Just very recently, I read Earl Shorris’ essay entitled The Last Word. There, he discussed about the condition of language in general, a condition that almost all of the world’s different, unique languages are facing: their doom to silence. In one part of that essay, he mentions the linguist Michael Krauss saying that as many as 3,000 languages, comprising half of all the words on earth, are doomed to silence in the next century.
Suddenly, I remembered Al Gore’s The Inconvenient Truth wherein he explained that in a few years to come, when global warming still rises to its peak, ice poles would then melt, increasing water level until it reaches the shores of big land masses, and afterwards covering them entirely in the face of the earth. Shorris’ essay is not about global warming, of course. But I see the same phenomenon in his discussion about the language and its fate after a few more years. Soon, these different languages would only be part of history, entirely covered in the face of the earth.
Of the languages what I mean is the different, indigenous languages of each region of each country in the world. Shorris even added further that of all the arts and sciences made by man, none equals a language, for only a language in its living entirety can describe a unique and irreplaceable world. Such statement is true. Language creates its own reality, as one of my professors had said. Language is a man-made tool used by humans wherein all the complexities of all cultures around the world came into being, no matter how distinct they may be. It is what we use to indicate a name for a specific thing, say a tree, or a flower, or a stone.
Shorriss’ central focus is the Yu’pik language spoken in the Yukon and Kuskokwim deltas in Alaska. He reported that the single most prominent feature is the television being set in the homes of the Yu’pik poor. Not that we should put all the blame on televisions for diminishing the value of a particular indigenous language. However, television is just one of the many products of globalization and Shorris pointed out that globalization homogenizes every nation, evry village, no matter how remote. Among the other products of it are movies, music, and the Internet. Unconsciously, the danger lies in every home.
What’s there to be afraid about, anyway? you may say. I was thinking about what Shorris said and what my profesor said. Being a Filipino, I could not easily shove off the idea that what the Yupiits are experiencing is similar to all the indigenous people in the Philippines. I am still talking of language here. I have to admit that my native language approximately ranks third in my standard of language proficiency, English being the topmost, and then Tagalog. He calls it The Hierarchy of Language, and pronounces hierarchy as ‘higher archy’. Suddenly, I was caught in a sudden realization: unknowingly, I have been starting to silence my own, native language.
The phenomenon is, in fact, very alarming. Seldom do I read literatures and other publications that devote into using my own language in my own place. It is only verbally alive. It is the English language that dominates the world today, and it is the same language that is required by all companies from every applicant, all schools from every student and teacher, all books from every subject. Slowly, there appears that impending fear of losing that unique, irreplaceable, fine texture of language, not just in my own country (Philippines) but for the whole world as well. Perhaps, Shorris is right when he said that to save languages, to provide some use, might require wars or nationalistic urges but it need not come to that point.
For now, I am sharing this for the mere purpose of awareness and a constant reminder at the same time of the condition of the languages that might seem inferior to English but, for the natives, surpasses the English language at all. Perhaps when my mind is made up and when I can gather more bases for my stand that I can share an original opinion that would be both informative and persuasive.
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