whether it has improved or worsened. 

We often change how we speak depending on the situation; we use different words and expressions. Why do we do this? Based on a combination of personal experience and research, reflect on why it is essential to use appropriate language in different scenarios.

Different cultures use different forms of slang. Slang is a type of language consisting of informal words and expressions. Some hold negative views towards slang, saying that it degrades the language system, while others believe it allows people to express their culture. Write about whether you believe slang should be acceptable or not: defend your position by giving evidence either that slang is detrimental to language or that it poses no threat.

English is the most spoken language in the United States and is used in government documents; it is all but the country’s official language. Do you believe the government should finally declare English the country’s official language? Research the viewpoints of both sides and form a conclusion; support your argument with sufficient details and research. 

Check out our guide packed full of transition words for essays .If you’re stuck picking your next essay topic, check out our guide on how to write an essay about diversity .

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Refusing “Endangered Languages” Narratives

Indigenous language endangerment is a global crisis, and in response, a normative “endangered languages” narrative about the crisis has developed. Though seemingly beneficent and accurate in many of its points, this narrative can also cause harm to language communities by furthering colonial logics that repurpose Indigenous languages as objects for wider society’s consumption, while deemphasizing or even outright omitting the extreme injustices that beget language endangerment. The objective of this essay is to promote social justice praxis first by detailing how language shift results from major injustices, and then by offering possible interventions that are accountable to the communities whose languages are endangered. Drawing from my experiences as a member of a Native American community whose language was wrongly labeled “extinct” within this narrative, I begin with an overview of how language endangerment is described to general audiences in the United States and critique the way it is framed and shared. From there, I shift to an alternative that draws from Indigenous ways of knowing to promote social justice through language reclamation.

Wesley Y. Leonard is a citizen of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma and an Associate Professor of Native American Studies at the University of California, Riverside. His research aims to build language reclamation capacity in Native American and other Indigenous communities by directly developing reclamation tools and changing the norms of language sciences toward this end. His work has appeared in journals such as the American Indian Culture and Research Journal , Gender and Language , and Language Documentation & Conservation.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization ( UNESCO ) declared 2022–2032 as the International Decade of Indigenous Languages ( IDIL ), noting that “[o]ptimistic estimates suggest that at least 50 percent of today’s spoken languages will be extinct or seriously endangered by 2100. More pessimistic, but also realistic estimates claim that 90–95 percent will become extinct or seriously endangered . . . . Most of these languages are Indigenous languages.” 1 In this summary, UNESCO correctly identifies a major crisis: the world’s language diversity has drastically diminished in the last several decades, many languages are not being transmitted to new generations, and the majority of these languages are Indigenous. 2 This phenomenon, referred to technically in language sciences as community language shift or just language shift but more commonly framed with metaphors for the endangerment of biological species, is particularly serious in North America, the focus of this essay.

Native American and other Indigenous language shift has increasingly become a focus of scientific and social concern, and the collective response has had many effects, several of which are positive. These include increased awareness, research, community language programs, and new networks of scholar-practitioners and activists. Language policy has shifted accordingly, both at the level of individual Indigenous communities and by non-Indigenous governments and organizations, with many calls to support language maintenance and revitalization. The IDIL , for example, “aims at ensuring [I]ndigenous peoples’ right to preserve, revitalize and promote their languages, and mainstreaming linguistic diversity and multilingualism aspects into the sustainable development efforts.” 3 Organizations geared toward this work, along with several language documentation initiatives, have been created. Even the U.S. government, long an agent of violence toward Native American nations and languages, passed in 1990 the Native American Languages Act, which established as policy that the United States will “preserve, protect, and promote the rights and freedom of Native Americans to use, practice, and develop Native American languages.” 4 Most important, many Native American communities are working hard for language maintenance and recovery.

I come from a Native American nation that is engaged in such work. I am a citizen of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, and our language, myaamiaataweenki, fell into almost complete dormancy during the 1960s, having been replaced by English until community efforts began in the 1990s to bring our language back by learning it from historical documentation. I am proud to report that myaamiaataweenki is used by many Miami people today. In this essay, I draw from my experiences in Miami language work, as well as my training and research as a linguist who specializes in language reclamation , a decolonial approach to language revitalization that centers community needs and goals and focuses on addressing the underlying causes of language shift. 5 The way language reclamation brought my community together corroborates, alongside similar examples from other communities, the assertion in the aforementioned Native American Languages Act that “the traditional languages of Native Americans are an integral part of their cultures and identities and form the basic medium for the transmission, and thus survival, of Native American cultures, literatures, histories, religions, political institutions, and values.”

What happened among Miami people — a story of extreme language shift but also, and crucially, of language recovery — is shared by other Native American communities. Indeed, as summarized by Indigenous education scholars Onowa McIvor (maskiko-nehinaw) and Teresa L. McCarty, “the sociolinguistic landscape in Native North America is defined by the dual realities of language loss and reclamation.” 6 However, accounts of reclamation are not widely reflected in academic and popular descriptions of language shift, which instead emphasize only the loss. I collectively refer to these as dominant endangered languages narratives , the core parts of which I refer to in the singular as the narrative . As I detail below by drawing upon tools and principles from Linguistics and Native American Studies, 7 the narrative contains several truths and is framed as beneficent, but draws atten tion away from the injustices that underlie language endangerment.

