1 Keynote Speaker LANGUAGE IS MORE THAN COMMUNICATION: WHY WE SHOULD MAINTAIN the MOTHER TONGUE and PROMOTE LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY
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Proceedings of the 2nd English Education International Conference (EEIC) in conjunction with the 9th Annual International Conference (AIC), Universitas Syiah Kuala, September 18-19, 2019, Banda Aceh, Indonesia ISSN: 2527-8037 Keynote Speaker LANGUAGE IS MORE THAN COMMUNICATION: WHY WE SHOULD MAINTAIN THE MOTHER TONGUE AND PROMOTE LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY Rob Amery Linguistics Department, School of Humanities, University of Adelaide, South Australia, Australia Email: [email protected] Abstract Language is commonly thought of as a means of communication and only as a means of communication, in the narrow sense of the word. Many English-speaking countries expect the rest of the World to learn and speak English and fail to consider a need for any other language. And there is a growing trend in countries like Indonesia, to see the national language as sufficient for all internal purposes, supplemented by English for higher education and international purposes (trade, tourism, diplomacy etc.). Little attention is paid to ethnic, minority, Indigenous or local languages, and their contribution is not highly valued. So why should we care about this latter group of languages, that are neither national or international languages, even though some, like Javanese or Telegu, are actually very large languages. This presentation will explore reasons why local languages are important and why they should be supported. One’s own language is key to identity. Each language is a storehouse of knowledge with its own genius and specific areas of elaboration. Each language embodies a particular worldview and cannot be fully captured through translation into another. It’s maintenance or revival has implications for the development of self-esteem, cultural pride, participation and performance in education and contributes to health and well-being. Keywords: Indigenous languages, local languages, endangered languages, minority languages, linguistic diversity, language shift. INTRODUCTION In this the United Nations International Year of Indigenous Languages, it is fitting that we turn our attention to consider why we should maintain local, Indigenous languages and why we should promote linguistic diversity. Language shift is accelerating at an unprecedented rate with the resultant loss of vast numbers of languages (Krauss; 1992, Dixon, 1991; Evans, 2009). We all use language to impart information, share our feelings and ideas, negotiate, consult, instruct and for numerous other speech acts known collectively as communication. For some, that is all they might think language is for: as a means, and a very effective means, to communicate with each other. But language is so much more than this. THE GENIUS OF LANGUAGE Different Languages are not simply different versions of each other. We can’t simply substitute a different set of words and language structures (i.e. translation) to convey precisely the same meaning. Language is more complex than that. Each language has its own genius, its own particular way of carving up and labelling the world. In many cases there is no simple one-to-one correspondence between the words of one language and the words of another. Let’s take kinship, for example. We might think that languages should share many properties here. After all, everyone has a biological mother and a biological father, as well as four grandparents, and most people have siblings etc. However, if we draw comparisons between the kinship terminologies of the Yolŋu of northeast Arnhemland in the North of Australia and English, we find that not one term has a precise counterpart in the other language. Why should this be the case? 1 LANGUAGE IS MORE THAN COMMUNICATION: WHY WE SHOULD MAINTAIN THE MOTHER TONGUE AND PROMOTE LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY by Rob Amery The closest counterpart to ‘mother’ in Yolŋu Matha is ŋändi or ŋama’. But these terms also refer to the mother’s sisters through the principle of ‘equivalence of same sex siblings’ and to even more distant kin such as ‘daughter’s son’s daughter’ and ‘wife’s brother’s wife’s mother’ or ‘wife’s brother’s daughter’ and so on (see Cooke, 1990). In English, an individual has just one mother and one father, but not so in Yolŋu society. In addition, there are basic kin terms within the Yolŋu system that have no easy equivalent term in English. Take ŋathiwalkur, for instance. Ŋathiwalkur could be conceived of as ‘mother’s brother’s wife’s mother’s brother’ or ‘mother’s mother’s brother’s wife’s brother’. Yolŋu Matha has some 24 basic kin terms compared with 15 in English (if we include the grandparent and grandchildren terms). We can add to this terms used by someone else to describe a relationship that a person has to the speaker, a suite of avoidance terms and bereavement terms (we