“It’s like dropping a bomb on the Louvre”
There was a good piece by Mark Abley in yesterday’s Guardian about the death of Marie Smith Jones, the last native speaker of the Alaskan language, Eyak.
Most residents of Anchorage, the Alaskan city where she spent her final decades, had never heard of her. Even after she addressed a UN conference on indigenous rights, she managed to maintain her privacy. Yet among the advocates for minority languages, Jones was famous. A few of them knew her by a different name: Udach’ Kuqax’a'a’ch’, a name that belonged to the Eyak language and means “a sound that calls people from far away”.
He used a quote that emphasised just how precious each language is:
Linguist Ken Hale put it more bluntly: “Languages embody the intellectual wealth of the people that speak them. Losing any one of them is like dropping a bomb on the Louvre.”
For anyone with an interest in language - and why and how quickly they disappear - I’d recommend Abley’s Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages. (I also mentioned it in a column a while back.)
I know this has nothing to do with the post but rooting around my (UCDSU) office this morning I happened to find a University Observer from March 1997. If you can tell me how many votes Ian Walsh beat Justin Sinnott by in the election for President, I will… I dunno. Do something pretty fab in your honour.
Comment by Gav Reilly | January 29, 2008 at 4:00 pmGav - You win a prize for random, out-of-left-field comment of the day. And the answer? I’ll guess 1500 votes.
Comment by Shane | January 29, 2008 at 5:49 pm1534 votes, actually… that was damn impressive. Name your price, sir.
Comment by Gav Reilly | January 29, 2008 at 6:11 pmNational Geographic had an very interesting article on disappearing languages recently. I’m not technical; I can’t direct you to a link or any of that stuff. I can say that if you’re in my bathroom anytime soon, you’ll find it in one of the top three or four issues in the stack.
Comment by Kid | January 30, 2008 at 6:39 pmKid - We’ll make a date. Everybody can come.
Comment by Shane | January 31, 2008 at 9:58 amSurely, there is an aspect of this we’re all ignoring in that were the languages more successful in assisting in the art of love then there would be more people who spoke it. It’s not just wars that kill of languages, the French and the Italians have been getting their rears handed to them for ages in wars and they’re still about.
Perhaps a OECD pro-creative language index is needed?
Comment by Dan Sullivan | January 31, 2008 at 12:57 pm