Linguistics, the discipline described as “the scientific study of language” though better characterized as a set of particular approaches to studying language, is predicated on the inherent value of language. Linguists recognize that all humans use language, and that languages meet the communicative needs of their users and evolve as needed. For this reason, claims about intrinsic deficiencies in a given language variety — for example, that it “doesn’t have grammar” or “is primitive” — are linguistically baseless. Instead, they are manifestations of a sociopolitical principle exemplified throughout this volume: that beliefs about people get transferred to the language(s) with which those people are associated. Beliefs about a given language variety’s alleged superiority or inferiority relative to others, along with other language myths, strongly affect language practices and policies. In contexts where Indigenous peoples are rendered as “savage” or even less than human, related ideologies about Indigenous languages follow.

Related to the point above is the notion that accounts of languages and language use are contextually embedded in historical and contemporary social relations and power structures. As a corollary, public narratives about oppressed language communities are likely to 1) privilege the needs, wants, and perspectives of dominant groups and 2) discount the roles of dominant groups and institutions in this oppression. Following this logic, dominant narratives warrant careful scrutiny, both in terms of their content and who is relating them for whom. Even “descriptions” can become speech acts — statements that perform an action — especially when they come from people with power. As discussed throughout this essay, it is common for non-Indigenous agents who have considerable power due to their social positions to describe Native American languages in ways that are not accountable to Native American communities.

Conversely, the field of Native American Studies frames issues, linguistic and otherwise, through Native American experiences and points of view, and strongly emphasizes accountability to Native American nations. Though a principle of Native American Studies is that respect for tribal sovereignty entails identifying differences among tribal nations, the field also recognizes common experiences across multiple nations, especially those with shared relationships to a particular colonial government. For this reason, alongside attention to particular tribal histories and circumstances, it is common for structures of oppression, and strategies to end them, to be theorized in general ways as I do in this essay. Native American Studies responds to a variety of oppressions such as racism and sexism, recognizing the need for an intersectional analytic as elaborated by Aris Moreno Clemons and Jessica A. Grieser in this volume, but stresses the major role of colonization in contemporary Native American experiences. 8 To this end, Tribal Critical Race Theory, a framework that draws upon general principles of Critical Race Theory but adds and highlights the political status (nationhood) and experiences of Native Americans, asserts as a foundational principle that colonization is endemic in wider society. 9 Particularly important for this essay is settler colonialism , the project and supporting logics whereby governments such as those of the United States and Canada try to replace Indigenous peoples — and by extension our languages, lifeways, intellectual traditions, and futures — through resettling Indigenous lands with new polities and linguistic landscapes.

Given the violence of settler colonialism, scholarship in Native American Studies frequently references oppression and trauma. As these accounts are crucial for understanding realities such as the current status of Native American languages, I include them. At the same time, I share Unanga x̂ scholar Eve Tuck’s observation that “damage-centered” accounts can promote problematic views of contemporary Indigenous peoples and mask our resilience and successes. 10 My response is to refuse the assumptions of inferiority that often accompany such accounts and instead to promote reclamation, with emphasis on how Indigenous cultural and intellectual traditions provide tools to support this work. For example, the focus on relationships that is core to Miami and other Native American communities’ ways of knowing is hugely important for language reclamation. A relational approach to understanding the world illuminates how language shift occurs when something ruptures the relationships people have to languages; language recovery thus requires rebuilding these relationships.

Though linguists certainly consider relationships such as how multiple languages may derive from a common source, it is not a disciplinary norm of Linguistics to follow the relational model described above. Instead, aligning with dominant academic practices of conceptualizing knowledge as universal and disembodied, it is common for linguists to focus on discrete elements, such as sounds, words, and clauses. Moreover, it is common practice for researchers to present linguistic analyses without mentioning their relationships to the communities whose languages are under discussion or engaging the question of who is licensed to make or share a given analysis. According to this logic, the quality of research conclusions lies in their reasoning, evidence, and impact. In Native American Studies, conversely, these metrics apply, but there is also emphasis on how knowledge is produced in particular places and contexts, with significant attention paid not only to what knowledge should be produced but also if, how, and by whom it should be shared.

As a Miami person whose lived experiences with language shift and recovery primarily involve my own and other North American Indigenous communities, and whose professional training occurred at U.S. institutions, my analysis draws on global trends but focuses on North American (particularly U.S.) dynamics. For this reason, the points I offer in this essay should not be taken as universal, though I draw attention to two themes that I believe are true for most Indigenous communities. First, members of Indigenous communities (as with minoritized communities in general) share the experience of being the characters, rather than the narrators, of stories and theories about language shift. Second, although many language scholars and activists center social justice when responding to language endangerment, this is not true for dominant endangered languages narratives. While the sharing of these narratives has supported some important interventions in research, education, and policy, their framing can harm Indigenous communities and the language reclamation work we do.

