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| Wonderful, Approachable OverviewAlthough there is admittedly some small bias in Mark Abley's writing, he presents a well written narrative with an easy to follow, compelling story line. He makes the subject exciting and easily relatable to those of us who don't have linguistics training.
I am now compelled, as an English speaker, to get out there and learn another language. I was especially interested in his discussion of language as a vehicle of thought and how the expression of other languages can teach us so much about thinking of the world through different eyes.
Phantom limbs & bombing the LouvreWhile six thousand languages are currently spoken, one dies every two weeks, and by the end of this century, perhaps half will be lost. With each one, as this book chronicles, a world of insight and millennia of wisdom vanish. You cannot recreate one from software and tapes anymore than, the author warns, you can bring cheetahs back to life from a vial of sperm and a National Geographic video. Or, as one informant tells him, it's like dropping a bomb on the Louvre, with each destruction of a tongue. Languages differ since they not only limit what we can say but what we must say.
For those, as with the Mohawks who learn their enormously complex, and verb-based (rather than noun-based as English and many non-American languages appear to have evolved) way of thinking and speaking, the need to recover ancestral speech is akin to a phantom limb, one which yearns to be reattached, reanimated. But, as Abley finds in all of his travels, the prognosis for successful recovery is slim. Still, as with Manx, a few fight the odds. The trouble is, it takes an act of will to resist giving in to the dominant language. A visit to the Inuit effectively dramatizes how "melting at the edges," the tendency to slip into English tugs every day at speakers of other languages. If, as in Welsh, Abley tells, one day all its speakers turned to one another and substituted "good morning" instead of "bore da," the language would be spoken of-- but only in the past tense. It would have died.
Abley explores Native Americans among the Yuchi in Oklahoma, an "isolate" not related to any other language and Mohawk in Canada. The force of governments, armies, preachers, and traders has won the world for English, it appears, everywhere he goes. With it comes conformity to the majority, and erosion of tribal or ethnic identity. His look at aboriginal Australia reveals that a creole of a half-dozen languages, done under pressure to communicate among themselves when the peoples were herded by missionaries a century ago into encampments, is arguably thriving, but smaller languages are dying. Similar to the Americas, the relentless force of global English-- itself the reluctant do-gooder or haphazardly sinister villain behind every chapter here, undermines, of course, the Celtic tongues, as does French that of the vernacular-- known by many contending names (is it a dialect? language? separate dialects?) in Provencal. In Israel and enclaves in the diaspora, on the other hand, the "mama-loshen" of Yiddish appears to be strongest in the male bastion among Hasidic males, contrary to its once-disparaged role as "servant girl" stealing away favors of the Lady of the house, according to intriguing century-old Zionist propaganda cited.
Chapters alternate efficiently between Abley's encounters with each of these languages and more general, if equally thoughtful, shorter overviews of language debates. Chomsky's deep structure and his assumption that we all process the world through basically the same set of hardwired codes hoarded wins the academic bout. But my sympathies and those of many minority language speakers appear to be with Sapir-Whorf: the Mohawk section provides eloquent testimony. Abley paraphrases his argument that language indeed constructs our cultural p-o-v from a summary of Brian Maracle's "Back to the Rez" that I quote in full:
"John carefully paddled his canoe through the rapids yesterday," we'd say in English. A Mohawk equivalent could take several forms, but typically it would go like this: "yesterday/ through the rapids/ his canoe/ carefully/ he paddled/ John." Brian compares the English version to a movie scene in which the camera focuses first on John, then on his boat, and finally on the scene around him. In the Mohawk version, time and landscape take precedence, followed by the boat and then by a man in the boat; personal identity comes last of all. "These two movies," Brian writes, "represent two drastically different ways of looking at life. . . The way that the English-speaking world structures its sentences explains to me, in a small way, why western society is so self-centred and narcissistic, why it is so fixated on the cult of the individual and why it is so obsessed with celebrities." (186-7)
Certainly, such a comparison makes me ponder the reach of the language we use here. Wal-Mart, Abley wonders in Oklahoma, could be a fine comparison to global English; but, a native corrects him. Unlike the mom-and-pop stores, the chain fails to stock other products. Instead, once it takes over, it features the generic brand. Same with English; convenience, ease of use, and predictability follow its hegemony. I wish the book had delved more deeply into Welsh counterculture and politics and the roles they played in its mid-20c campaign; likewise, the forces behind Hebrew vs. Yiddish deserved more attention. But, endnotes point readers towards further reading. It's a brief book, and Abley takes pains not to load it down too heavily with academic debate or historical detail. It's aimed at a general reader, refreshingly.
