As a over-anxious preteen I'd walk through the Washington metro tunnels imagining the halls flooding with a loose, green mist of sarin gas; my fellow citizens staggering about blinded-- eyes bulging-- clawing violently at their throats or lying unconscious and twitching like dogs in group rem sleep. I spent evenings pondering over accidental nuclear weapons launches and mass extinctions-- or why my birthday parties were so consistently lacking in attendance.
Cheerfully enough, scientists agree we're square-in-the-middle of an ongoing mass extinction. To quote wikipedia:
“The current rate of extinction based on statistical modelling is estimated to be 10 to 100 times the usual background level. It is feared that 50% of species could be extinct by the end of the 21st century.”
As Kenan Malik seems giddy to point out near the beginning of Let Them Die, this isn't the only modern extinction, “Some pessimists suggest that by the year 3000 just 600 languages will be left,” he notes before quoting linguist David Crystal, “We should care about dying languages for the same reason that we care about when a species of animal or plant dies. It reduces the diversity of our planet.” Every other piece in the first chapter of Exploring Language is at-the-ready to compare our rapidly collapsing ecosystem and the mass die off of tongues, and here stews the meat and potatoes of Malik's argument: while the parallels are effortless, the metaphor is invalid in a 'Colorado and a postage stamp are both rectangles' sort of way: honey bees could die out-- they are-- and our farmers would be harvesting aspirated dirt and pet dander. No laymen will bat a lash when Middle Chulym is gone; we will be too busy eating.
This is the only valid point Malik stumbles into; all others are either factually shaky, or non-relevant--like painting romanticism as a few ideological bus stops over from burning Jews en masse (pg 86 para 9).
And, although hyperbolic to contrast our failing planet with obscure dialects, it does not make their salvation a negative. There're myriad avenues for measuring the scope and reach of human cognition, but few superior, or less documented, than linguistics.
Malik views linguists eager to save dying languages as inhibitive to the disenfranchised aspiring for greater things. Quote: “There is nothing noble or authentic about local ways of life; they are simply backbreaking (pg87 para12),” Cultures seeking to preserve a sense of societal integrity don't just occur in our poorest regions. Ireland, ranked fifth in the human development index, and first in standard of living-- or Wales, with it's high Tom Jones birthing ratio and beautiful, actual, place names like Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch-- have both experienced resurgences in native speak. In Ireland some radio stations broadcast solely in Irish; in Wales, the critically acclaimed rock group Super Furry Animals charted at #11 in the UK with an album entirely sung in entirely in Welsh; In America, tribes like the Mohawks and Seminoles are using software programs to educate their youth and stave off language extinction; and in China and India poverty is widespread (although lessening rapidly) in spite of Mandarin and Hindi's noted status; so this isn't progress and modernity versus googly eyed romantics and Malik does his thesis and his intellectual honesty a disservice by portraying it as such.
Quoting him once more:
“Language campaigners also confuse political oppression and the loss of cultural identity. Some groups-- such as Turkish Kurds-- are banned from using their language as a part of a wider campaign by the Turkish state to deny Kurds their rights. But most languages themselves die out, not because they are suppressed, but because native speakers yearn for a better life (pg 87 para 12),” And, “The Reason that Eyak will soon be extinct is not because Marie Smith Jones has been denied her rights, but because no one else wants to, or is capable of speaking the language (pg 87 para 11).”
From Wikipedia's page on (the now late) Marie Smith Jones:
“Although she had nine children, they did not learn to speak Eyak due to the social stigma associated with it at the time.” Since Columbus first mistook Hispaniola for India, this has been a common story for indigenous peoples, and really, it's extremely lazy Journalism on Malik's part to just assume Marie Smith felt unconstrained to pass on Eyak. Would he make the same claim for the aboriginals of Australia? Or the rest of the Americas? He'd certainly be just as wrong. Peoples like the Kurds, Eyak, Chulyms, and countless other minorities who's language is suppressed, often to the point of death, are the rules-- not the exceptions.
Quoting Malik, “The Human capacity for language certainly shapes our thinking. But particular languages almost certainly do not. (pg 86 para 8)” Malik refers to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the notion that our first language colors our comprehension and actions. He wants us to assume that academia has unlovingly discarded Sapir-Whorf to the same intellectual waste receptacle as geocentricism, a static universe, or phrenology, chalking such an “absurd” idea up to sheltered romantics far removed from the hard edged world of science when, in fact, it's hotly debated among linguists. Although most do agree that native language effects thought to some degree; the argument lies over the extent.