Widely referenced by linguists as a call to action is the 1992 “Endangered Languages” collection of papers published in Language , a flagship journal in Linguistics. This series includes linguist Michael Krauss’s essay “The World’s Languages in Crisis,” which claims that “[l]anguages no longer being learned as mother-tongue by children are beyond mere endangerment, for, unless the course is somehow dramatically reversed, they are already doomed to extinction, like species lacking reproductive capacity.” 11

While such a break in intergenerational transmission actually applies to an array of languages and dialects, several of which are not Indigenous, Indigenous languages have become the prototype in discussions of language shift. This theme of doom and gloom, with Indigenous language “extinction” as the presumed endpoint, anchors many popular as well as scientific discussions of language endangerment, and is central to dominant endangered languages narratives.

For instance, the teleological trajectory toward complete nonuse of a given language, described in the narrative as “extinction,” is almost always anchored in predictions with specific numbers. In general, this is operationalized through a statement that some percentage of the world’s roughly seven thousand languages will disappear within a specified time frame, often one hundred years, as with the IDIL statement quoted earlier. Sometimes the narrative mentions that “languages have always died,” but with an accompanying explanation that this phenomenon has greatly accelerated in recent times. Especially frequent in reference to current trends is the specific claim that “a language dies every two weeks.” Though empirical research reported on in the Catalogue of Endangered Languages finds instead that this rate is actually about every twelve weeks, the crux of the idea holds. 12

Even though the narrative often ignores major types of linguistic diversity — for example, the glaring omission of endangered sign languages — it normally includes a statement about the value of linguistic diversity, or of human diversity more broadly. If framed within human rights, the narrative could offer compelling support for social justice. However, the narrative instead too easily evokes neoliberal discourses of diversity, in which examples that are lesser known by dominant groups — the assumed baseline — are rendered “diverse” and become repurposed as resources. This is exemplified by the narrative’s lamentation of cultural and scientific losses when languages “disappear,” emphasizing how “we” (who is the pronoun referring to?) are losing this knowledge or “our” heritage.

Particularly when shared with academic audiences, these claims of imminent loss frequently reference how language diversity is crucial to science. For instance, a major research framework in Linguistics aims to uncover universals of human languages, a task that requires data from many languages, including, of course, those that are endangered. Especially when related by linguists, the narrative may include details about how concepts are encoded in grammar, or how ecological knowledge may be gleaned from words. Longer versions might include examples of concepts known only because “we discovered them before it was too late.”

Although the basic idea is true — that different groups, and by extension different languages, encode different types of information and showcase human linguistic potential in different ways — the problems in this section of the narrative are numerous. As elaborated throughout this essay, the framing of Indigenous languages as resources to extract, whose value lies in what they can provide for “us” (non-Indigenous publics), and whose embedded information becomes true “knowledge” only after it has been described and curated within scientific circles, is Colonialism 101.

Most important, and also a reflection of colonialism, is that the narrative deemphasizes why language endangerment is occurring on the unprecedented scale that it is. Indeed, a common statement is that Native American languages are “quickly disappearing,” and that “a language dies when people stop speaking it.” Such tautologies are not helpful. Borrowing conceptually from Newton’s principle that objects in motion stay in motion unless an external force acts upon them, Chikasaw linguist Jenny L. Davis observes that intergenerational transmission of languages continues over time unless an external force disrupts this process. 13 By extension, the external forces should be the focus, yet the dominant narrative largely does not reflect this.

The narrative often does provide some explanation for current trends in language “loss” by referencing broad factors such as globalization, education, or language shame. Some narrators identify unequal power relations explicitly. However, the narrative rarely engages the deeper forces that facilitate these unequal power relations and related inequities. Missing, for instance, is critical engagement with how globalization is not merely a story of the world’s populations getting closer due to travel and technologies, but crucially also a story of colonialism and imperialism. Missing are critical examinations of how policies, such as what languages are used and taught in schools, are indexed to nation-building and nation-­eradicating practices that are themselves linked to colonialism and imperialism. Language attitudes, particularly shame toward one’s language(s) of heritage, can have large effects and are worth studying. The problem occurs when the narrative presents language shame as the source of language shift, rather than an outcome of oppression.

Sometimes the narrative includes explanations that superficially may come across as reasonable or self-evident. Referencing “economic pressures,” for example, some versions explain that members of minoritized language communities adopt languages of wider use to get jobs. However, beyond failing to query the economic injustices that often characterize these situations, the narrative frequently omits key linguistic principles that bring such explanations into question. Multilingualism is the historical and contemporary norm in most parts of the world, and people can and do learn additional languages while maintaining those they already have. Nevertheless, the narrative naturalizes Native American communities’ wholesale replacement of their original languages. Along with “wouldn’t it be better if we all spoke one language?”-type arguments that dismiss the harms of language shift, the narrative misses how language maintenance and reclamation occur in contexts of multilingualism, which has long been the norm across Native North America. 14

And sometimes the implied reason for communities such as my own shifting entirely to English is that it just happened. Native American language loss is a natural result of progress — unfortunate, yet inevitable, and in Native Americans’ best interest, helping them to be part of modern American society . This colonial rationale evokes logics of Social Darwinism that have long been debunked in anthropological sciences but remain robust in wider society, as a quick perusal of reader comments for popular articles about “dying” languages shows.

