WHAT WE LOSE WHEN WE LOSE OUR MOTHER TONGUES

By SHAGORIKA EASWAR

Fluent in several languages, my multilingual parents did mental math in the languages they learnt to speak first.

My father in Bangla and my mother in Hindi. That’s because they had learnt the multiplication tables in those languages, they said.

“In a singsong manner!” my mother would add.

My parents also had just the right saying or proverb – and a doha or couplet or two from Rahim or Kabir – for every occasion. In different languages. And while one could translate and explain them in the context of the situation, the nuances were often lost in another language.

Thus media reports on the initiative to revitalize Native languages struck a deep chord. In a Toronto Star article a while back, Marie Woolf wrote of care-home staff being unable to understand a resident’s request for a cup of tea.

Afflicted by Alzheimer’s disease, Chief Joseph Peters had reverted to speaking solely in his mother tongue, Mi’kmaq. The former chief of Glooscap First Nation grew increasingly frustrated and his daughter had to go in to translate for him.

Excerpts from the article:

“This year marks the beginning of an international decade of Indigenous languages in which Canada is to play a key role.

“Inuit, First nations and metis representatives have all said they wanted to see more action to make Indigenous languages more widely spoken in Canada, with measures to ensure they are also taught in schools.

“Around 70 per cent of Nunavut’s population speaks Inuktitut and it is recognized as an official language in the territory, but most children are taught in English.

“The Inuit representative on the UNESCO task force wants Canada to make Inuktitut an official language alongside English and French.”

You have to ask, why hasn’t it been done already?

Newcomers arriving in Canada today are greeted by welcoming policies such as multiculturalism and know their rights and freedoms are enshrined in the Canadian Charter. They are, in fact, welcomed by notices in their languages at the airports, their points of entry.

They feel blessed to be in a land that encourages them to build new lives while being firmly rooted in their cultures.

They are very aware of what a huge gift this is. But many remain largely ignorant of what was taken from the original inhabitants in the making of this country.

Early French and British settlers were a rare, intrepid breed. They tamed the vast Canadian wilderness to give us the country as we know it today.

Much is made of the land acknowledgements that we’ve started making. Of giving thanks to people who lived here before us. And it’s a laudable effort. But think about it, and doesn’t it smack just a little of a game children play?

This Lego block is yours and this one, too, but the entire structure is mine.

So much has been written and talked about the horrific losses dealt to the Indigenous peoples in the process of claiming Canada. Of the treaties forged but not respected, of lands taken, of children that were removed from their families. Even after all of the above have been acknowledged (and some apologized for), what has really changed on the ground? People still live in places with no proper drinking water, communities are still underfunded in areas of healthcare and education, women are still missing and murdered in huge numbers.

Dr Chandrakant Shah, who has worked tirelessly to raise awareness of Indigenous people’s history and issues, notes that resources for health, education and social services are scarce in these Indigenous communities; so are employment opportunities.

How many of us know enough about all this to care enough to do something about it?

Newcomers to Canada are thrilled to discover heritage language classes. They sign their children up for weekly lessons in languages ranging from Arabic to Tamil and a whole host of others in between.

But while Canada does a commendable job of helping immigrants retain their mother tongues, isn’t it ironic that its own Indigenous languages are in dire danger of being erased?

In The Wayfinders, Wade Davis had described languages as more than a set of grammatical rules or a vocabulary. It is a flash of the human spirit, the vehicle by which the soul of each particular culture comes into the material world. Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind, a watershed of thought, an ecosystem of possibilities.

And, shockingly, “of the 7000 languages spoken today, fully half are not being taught to children”.

Just think about it. What could be more lonely than to be enveloped in silence, to be the last of your people to speak your native tongue, to have no way to pass on the wisdom of your ancestors or anticipate the promise of your descendants.

Or even, just to request a cup of tea.

For those who suggest that fewer languages might mean better communication, a better way for everyone to get along, Davis has this brilliant response.

Let’s make that universal language Haida or Yoruba, Lakota, Inuktitut or San. “Suddenly people get a sense of what it would mean to be unable to speak their mother tongue.”

It is time to get fully behind the initiative to revive and protect Indigenous languages. Time to give them their due place in our country. It is time to right a wrong.