The paths and links of language and memory

[scarlettina]

This morning in his link salad, jaylake included a link to a National Geographic piece about language loss, a magnificent photo essay/slide show showing people who speak vanishing languages, including words from those languages. Most of the languages shown are Native American, though they are certainly not the only languages we are losing in the world. I'

Comments

[prettyshrub]

I find it odd that we are losing languages when we have so many good ways of preserving them. They are certainly worth preserving.

Thank you for sharing your seder memory, it sounds wonderful. :)

I learned an English version of Tumbalalaika in grade school choir. I still sing it sometimes to myself because it really is a beautiful song.

[kistha]

It is so sad to lose languages and there is so many ways of preserving them now - it should really be more of a priority. But it was a lovely slide show. I wish it had a audio component.

I think the reason this happens has to do with the idea that there must be one language one culture. Which I think is ridiculous. America was founded on a blending of cultures - I think we should all know more than one language, period.

[scarlettina]

Most Europeans I've met can speak more than one language. One of the naturalists I worked with in Africa spoke seven languages. I think the difference is that Europe and Africa are so tightly packed with countries close together. The US is the size of a continent and we don't need to speak more than one language on a daily basis. When you're daily exposed to a variety of languages, your awareness is raised and the necessity is clear and present. In North America, English is prevalent and the one language that everyone speaks. In Europe and Africa, languages exist cheek by jowl (almost literally). It's a survival necessity to be multi-lingual in a way we're not here.

[diwriter]

Some of my early Jewish memories are of Seders where half the table was praying in Ladino, and half in Hebrew. My father was raised in a mostly-secular Jewish family, but his Aunt married into a more-observant Sephardic/Ladino family from Greece. I loved the sound of the Ladino.

[garyomaha]

Thank you for sharing this story.

>>I think that music is as powerful a memory trigger as scent is<<

For me, too!

Thanks for this interesting post

[the_same_andrew]

Thanks, like it says. Great post. Language and identity are so tightly related, when a language dies, so does an identity with it.

Re: Thanks for this interesting post

[scarlettina]

YOu're very welcome. Glad you liked it!

"That's a Jewish word," she told me

[the_same_andrew]

I was down in Boston taking a course a few years ago, and one of my classmates (from New York City, iirc) used some Yiddish turn of phrase which I now misremember.

"Oh, that's a Jewish word," she said.

Did Eliezer Ben-Yehuda live in vain? I didn't ask. I sure as hell didn't fly all the way from Edmonton to explain how I knew who he'd been. (On the Company's time, I just smile and nod.) But I wish I knew more about the languages of the diaspora, and how it all came to be the way it is.