The truth is that contemporary Native American language shift is primarily an outcome of oppression, a point that many members of Native American communities can explain easily because we experience the effects of settler colonialism, racism, and other - ism s daily. Major examples include land dispossession through forced relocations and environmental degradation, policies aimed toward language eradication, violent disruptions to cultural practices (with some even made illegal), and assimilatory education through missions and boarding schools. Added to these are wider issues that adversely affect language maintenance in general, such as the hegemony of English and other pressures discussed by other authors in this volume.

In critical scholarship, language endangerment is theorized and responded to in complex ways, engaging issues such as those summarized above. Recent Native American language shift reflects what critical language scholars such as Tove Skutnabb-Kangas refer to as linguicide , which is anchored in linguicism : “ideologies, structures and practices which are used to legitimate, effectuate, regulate, and reproduce an unequal division of power and resources (both material and immaterial) between groups which are defined on the basis of language.” 15 But linguicism is not the frame that the narrative espouses. Instead, it focuses on the “disappearance” of Native American languages, with little attention to the oppressions that created and reinforce this outcome.

In response, I next explore these stories of oppression and linguicide — those that are not prominent in the narrative but that regularly come up in my discussions with other Native Americans. These are the stories that must be shared, honestly acknowledged, and responded to. Again, owing to my experiences and relations as a Miami person, I draw heavily on examples from my own community.

I begin with literal displacement via land theft. Despite a series of treaties by Miami leaders with the U.S. government stating that the original Miami homelands in Indiana and surrounding areas would remain Miami forever, our community was split in 1846 when many families — including my direct ­ancestors — were forcibly removed from these lands to a reservation in Kansas by U.S. agents. Traditional Miami cultural practices, which reflect relationships to particular homelands, were, of course, disrupted. And then in a second removal in the late 1860s, several Miamis, though not all–again, splitting the community beyond what had already occurred in 1846–were sent to Indian Territory (present-­day Oklahoma), further disrupting community lifeways. This second removal was followed by individual land allotments through legislation similar to the broader U.S. policy (Dawes Act) to socialize Native Americans into Euro-Western relationships with land as individual property and capital. 16 As with this allotment policy, which applied to members of many Native American nations, the Miami removals themselves also reflected a broader policy: the U.S. government’s Indian Removal Act of 1830. 17 For this reason, though the details vary, the examples from my community parallel those of many Native American nations, particularly those whose homelands are in what is now the eastern part of the United States.

Shortly after the bulk of removals and displacements, the U.S. government ­adopted a policy of assimilatory education of tribal youth via federally operated Indian boarding schools, which several of my Miami ancestors attended. When these institutions are (sometimes) mentioned in the dominant narrative, the illustrative detail is that they forbade the use of Indian languages and physically punished children who broke this rule. This is true and clearly important, but there is much more to consider. The fundamental assumption underlying these institutions was that Indian cultures and knowledge systems were “savage” and needed to be eradicated. In addition to their practices of blatant cultural genocide along with additional abuses, these schools ruptured tribal relationships; children were literally removed from their homes and kinship networks.

Although there are many stories of resistance, Indian boarding schools’ objectives were largely realized. Not only did the use and transmission of many children’s tribal languages end, these children were also inculcated with ideologies to justify this linguicide. I have long been haunted by an interview with a Miami Elder who had gone to boarding school in the early 1900s and stated that “it done the Indian children just a lot of good.” She explained that visitors came from the eastern part of the United States to make sure the children were speaking English, and that she worked in the sewing room at the school five days a week but on weekends went to church and Sunday school. She emphasized how on Sundays, they didn’t get supper but instead got a piece of apple pie and gingerbread, and that she would never forget that apple pie! 18 But she did forget — perhaps was forced to “forget” — our tribal language.

Other boarding school survivors share their experiences of language oppression more directly, as with the following story from a Warm Springs Elder:

Before I went to the boarding school, I was speaking [a Native American language], and all my sisters and brothers were speaking it. That’s all we spoke, and then we got into boarding school and we were not allowed to speak. And I grew up believing that it was something very bad, because we got punished, or switched, and so they just kind of beat it out of me . . . . That boarding school did bad stuff to us, and they took the most important thing, which was our language. 19

As Diné scholar James McKenzie explains in an essay directed to applied linguists, trauma experienced directly by boarding school survivors, which in many cases extends far beyond language oppression to include physical and sexual violence, does not end with the survivors themselves. 20 Instead, the trauma can be passed on to subsequent generations, continuing to harm individual and community well-being until something intervenes. Language reclamation can address this trauma by helping people to (re)establish healthy relationships with their languages and what those languages represent in their respective community contexts and cosmologies.

Around the same time as the development and spread of Indian boarding schools in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the U.S. government increasingly adopted policies and promoted nationalist narratives that furthered an ideal of English monolingualism. Even though the earlier historical record of settler life in the United States documents a landscape of many languages and more acceptance of language diversity, the notion that English was the language of the United States became increasingly promoted as an imagined original American trait. 21 This belief, which remains strong today, impedes the maintenance of Native American (and other) languages.