can only manage orphan, widow and widower in English) (see Galpagalpa et al, 1984). Kaurna from Adelaide has an additional suite of terms to refer to deceased kin (e.g. kutarri ‘a late Elder sister’ as opposed to yakana ‘elder sister’. Let’s take another simple example. Every human with reasonable eyesight who has ever lived on earth has been aware of the ‘sun’ and the ‘moon’, so it is to be expected that every language should have a term for ‘sun’ and ‘moon’. Indeed, it is probably a reasonable assumption that these terms are universal. But these terms certainly do not have the same cultural associations or extended meanings in every language. Australian languages typically extend the meaning of the word for ‘sun’ to ‘day’, ‘time’, ‘clock’ etc. What’s more, the ‘sun’ and ‘moon’ have opposite genders to each other. In some Indigenous Australian cultures the ‘sun’ is male, whilst in others it is female, but if the ‘sun’ is male then the moon will be female within that culture. The ‘sun’ and the ‘moon’ play central roles within many Dreaming narratives for Indigenous Australians. In many languages the word for ‘moon’ also means ‘month’, just as it does in Bahasa Indonesia. But in English of course, the word ‘month’ is derived from ‘moon’. And English makes the association of lunatic and lunacy with lunar, an adjective relating to the moon. Not so long ago, there was just one ‘sun’ and one ‘moon’, but consider how the conceptualisation of these words has changed with advances in astronomy and astro-physics. We are now aware that stars are suns and that other planets also have moons. According to NASA, Jupiter is now thought to have 79 moons with 53 of them already bearing names and another 26 awaiting official names (https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/moons/jupiter-moons/overview). So, in fact we now know that there are countless numbers of suns and there must also be countless numbers of moons in the universe. As a result, the modern concepts of ‘sun’ and ‘moon’, whilst being essentially the same as in days gone by, now have an added dimension. So things are not quite so simple and straightforward as they might appear at first glance. In our initial survey of the languages of Pulau Simeulue and Pulau Banyak, Pak Zulfadli Aziz and I became aware of some interesting lexical issues. In Devayan there are two words for ‘red’. We are not talking about different shades of red, but rather precisely the same colour from the perspective of other languages. In Devayan, bala ‘red’ refers to a compact and consolidated red as on the Indonesian flag whereas afala ‘red’ refers to a distributed red, for example ripe red fruit on a tree or red writing on a book. I am not aware of any other language making this kind of distinction. We found that in Sigulai, lumalangi is a reasonable equivalent for English ‘swim’ and is what people, buffalos, crocodiles, snakes and turtles do when they are immersed in a body of water, except that fish do not lumalangi. Rather, fish mofanɯ which usually means ‘walk’ or ‘run’. When Sigulai speakers are asked for an explanation, they say it is because fish don’t have any choice. We also found a distinction between dadaw ‘to sit on the floor’ and tataw ‘to sit on a chair’ in Sigulai. Local languages are typically best equipped to talk about the local environment including landforms, weather phenomena, fauna and flora. In these domains they may leave languages like English and Indonesian appearing impoverished, despite their huge lexicons. For instance, the Kaurna language of Adelaide has distinct terms tarnta ‘male red kangaroo’, kurlu ‘female red kangaroo’, nantu ‘male grey kangaroo’, wauwi ‘female grey kangaroo’, tarka ‘sp. of large kangaroo’ (perhaps the ‘euro’), wailtyi ‘sp. of large kangaroo’, kurtaka ‘young kangaroo’, kardi ‘male emu’, taitya ‘female emu’ and so on. Yolŋu Matha has a plethora of terms for different species of sharks and rays. Galpagalpa et al (1984, pp. 73-83) list some 66 terms (including some used only in song). Unlike English terms in this domain, which are almost all compounds (e.g. hammerhead shark, tiger shark, grey nurse shark, shovelnose ray etc) the Yolŋu terms are distinct lexemes which, with few exceptions, bear no relationship to other words. Clearly much more work is yet to be done in these areas to document the full Yolŋu lexicon. In our investigation of the languages of Pulau Simeulue and Pulau Banyak Pak Zulfadli Aziz and I found rich lexicons for talking about coconuts and cloves, including distinctive terms for referring to one 2 Proceedings of the 2nd English Education International Conference (EEIC) in conjunction with the 9th Annual International Conference (AIC), Universitas Syiah Kuala, September 18-19, 2019, Banda Aceh, Indonesia ISSN: 2527-8037 and a half coconuts and two and a half coconuts. We also observed very complex systems of counting where not only does the classifier change, but the very number itself is different depending on what is being enumerated (Amery & Aziz, forthcoming).