‘Our languages are not dying, they are being killed’

The long-term existence of our languages is dependent on soil, water, and trees, writes Akshat Jain.

By Akshat Jain

New Delhi: In January 2010, Boa Sr, the last speaker of the Bo language, passed away. A song from Boa Sr’s opus lyrically conveys how the world feels like after getting robbed of one’s language: “a ḍure kaiyo laṛuka, ḍure kaiyo laṛuka, ḍure kaiyo laṛuka” – This place is not good for living. The Great Andamanese’s tragic loss of languages resonates with other Indigenous peoples across the world, which Yasnaya Elena Aguilar, a linguist and Indigenous rights activist, succinctly argues thus, “Our languages are not dying, they are being killed.”

Today, there are over 6,000 languages spoken worldwide. According to the University of Hawaii's Catalog of Threatened Languages in the United States, a language dies on average once every three months throughout the globe on a global scale. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), half of the world's languages will go extinct within the next century.

Governments, academic institutions, and civil society groups have all taken part in a variety of events to mark the International Year of Indigenous Languages, which began on January Yásnaya Aguilar, a Mixe linguists activists, presented a lecture in the Mixe (or Ayuujk) language before Mexico's Congress on February 26 on the importance of languages and the factors that influence their survival or extinction at the Legislative Palace of San Lázaro. This speech changes the course of history by bringing to light the wounds, injustices, plundering, and bigotry that have occurred in the name of Mexico in the past. This is the first time something like this has happened in history. There has never been a time in human history when so many languages have perished in such large numbers. What is the present reason for the extinction of languages? Around 300 years ago, the world began to separate and develop internal borders: it remained divided, and traveling to different parts of the world without papers became impossible. The world was still divided into over 200 countries, each with its own government, flag, and preferred mindset and each state had its own vernacular to accomplish this internal consistency. Different languages were frequently subjected to discrimination and hostility. Mexico, as we know it now, is a 200-year-old country. About 300 years after the Spanish conquest, 65% of the population spoke an indigenous language in 1862. Spanish, it appears, was a minority language at the time.

About 6.5% of the population speaks an ethnic language. Spanish has now surpassed English as the world's most widely spoken language. Náhuatl, Maya, Mayo, Tepehua, Tepehuano, Mixe, and other indigenous languages were formerly common, but are now rare. What occurred to make them the minority? Did we decide to abandon our languages all of a sudden? This is not the case in the least. It was due to a dynamic exacerbated by

policy acts that limited individuals to exclusively speaking Spanish. Our forefathers were subjected to blows, punishments, and prejudice as a result of speaking their mother tongues.

The long-term existence of our languages is dependent on soil, water, and trees. How will our vernacular be revitalized in the face of constant challenges to our homeland? Rather than dying, our languages are being eradicated. Many of the most important international disputes and challenges are everyday primary examples for many people. Unfairness, poverty, inequality, prejudice, racism, and other complicated issues can all be explored via literature. It is because fiction allows participants to deal with the difficulties that businesses and individuals confront every day.

(This article has been written by Akshat Jain, Research Scholar, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. The scholar is a graduate of BITS Pilani, and is pursuing his research studies in the field of Psychology and Neuroscience)