Linguistic justice calls for sharing stories such as those above, which though highly abridged can at least point to recurring themes of oppression, thereby facilitating the detailed discussions that need to occur. But sharing stories of colonial violence or the hegemony of English disrupts contemporary power structures, so stories such as those of boarding school survivors tend to be pushed to the margins. Whether by misattributing fault onto language communities or by just ignoring the agents of language oppression entirely, the narrative often works against justice by engaging a strategy that Davis calls erasure of colonial agency . Complementing this is a strategy of removing languages from their relational contexts. Davis describes the latter as linguistic extraction , the process of documenting, describ­ing, preserving, or otherwise engaging with languages separately from the social and political contexts of their historical and contemporary use and users. 22

Both strategies occur in dominant endangered languages narratives, which adopt and naturalize “endangered languages” as the unit of focus as opposed to the broader process of endangerment. This frame of “endangered languages” reinforces a theory of languages as objects: named, bounded sets of grammatical patterns and vocabulary that can be counted, analyzed, or lost. Indeed, research by language scientists, which as shown throughout the essays in this volume has great potential to promote social justice, can also foster harm by rendering languages into disembodied data or objects whose primary value lies in what they contribute to science. I emphasize that it is common in Native American communities for languages and peoplehood to be heavily intertwined. 23 In such contexts, objectifying the language by emphasizing, for example, what its grammar reveals for science easily objectifies the people who claim the language.

Unfortunately, as extractive models of Indigenous language research remain sanctioned in normative research practices, associated framing is common in the dominant narrative. For instance, it regularly includes queries about how Native American languages contribute to “our knowledge,” where “our” is contextually referring to members of dominant groups, such as language scientists. Asking “What do we lose when a language dies?” has a similar overtone, especially when relayed in a context with few or no Indigenous people. This noted, it is not my opinion that wider society cannot or should not appreciate and learn from Indigenous languages. The problem is rather that these queries too often lack important counterparts, such as “What does colonialism have to do with it?”

It is common in Linguistics to categorize and theorize “endangered languages” through biological metaphors such as living and dying . This practice, which also occurs in Indigenous communities, is not surprising, given that using language is so intertwined with human life experience. Moreover, language endangerment, like biological species endangerment, occurs when environments have been seriously disrupted. If employed to express these links, the use of biological metaphors could facilitate social justice by calling attention to the issues that must be addressed to reverse language shift. In general, however, use of biological metaphors warrants great caution. In the narrative, Native American language shift is normally framed unidirectionally (only away from the original languages) using categories that represent increasingly severe stages of endangerment and end at extinction . This is highly problematic. 24

Actual extinction of a biological species is normally understood as a lost cause, an irreversible eventuality. By extension, if a language is “extinct,” interventions that could promote its future use, such as funding language programs, are illogical, hopeless, and unlikely to be supported. But here the species extinction metaphor fails. Using language is an action, not an object. A community may stop using its original language, but they can also start using it again so long as there are records of the language to learn from and people who are able and empowered to do this work.

In masking these and related possibilities, extinction narratives are a form of oppression. They are also entrenched. I have on many occasions related the story of how my tribal language had been declared “extinct” by linguists before the Miami people reclaimed it as a language of everyday use. Although Miami people assert our linguistic sovereignty by explaining that our language was just “sleeping” for about thirty years, some scholars continue to describe myaamiaataweenki as “extinct.” This is just one of the many contradictions supported by the dominant endangered languages narrative, whose strength in guiding theory likely at least partly explains why public sources such as Wikipedia have continued to describe my community’s language as “extinct,” despite ample evidence otherwise. 25

Even more serious than masking possibilities for language reclamation, the logic of language extinction intersects with the dominant narrative’s focus on “endangered languages” in a way that goes beyond erasing the underlying oppressions of language endangerment to also erase their continued presence. That language shift is “complete” does not mean these oppressions have even been identified, let alone corrected. The intergenerational trauma from boarding school experiences, for example, does not stop when a community’s language has gone out of use. Rather, it stops when communities can engage in and are supported in healing, and in rebuilding the relationships that boarding schools violently severed. Similarly, ruptures between communities and their lands do not stop when language shift is complete. Rather, they stop through interventions that restore those relationships, a process that requires decolonization and supporting activism such as the LandBack movement. 26

The dominant endangered languages narrative fails to support language recovery because it puts the focus on results of oppressions, rather than on identifying and dismantling the oppressions. But it does not have to be this way. I conclude with possible changes and actions.

