2008 Plain English Speaking Award Finalists' Speeches
Hannah Gould – MacRobertson Girls’ High School
Falling in a well unknowingly
Let me tell you about a word. Let me tell you about the word bakku-shan, from Japanese – a charming word referring to a girl who looks really pretty from behind, but not from the front.
Today I want to speak to you about two more words ‘language death’, and the importance of valuing languages not only as intellectual curiosities but as an intrinsic part of who we are as human beings. In this century alone, over 50% of the worlds languages will simply disappear.
Standing up here today, in an English language speaking competition, attempting to convince you that the dominance of English is not always a good thing, and with a speech comprising 5% foreign words, the only word I can think to describe my deep sense of inadequacy is weltschmerz. This is not English of course, it’s German. And if I had to translate it, it would mean a deep sense of sadness caused by the sudden realisation that my own weaknesses are in fact due to the inappropriateness and cruelty of the world. Is that not the best word that you have ever heard? Or perhaps not, perhaps you prefer gobray, from the small language of Boro, meaning to fall into a well unknowingly.
So, great languages are dying. But why should I care? I mean surely it is great for the linguistic and the academic, but why should I be practically concerned? But if that’s all language is, merely restricted to academics and universities, or purely for passing on information, for finding out the time, then sure, I probably wouldn’t care. But language is what defines us. More than a guidebook, a dictionary will show you a culture. As British linguist Ken Hale says, ‘Languages embody the intellectual wealth of the people who speak them. Losing any one of them is like dropping a bomb on the Louvre’. So when you think of language death in the next 100 years as losing 50% of human culture, traditions and knowledge, then it suddenly becomes something so much more important.
Okay, so how do languages die? Now obviously languages don’t breathe, but the people who speak them do, and around the world today there are some 50–60 languages with only one speaker. One of these is Mata Ki, an Aboriginal language spoken by Patrick Nudiga in the Northern Territory. Every word that Patrick speaks is a representation of how generations of his people have viewed the natural environment. If we loose these languages, we loose the relationships. How can we live in a world where there is not the word iminngernaaveersasstunngortusaavunga – an Inuit word meaning ‘I will not become and alcoholic’.
The greatest threat on languages is globalisation, and the growing cultural imperialism of countries such as America, which devalues smaller cultures and smaller languages. Okay, for all of you who don’t speak international studies, this means that when a generation of language speakers grows up, it doesn’t continue the language of its people, but instead chooses the language in which Hollywood films are made, iPods are sold or myspace pages are made. As English and Mandarin grow as markers of status and wealth, small languages simply die out. The top ten languages in the world are now spoken by over 50% of the population. English is now the most widely spoken second language in the world.
You may perhaps suggest that this is just a form of linguistic Darwinism, survival of the fittest. But languages are not only culturally significant; they are beautiful and at times simply absurd. Take for example the word kummerspeck from German, which literally means ‘grief bacon’. A useful word, used to describe the weight gained from emotional overeating. How many times a week I could use that word – I tell you. Or, take for example the word for the colour brown, from Mal Bri, a small South-American language, which literally means ‘female badger genitals’ or ‘male badger genitals’, depending on the sex of the speaker. It is thus an established fact of all linguistic debate that languages are equal.
This may surprise you. You may suggest, for instance, that English must be intrinsically better, for why else would it dominate? But English has survived not because of intrinsic worth but historical circumstance. If Rome hadn’t fallen, I could very well be speaking Latin. If Alfred the Great hadn’t decided to give his coronation speech in the tongue of the peasants, I could be speaking French. It is only because the uneducated continued Old English that I am speaking to you in this tongue today.
So what do I propose? This is not a cry for linguistic protectionism. Language change, and death, while sad, is inevitable. It’s why we lost Latin and it’s why we will loose Livonia, spoken by only a single grandfather in the Baltic States. And I am not suggesting that we all go off into the South-American jungle and learn Boro. But what I am suggesting is we start to realise the cultural significance and beauty that languages, that single words, have. So maybe in a century or so we wont all be feeling so much illunga, an African word meaning a feeling of loss for the sounds of a language that is gone.
