I was quite
fascinated to read a wonderful article on the revival of a delightful language
(through its script) in Sunday’s ‘The Hindu’ dated 24 September 2017.
Something unique,
quite ‘the rarest of rare’ types, and a revelation of sorts for language enthusiasts
of every nation, age, and clime.
The article by
Iboyaima Laithangbam titled, ‘Banished Manipuri script stages a comeback,’ was
by all means, a ray of hope to linguaphiles all over.
Indeed, one of
the main premises of postcolonial studies situates language at the heart of the
colonial enterprise and power.
And yes! there’s more
to it than meets the eye.
Language is more
than simply a means of communication. It conditions our reality and our world-view
by ‘cutting up and ordering reality into meaningful units.’
Interestingly, Ngugi
wa Thiong’o echoes this sentiment, when he says,
“a specific
culture is not transmitted through language in its universality but in its
particularity as the language of a specific community with a specific history.
Written literature and orature are the main means by which a particular
language transmits the images of the world contained in the culture it carries.
Language as communication and as culture are then products of each other.
Communication creates culture: culture is a means of communication. Language
carries culture, and culture carries, particularly through orature and literature,
the entire body of values by which we come to perceive ourselves and our place
in the world. How people perceive themselves affects how they look at their culture,
at their politics and at the social production of wealth, at their entire
relationship to nature and to other beings. Language is thus inseparable from
ourselves as a community of human beings with a specific form and character, a
specific history, a specific relationship to the world” (Decolonising the Mind 15, 16).
He adds on to say
that, language does not just passively reflect reality; it also goes a long way
towards creating a person’s understanding of their world! Indeed, “the British
Empire did not rule by military and physical force alone. It endured by getting
both colonising and colonised people to see their world and themselves in a
particular way, internalising the language of Empire as representing the
natural, true order of life.” (McLeod 19)
In 1992,
linguists attending the International Linguistics Congress in Quebec agreed the
following statement:
As the
disappearance of any one language constitutes an irretrievable loss to mankind,
it is for UNESCO a task of great urgency to respond to this situation by
promoting and, if possible, sponsoring programs of linguistic organizations for
the description in the form of grammars, dictionaries and texts, including the
recording of oral literatures, of hitherto unstudied or inadequately documented
endangered and dying languages.
UNESCO did
respond. At a conference in November 1993, the General Assembly adopted the
‘Endangered Languages Project’ – including the ‘Red Book of Endangered
Languages’ – and a few months later a progress report observed:
Although its
exact scope is not yet known, it is certain that the extinction of languages is
progressing rapidly in many parts of the world, and it is of the highest
importance that the linguistic profession realize that it has to step up its
descriptive efforts.
Hence,
internalising another language due to, ‘colonial indoctrination,’ results in
adverse psychological damage suffered by the people in question.
In 1995 an
International Clearing House for Endangered Languages was inaugurated at the
University of Tokyo. The same year, an Endangered Language Fund was instituted
in the USA. The opening statement by the Fund’s committee pulled no punches:
Languages have
died off throughout history, but never have we faced the massive extinction
that is threatening the world right now. As language professionals, we are
faced with a stark reality: Much of what we study will not be available to
future generations. The cultural heritage of many peoples is crumbling while we
look on. Are we willing to shoulder the blame for having stood by and done
nothing?