First, rather than lamenting how languages “disappear” or “vanish,” I propose highlighting the agents of language shift through queries such as, “Who or what is oppressing these language communities?” From this vantage, the central question is no longer about what an undefined “we” lose when languages go out of use, but instead about changing social dynamics, a process that requires identifying structures of oppression and stopping them. This is a social justice approach, situated in an honest account of the historical and contemporary factors that underlie language shift in places like North America. Anthropologist Gerald Roche gets to the heart of what a social justice–oriented narrative could emphasize:

Speakers and signers of Indigenous and minoritized languages have repeatedly explained that their languages are endangered due to failures of social justice — the oppression, marginalization, stigmatization, exclusion, deprivation, and so on — that take place in the context of imperial, colonial, and nationalist domination. 27

Beyond working to reverse the injustices created by this domination, the second key to an alternative narrative is a focus on reclamation, and what non-­Indigenous agents and institutions can do to support it. Shifting the unit of analysis away from “endangered languages,” which focuses on languages rather than the peoples who claim them, is crucial to this narrative. “Language endangerment” is an improvement, as it references a process rather than objects, but better yet would be to position community language ecologies as the anchor for the story. Language ecologies are the ways in which languages exist in their environments, and an ecological approach thus inherently emphasizes place (which is especially fundamental to Indigenous communities) along with sociopolitical, economic, and other factors in language shift and recovery. An ecological approach emphasizes relationships, which as noted earlier must in some way have been severely changed or damaged in order for language shift to have occurred. Unlike the dominant narrative’s focus, this approach firmly engages the multiple oppressions those communities have experienced and continue to experience, while also drawing attention to their rights, needs, goals, and futures.

Finally, following from the last point is the importance of prioritizing the lived experiences of members of Native American language communities when planning and executing language work. Roche notes that dominant approaches to theorizing language endangerment largely miss the political factors and lead to “a ­refusal to sincerely hear the voices of the linguistically oppressed.” 28 I follow Roche’s observation that many members of oppressed language communities are already explaining the causes of language endangerment and sharing stories of language reclamation, and yet we are not fully being heard or seen. 29 In Native North America, where settler colonial logics teach that Native Americans for the most part no longer really exist, this is to be expected; and by extension, the stories we relate and the needs we articulate are easily dismissed by dominant discourses and the actions they promote. As shown throughout the essays in this volume, however, many tools to address these injustices already exist. The question is whether people with power are willing to engage them.

author’s note

A Dean’s Professorship at the University of California, Riverside Center for Ideas and Society funded through a Mellon Foundation Investments in Humanities Faculty Grant supported work on this essay.

• 1 United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, “ International Decade of Indigenous Languages 2022–2032 ” (accessed June 12, 2023).
• 2 I follow the convention of capitalizing Indigenous when used as an ethnopolitical identifier to specific original peoples.
• 3 This statement appears on one of the main UNESCO websites for the IDIL . See UNESCO , ­“ Indigenous Languages Decade (2022–2032) ” (accessed July 25, 2023).
• 4 An Act to Reauthorize the Tribally Controlled Community College Assistance Act of 1978 and the Navajo Community College Act, 101st Congress, 04 Stat. 1152, Public Law 101-477, October 30, 1990.
• 5 For an overview of the language reclamation framework, see Wesley Y. Leonard, “Contesting Extinction through a Praxis of Language Reclamation,” in Contesting Extinctions: Decolonial and Regenerative Futures , ed. Suzanne M. McCullagh, Luis I. Prádanos, Ilaria Tabusso Marcyan, and Catherine Wagner (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2021), 143–159.
• 6 Onowa McIvor and Teresa L. McCarty, “ Indigenous Bilingual and Revitalization-­Immersion Education in Canada and the USA ,” in Bilingual and Multilingual Education , 3rd edition, ed. Ofelia García, Angel M. Y. Lin, and Stephen May (Cham, Switzerland: Springer Cham, 2016), 422.
• 7 I capitalize the names of academic fields to recognize that they are proper nouns, each with specific sets of questions, methods, goals, and personnel.
• 8 Aris Moreno Clemons and Jessica A. Grieser, “ Black Womanhood: Raciolinguistic Intersections of Gender, Sexuality & Social Status in the Aftermaths of Colonization ,” Dædalus 152 (3) (Summer 2023): 115–129.
• 9 Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy, “ Toward a Tribal Critical Race Theory in Education ,” The Urban Review 37 (5) (2005): 425–446.
• 10 Eve Tuck, “ Suspending Damage: A Letter to Communities ,” Harvard Educational Review 79 (3) (2009): 409–427.
• 11 Michael Krauss, “The World’s Languages in Crisis,” Language 68 (1) (1992): 4.
• 12 Lyle Campbell and Eve Okura, “New Knowledge Produced by the Catalogue of Endangered Languages ,” in Cataloguing the World’s Endangered Languages , ed. Lyle Campbell and Anna Belew (New York: Routledge, 2018), 79.
• 13 Jenny L. Davis, “ Resisting Rhetorics of Language Endangerment: Reclamation through Indigenous Language Survivance ,” Language Documentation and Description 14 (2017): 41.
• 14 McIvor and McCarty, “Indigenous Bilingual and Revitalization-Immersion Education,” 3.
• 15 Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, “ Linguicism ,” in The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2015).
• 16 An Act to Provide for the Allotment of Lands in Severalty to Indians on the Various Reservations (General Allotment Act or Dawes Act), 49th Congress, 2nd Session, Stat. 24, 388–391, December 6, 1886 (codified as 25 U.S.C. ch. 9 § 331 et seq.).
• 17 An Act to Provide for an Exchange of Lands with the Indians Residing in Any of the States or Territories, and For Their Removal West of the River Mississippi (Indian Removal Act), 21st Congress, 4 Stat. 411, signed into law May 28, 1830.
• 18 This example comes from a series of Miami Elder interviews in the late 1960s that I accessed through Miami tribal archives. For reasons of privacy, I omit identifying details.
• 19 Quoted in Erin Flynn Haynes, “ When Support for Language Revitalization Is Not Enough: The End of Indigenous Language Classes at Warm Springs Elementary School ,” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 209 (2011): 143.
• 20 James McKenzie, “ Addressing Historical Trauma and Healing in Indigenous Language Cultivation and Revitalization ,” Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 42 (2022): 71–77.
• 21 April Linton, “ Language Politics and Policy in the United States: Implications for the Immigration Debate ,” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 199 (2009): 9–37.
• 22 Davis, “Resisting Rhetorics of Language Endangerment,” 40–45.
• 23 Wesley Y. Leonard, “ Producing Language Reclamation by Decolonising ‘Language ,’” ­ Language Documentation and Description 14 (2017): 15–36.
• 24 I detail the harm of this trajectory along with the underlying logics and effects of these biological metaphors in Leonard, “Contesting Extinction.” See also Bernard C. Perley, “ Zombie Linguistics: Experts, Endangered Languages and the Curse of Undead Voices ,” Anthropological Forum 22 (2) (2012): 133–149.
• 25 Leonard, “Contesting Extinction.”
• 26 Also written as two words (“Land Back”), this movement calls for and develops strategies to return lands to the control of their original caretakers. See LandBack .
• 27 Gerald Roche, “Abandoning Endangered Languages: Ethical Loneliness, Language Oppression, and Social Justice,” American Anthropologist 122 (1) (2020): 164.
• 29 For example, a 2021 issue of WINHEC: International Journal of Indigenous Education Scholarship focuses on “Indigenous Language Revitalization: Innovation, Reflection and Future Directions.” See WINHEC: International Journal of Indigenous Education Scholarship 16 (1) (2021). For an example from a previous issue of Dædalus , see Teresa L. McCarty, Sheilah E. Nicholas, Kari A. B. Chew, Natalie G. Diaz, Wesley Y. Leonard, and Louellyn White, “ Hear Our Languages, Hear Our Voices: Storywork as Theory and Praxis in Indigenous-Language Reclamation ,” Dædalus 147 (2) (2018): 160–172.

