NI 473 - June, 2014

The politics of language loss

A note from the editor

Save our speech!

‘I think they might be backward.’

This was the damning verdict of the health visitor on discovering that my twin sister and I, aged two, were resolutely refusing to speak a proper language (ie English), and were instead babbling away in some incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo. My mother knew better. Like endless sets of twins around the world, we had simply come up with our own language, in which we were perfectly fluent and happy, thank you very much. The rest of the family managed to decipher enough to know what we wanted – and given that that was the extent of our two-year-old world, why bother with anything else? When we went to school, we were put into separate classes and inevitably picked up the far inferior language our peers were speaking. And our own twin-speak soon died out.

This, in a microcosm, is what is happening to the vast majority of the 7,000 languages currently spoken around the world, which struggle against political and cultural assimilation, fall out of favour or are beaten into obscurity. Many linguists believe their fate is sealed, and that within two centuries, we’ll all be speaking the same language. But all is not yet lost – as our Big Story this month reveals.

Also in this issue, we highlight a theatre making waves in Afghanistan by encouraging people to act out their trauma. And Lydia James investigates the shocking – and growing – phenomenon of food waste, and offers some ingenious ways to stop our leftovers ending up in landfill.

Jo Lateu for the New Internationalist co-operative.
www.newint.org

The big story

Photo: Lorenzo Rossi / Alamy

NI 473 - June, 2014

The politics of language loss

A note from the editor

Save our speech!

The big story

Jo Lateu explains why the world's minority languages matter for all of us - and why we should be fighting for their survival.

Features

Nora Marks Dauenhauer was born in 1927 into the Tlingit aboriginal nation of Alaska. A poet, short-story writer and scholar, she has dedicated much of her life to preserving and promoting the Tlingit language.

For decades Kurds in Turkey were banned from using their own language. Do recent government concessions reflect a genuine change of heart? Naila Bozo investigates.

There are between 5,000 and 7,000 languages in use today, but every fortnight one of them goes extinct.

Half of the 200 indigenous languages spoken in Australia before the British arrived have died and fewer than 20 are being taught to the next generation. But Katrina Power is one of those busy bucking the trend.

Language survival is a rollercoaster ride. The fate of the world’s mother tongues is often dependent on a combination of factors, including grassroots activism, political will and simple chance.

Saving languages is good for the environment and for tackling poverty. Suzanne Romaine explains why.

Lydia James uncovers some novel ways to divert food from landfill.

Anne Hoffman hears about the struggle for reproductive rights in Chile.

Opinion

Professor and author Stephen D’Arcy and historian and journalist Vijay Prashad go head to head.

View from America by Mark Engler.

By Steve Parry.

Agenda

Regulars

A hold-up at the airport sets Ruby Diamonde to thinking about the state of siege under which Central Africans have to live.

Oleksy Kustovsky from Ukraine with ‘Excision’.

Cartoon by Simon Kneebone.

Facts, figures and images from Israel.

Encouraging people to act out their trauma results not just in empathy but in action. Hjalmar Jorge Joffre-Eichhorn has witnessed the transformation first hand.

Cartoon by P J Polyp.

Highlighting the work of artists and photographers from the Majority World.

Cartoon by Marc Roberts.

The award-winning novelist and film director tells Graeme Green about growing up in rural China, freedom, censorship and loneliness.

Film, Book & Music Reviews

Jimmy’s Hall, directed by Ken Loach; Of Horses and Men, directed and written by Benedikt Erlingsson.

Toumani & Sidiki by Toumani Diabaté and Sidiki Diabaté; La Tsadika by Mor Karbasi.

I Am China by Xiaolu Guo; Foreign Gods, Inc by Okey Ndibe; The Hunt for the Golden Mole by Richard Girling; The Secret World of Oil by Ken Silverstein.

Music, film and book also out there.

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