“The idea that French speakers view the world differently than from English speakers, because they speak French, is clearly absurd (pg 86 para 8).” Anecdotally, I can tell you of my friend who fluently speaks French reporting his thoughts, when in that language, coming out with bits of difference, but on the whole, close. And why shouldn't they be? England borders France; it was invaded by France near the start of the last Millennium; English is overwhelmingly Latinate, overwhelmingly similar to French; so of course speaking it natively wouldn't significantly alter your view of the world relative to our own. For an actual example, there's the Pirahã, a group of hunter-gatherers in the backwaters of northwestern Brazil. Before I discuss them further, I'd like to provide another Malik quote for soon-to-be-obvious reasons:
“It is of course enriching to learn other languages. But is is enriching not because cultures because different languages and cultures are unique, but because making contact across barriers of language and culture allows us to expand our own horizons and become more universal in outlook (pg 85 para 5).”
From wikipedia:
“Though it is controversial whether the Pirahã have words for 'one' and 'two' it is not controversial that they lack higher numbers. For these, they use only approximate measures, and in tests were unable to consistently distinguish between a group of four objects and a similarly-arranged group of five objects. When asked to duplicate groups of objects, they duplicate the number correctly on average, but almost never get the number exactly in a single trial.
Being (correctly) concerned that, because of this cultural gap, they were being cheated in trade, the Pirahã people asked Daniel Everett, a linguist who was working with them, to teach them basic numeracy skills. After eight months of enthusiastic but fruitless daily study, the Pirahã concluded that they were incapable of learning the material, and discontinued the lessons. Not a single Pirahã had learned to count up to ten or even add 1 + 1
As described in Daniel Everett's book Don't Sleep There are Snakes:
As far as the Pirahã have related to researchers, their culture is concerned solely with matters that fall within direct personal experience, and thus there is no history beyond living memory.
The culture has the simplest known kinship system, not tracking relations any more distant than biological siblings.
There appears to be no social hierarchy, the Pirahã lack leaders.
They have very little artwork. The artwork that is present, mostly necklaces and drawn stick-figures, is used primarily to ward off evil spirits.
The Pirahã have no concept of God or religion.
The Pirahã take short naps of 15 minutes to two hours through the day and night, and rarely sleep through the night.
The Pirahã have not related to researchers any fiction or mythology.
The Pirahã can whistle their language, which is how its men communicate when hunting in the jungle.”
This is all recent scientific work, yet Malik still claims, “Most linguists have long given up on the idea that people's perceptions of the world, and the kinds of concepts they hold, is constrained by the particular language they speak {pg 86 para 8).” Evidently he can't keep as up to date on current fieldwork as a community college student with a modem.
Less exotic is absolute pitch: the ability to identify notes heard in music, or everyday sounds, as if they were as plain and regular as colors. It's an obvious boon to musical aptitude and scientists have noted it in a conspicuously higher proportion of Eastern Asians. Again to blessed, blessed wikipedia:
“Individuals of East Asian heritage reared in the United States or Canada have 'no significant difference' in prevalence of absolute pitch than do Caucasians of the same geographical origin. The difference in prevalence is more likely explained by linguistic experience than genetic heritage. Many East Asians speak tone languages such as Mandarin and Cantonese; the prevalence of absolute pitch may be explained by exposure to pitches together with meaningful labels very early in life.“
Concisely, there's more for evidence language and culture intertwining into human thought than there is against. But of greater importance than that or linguistic rights is the wealth or “shitload” of knowledge we stand to loose-- a nearly unchecked blaze at a modern Library of Alexandria. As Jack Hitt relates in his essay, Say No More: “'I remember when I was doing fieldwork in Mexico,' said Lusia Maffi. She encountered a man whose native Mayan was already blurred with Mexican Spanish. He had traveled with his 2-year-old daughter to a health clinic because she was sick with serious diarrhea. 'He no longer knew the word for yakan k'ulub wamal,' she said using the Mayan term for a plant long known to cure the problem. 'It was probably growing in his backyard.(pg 78 para 19)'” We have a massive pile of knowledge, both scientific and anthropological, at the verge of nonexistence, and Malik wants us to shrug it off?
Pinche, mang.
Pinche.
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