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Teenagers on What Their Families’ Native Languages Mean to Them

“I’m not that embarrassed,” one student said of his accent, “because it’s a flex to know multiple languages.”

By The Learning Network

Do you speak any languages besides English at home? Did your parents, grandparents or great-grandparents when they were growing up? Do you or anyone else in your family have what might be considered an accent?

In the guest essay “ ‘Don’t Lose Your Accent!’ ” Ilan Stavans urges newcomers to the United States to embrace their “immigrant verbal heritage.” He writes that “far from undermining the American experiment, immigrants enhance our culture by introducing new ideas, cuisines and art. They also enrich the English language.”

What role does your family’s native tongue play in your life? we asked students. We heard from young people who speak Russian, Telugu, Spanish, Farsi, Cantonese, Twi, Quichua, Arabic and Polish. We heard from those who took pride in their family’s multilingualism and from those who were made to feel ashamed of it, but eventually came to cherish it. We also heard from several students who never had the chance to learn their relatives’ native tongue and regretted it.

Benjamin, a student from San Jose, Calif., who grew up speaking English and Mandarin, summed up a sentiment many students expressed about their linguistic heritages: “Back in elementary school, I was often told that I had an accent, but now that I think about it, I’m not that embarrassed, because it’s a flex to know multiple languages.” Read on to see what else teenagers had to say about what their families’ native languages mean to them.

Thank you to all those who joined the conversation on our writing prompts this week, including students from Casa Roble High School in Orangevale, Calif .; Union County Vocational-Technical High School in Scotch Plains, N.J. ; and W.T. Clarke High School in Westbury, N.Y.

Please note: Student comments have been lightly edited for length, but otherwise appear as they were originally submitted.

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Definition and Examples of Native Languages

Glossary of Grammatical and Rhetorical Terms

• An Introduction to Punctuation
• Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
• M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
• B.A., English, State University of New York

In most cases, the term native language refers to the language that a person acquires in early childhood because it is spoken in the family and/or it is the language of the region where the child lives. Also known as a mother tongue , first language , or arterial language .

A person who has more than one native language is regarded as bilingual or multilingual .

Contemporary linguists and educators commonly use the term L1 to refer to a first or native language, and the term L2 to refer to a second language or a foreign language that's being studied.

As David Crystal has observed, the term native language (like native speaker ) "has become a sensitive one in those parts of the world where native has developed demeaning connotations " ( Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics ). The term is avoided by some specialists in World English and New Englishes .