Can languages be saved? Abley encourages us, and shows in his last chapter how we can help practically such efforts that justifiably link endangered languages with ecological threats. Perhaps we can ease the impact of global English in this age of franchises and superstores and monolingual products.
Simplistic but interestingI'm not a linguist but I do speak several languages, mostly smatterings of each and I understand the difficulties of translation from one to another and the frustration of not knowing which words best fit the idea you're trying to impart. The feeling that the translation is at best a best fit and at worst a misrepresentation of the words used. One of these languages is Irish Gaelic or Gaeilge, a language fighting for survival.
I didn't really realise that I had it easy, comparatively speaking. At least the construction of English by Irish people is understood, the grammar, while not perfect, does work to an extent.
This book is about several languages in danger and the variety of strenghts, weaknesses, opportunities and threats they're encountering. He looks at some of the ways cultures have fought for their language survival against the "Wall-Mart" of languages that is English. And it's an interesting read.
But it's a simplified read, it skims a surface of fact and makes you wonder about what you can do to improve things within your own language groups but it doesn't go any further than that. It's written by a journalist in a very accessible style and in the manner of a travelogue. It lost some points for the lack of depth but gained some back for being so readable.
An intriguing survey.It's difficult to know where best to review SPOKEN HERE: TRAVELS AMONG THREATENED LANGUAGES: as a travelogue it holds much to attract leisure armchair traveler audiences; as a linguistics coverage it invites the attention of college-level English majors. Both audiences will find Mark Abely's survey of the world's endangered tongues to be revealing, with chapters moving from the Arctic Circle through North America to Australia as Abley visits the exotic locales which harbor fading languages and reveals the lives of their last speakers. An intriguing survey.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
"What is the language using us for?"That's the question asked by Scottish poet W. S. Graham, quoted by Mark Abley.
It's another way of stating what's sometimes called the "Safir-Whorf hypothesis" - - the idea that your worldview is partly determined by the specifics of the language you speak. And anyone who has seriously tried to translate from one language (i.e., culture) into another knows there's some truth to this.
Safir and Whorf have been replaced by Noam Chomsky's generative grammar and Steven Pinker's "language instinct" and the assertion that no language is inherently more capable of expressing an idea than any other language, which of course is true. But some languages NEED to say certain things, so when they do, their grammar or vocabulary or syntax will let them do a better job of it.
A Welsh poet to Mark Abley: "In English, when you say the word 'mountain,' so many things come to mind . . . But when you say 'mynydd,' a very clear picture comes to mind: what I can see on the other side of the valley."
Mark Abley traveled to places all over the developing and developed world where languages are in danger of dying out, and where they're being reinvigorated. But his story comes alive especially when he talks about different aboriginal languages and cultures that are in danger of being overwhelmed by "big" languages and culture, especially English.
Abley makes it clear that it's not just linguistic diversity that's at stake. You could make a case that it's better for everyone to speak just a few (or even one) language, though I think you could refute it. (Oddly enough, I've only ever seen this monolinguistic argument asserted by people who happen to speak the language in question.) But it's not just minority languages that are threatened. The existence of different cultures and the natural world itself are at stake.
Linguistic diversity is tied up with cultural diversity and biological diversity. Globalization can threaten all three. And human beings need all three kinds to survive.
Linguist Danielle Cyr talks about "imposing our notion of truth" by letting these languages die. Other people's truths might provide a way of looking at a problem that would save us all.
Just as someday we might need more than the one species of corn an American corporation grows, or some of the species of fish that have already disappeared from the ocean.
Half the six thousand languages that are spoken now will be gone by the end of this century. "We" (the global culture that knows Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Bono, and, this week at least, Michael Richards) may not need any one of these languages in particular. But we need to know about as many as possible. The more ways we know that people HAVE thought, the more ways we know it's possible TO think.
Some scientists think that language developed in humans along with intelligence, and that they reinforced each other. That we're homo loquens.
We need to know how languages work so we know what we are.
Product DescriptionIn Spoken Here, Mark Abley takes us on a world tour from the Arctic Circle to Oklahoma to Australia in a fervent quest to document some of the world's most endangered languages. His mission is urgent: Of the six thousand languages spoken in the world today, only six hundred may survive into the next century. Abley visits the exotic and frequently remote locales that are home to fading languages and constructs engaging and entertaining portraits of some of the last living speakers of these tongues. Throughout this exhilarating travelogue, he points out that the same forces that put biological species at risk -- development, globalization, loss of habitat -- are also threatening human languages, and with them, something very basic about their speakers' cultures.
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