Hellish Behavior

On June 16, 1976, nearly 20,000 high school students protested the fact that they weren’t allowed to be taught in their native language. This happened in South Africa, when Afrikaans was the language of power, and the other languages, well they just needed to go.

Language is one of our most unifying as well as divisive gifts. Even now, more than thirty years later, in this country, language is still unifying and divisive. Whether it is people yelling “Speak English!” or as I usually hear… “Speak American!” or whether the local tribes offer classes for young folks to learn their ancestral language, our ability to communicate is vital, and our connection to those who we can communicate with is even more important than our connection to those who we can worship with. In all of the situations where tribal or native or indigenous peoples have been forced to give up their native languages and adopt the language of their oppressors, the end result has never been good.

This theft of culture, of identity, is more defining and more detrimental than the adaptation of clothing and lifestyle.

Why?

Because people want to be heard…we each want a voice, to be understood, to communicate our needs and our desires, we want to know that we have a connection to not only those from the same ‘tribe’ but also to our ancestors.

Was that protest worth it? I wasn’t there. I lost nobody. In fact, I was only eight years old…but I’d say so. I’d say that nobody…and yes, I do mean nobody, has the right to steal another person’s culture…to force out a language, to kill it.

Linguists believe that there are nearly 7,000 languages currently spoken around the world…they also believe that up to 90% of those languages will be extinct before the year 2100. Of course since I can’t grasp math for the life of me, I have no idea exactly what number that is, but that’s a goddamn lot of languages to disappear, a lot of cultures that will be missing a huge portion of their individuality. It’s a lot of grandchildren who will no longer be able to read the love letters of their grandmothers, it is too many nephews and nieces that will never understand the quirks and expressions that their uncles use. It is an ungodly amount of descendents that will never hear the language of their ancestors, never speak the language of those who came before.

I think that’s sad.

So today, in honor of those children who stepped out, walked toward what they knew could be their deaths, and in honor of those who died for the right to be educated in their native tongue, to have the right to have a cultural separation from the destroyers of their way of life, just remember, the next time you get pissed that you have to push number 1 for English, that you wouldn’t want to be forced to give up your language either…