Examples and Observations

"[Leonard] Bloomfield (1933) defines a native language as one learned on one's mother's knee, and claims that no one is perfectly sure in a language that is acquired later. 'The first language a human being learns to speak is his native language; he is a native speaker of this language' (1933: 43). This definition equates a native speaker with a mother tongue speaker. Bloomfield's definition also assumes that age is the critical factor in language learning and that native speakers provide the best models, although he does say that, in rare instances, it is possible for a foreigner to speak as well as a native. . . . "The assumptions behind all these terms are that a person will speak the language they learn first better than languages they learn later, and that a person who learns a language later cannot speak it as well as a person who has learned the language as their first language. But it is clearly not necessarily true that the language a person learns first is the one they will always be best at . . .." (Andy Kirkpatrick, World Englishes: Implications for International Communication and English Language Teaching . Cambridge University Press, 2007)​

Native Language Acquisition

"A native language is generally the first one a child is exposed to. Some early studies referred to the process of learning one's first or native language as First Language Acquisition or FLA , but because many, perhaps most, children in the world are exposed to more than one language almost from birth, a child may have more than one native language. As a consequence, specialists now prefer the term native language acquisition (NLA); it is more accurate and includes all sorts of childhood situations." (Fredric Field, Bilingualism in the USA: The Case of the Chicano-Latino Community . John Benjamins, 2011)

Language Acquisition and Language Change

"Our native language is like a second skin, so much a part of us we resist the idea that it is constantly changing, constantly being renewed. Though we know intellectually that the English we speak today and the English of Shakespeare's time are very different, we tend to think of them as the same--static rather than dynamic." (Casey Miller and Kate Swift, The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing , 2nd ed. iUniverse, 2000) "Languages change because they are used by human beings, not machines. Human beings share common physiological and cognitive characteristics, but members of a speech community differ slightly in their knowledge and use of their shared language. Speakers of different regions, social classes, and generations use language differently in different situations ( register variation). As children acquire their native language , they are exposed to this synchronic variation within their language. For example, speakers of any generation use more and less formal language depending on the situation. Parents (and other adults) tend to use more informal language to children. Children may acquire some informal features of the language in preference to their formal alternatives, and incremental changes in the language (tending toward greater informality) accumulate over generations. (This may help explain why each generation seems to feel that following generations are ruder and less eloquent , and are corrupting the language!) When a later generation acquires an innovation in the language introduced by a previous generation, the language changes." (Shaligram Shukla and Jeff Connor-Linton, "Language Change." An Introduction to Language And Linguistics , ed. by Ralph W. Fasold and Jeff Connor-Linton. Cambridge University Press, 2006)

Margaret Cho on Her Native Language

"It was hard for me to do the show [ All-American Girl ] because a lot of people didn't even understand the concept of Asian-American. I was on a morning show, and the host said, 'Awright, Margaret, we're changing over to an ABC affiliate! So why don't you tell our viewers in your native language that we're making that transition?' So I looked at the camera and said, 'Um, they're changing over to an ABC affiliate.'" (Margaret Cho, I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight . Penguin, 2006)

Joanna Czechowska on Reclaiming a Native Language

"As a child growing up in Derby [England] in the 60s I spoke Polish beautifully, thanks to my grandmother. While my mother went out to work, my grandmother, who spoke no English, looked after me, teaching me to speak her native tongue . Babcia, as we called her, dressed in black with stout brown shoes, wore her grey hair in a bun, and carried a walking stick.

"But my love affair with Polish culture began to fade when I was five--the year Babcia died. "My sisters and I continued to go to Polish school, but the language would not return. Despite the efforts of my father, even a family trip to Poland in 1965 could not bring it back. When six years later my father died too, at just 53, our Polish connection almost ceased to exist. I left Derby and went to university in London. I never spoke Polish, never ate Polish food nor visited Poland. My childhood was gone and almost forgotten. "Then in 2004, more than 30 years later, things changed again. A new wave of Polish immigrants had arrived and I began to hear the language of my childhood all around me--every time I got on a bus. I saw Polish newspapers in the capital and Polish food for sale in the shops. The language sounded so familiar yet somehow distant--as if it were something I tried to grab but was always out of reach.

"I began to write a novel [ The Black Madonna of Derby ] about a fictional Polish family and, at the same time, decided to enroll at a Polish language school.

"Each week I went through half-remembered phrases, getting bogged down in the intricate grammar and impossible inflections . When my book was published, it put me back in touch with school friends who like me were second-generation Polish. And strangely, in my language classes, I still had my accent and I found words and phrases would sometimes come unbidden, long lost speech patterns making a sudden reappearance. I had found my childhood again."

Joanna Czechowska, "After My Polish Grandmother Died, I Did Not Speak Her Native Language for 40 Years." The Guardian , July 15, 2009

Margaret Cho,  I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight . Penguin, 2006

Shaligram Shukla and Jeff Connor-Linton, "Language Change."  An Introduction to Language And Linguistics , ed. by Ralph W. Fasold and Jeff Connor-Linton. Cambridge University Press, 2006

Casey Miller and Kate Swift,  The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing , 2nd ed. iUniverse, 2000

Fredric Field,  Bilingualism in the USA: The Case of the Chicano-Latino Community . John Benjamins, 2011

Andy Kirkpatrick,  World Englishes: Implications for International Communication and English Language Teaching . Cambridge University Press, 2007

• Definition and Examples of a Lingua Franca
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