Planet Word

by J. P. Davidson

  The Grimms’ fairy tales quickly became classics in children’s literature

  The brothers didn’t live to see the fulfilment of another dream of theirs – the founding of the modern German nation-state in 1871. Jacob Grimm had written in his autobiography a few years earlier:

  Nearly all my labours have been devoted, either directly or indirectly, to the investigation of our earlier language, poetry and laws. These studies may have appeared to many, and may still appear, useless; to me they have always seemed a noble and earnest task, definitely and inseparably connected with our common fatherland, and calculated to foster the love of it.

  With hindsight, Jacob’s nationalistic tones – however romantic – are rather unsettling. I much prefer the words he used in his eulogy for his beloved brother Wilhelm. He called him simply mein Märchenbruder, my fairy-tale brother.

  It’s reckoned that there are more than 6,000 languages spoken around the world today. Most modern linguists don’t think that these languages originated in just one place, but rather that a variety of them evolved independently among different groups. Current thinking is that almost all of them can be traced back to about ten main ‘language families’. Chinese, for instance, derives from Sino-Tibetan; Swahili from Niger-Congo. But the largest of these families, the one that half the world’s population can trace their language back to, is Proto-Indo-European.

  Scholars in Europe first began to investigate the history of languages at the end of the eighteenth century. There was already clear evidence that a group of languages – French, Spanish, Italian and other Romance languages – were descended from Latin. What Jacob Grimm, in his Deutsche Grammatik, and a handful of others did was to trace back almost all the languages of Europe, together with some from western Asia and northern India, to one single ancestor language – Proto-Indo-European (PIE).

  Grimm’s Law, as it became known, showed how the consonants of different Indo-European languages relate to each other. For example, there is a regular relationship between words beginning with p in Sanskrit, Latin or Greek and f in Germanic languages (including English). So, pater in Latin becomes father in English; or pada, ped and pus in Sanskrit, Latin and Greek become foot, voet, Fuss, fotur and fod in English, Dutch, German, Icelandic and Danish. Other examples show the relationship of k to h in non-Germanic and Germanic languages: kyon, canis and ci (dog) in Greek, Latin and Welsh become hound and Hund in English and German. And there’s also a link from g to k, for example, with gelandros and gelu, meaning cold in Greek and Latin, becoming cold, kalt and kall in English, German and Swedish.

  We think this single language was spoken more than 5,000 years ago in the Steppes of southern Russia. As tribes migrated through Europe and Asia, PIE split into a number of dialects, and these in time developed into separate languages. It wasn’t the first language of man; it’s simply the oldest we have evidence of. We don’t know what PIE would have sounded like, and there are no written records. All we can do is try to inch our way tantalizingly nearer by looking for clues in the oldest written records we’ve found so far. For example, scholars have worked on prose from the Old Indic literature of ancient India, which was passed orally from generation to generation. One piece of prose – The King and the God – is thought to be the oldest sample of literature in any Indo-European language. By working backwards a few millennia, this is how some scholars think a PIE storyteller 5,000 years ago might have sounded: ‘To réecs éhest. So nputlos éhest. So réecs súhnum éwelt. Só tóso cceutérm prcscet: “Súhnus moi jnhyotaam!” ’ (‘Once there was a king. He was childless. The king wanted a son. He asked his priest: “May a son be born to me!” ’).

  The floor of the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York looks a bit like a reincarnation of the Tower of Babel. Hundreds of voices talking in different tongues, evidence that mankind’s initial proto-languages split into thousands more. In fact, there are just six official languages in the United Nations – English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Russian and Arabic; de facto, all 192 member states have to speak one of these to be heard. It is rather ironic that the United Nations, the defender of the rights and sovereignty of all its member states, has to use old-fashioned language imperialism to make itself understood. Perhaps the world would be better off if everybody spoke just one language.

  ‘Oh, no,’ insists Zaha Bustema, an Arab-English simultaneous translator. ‘No, no, no, no!’ Her passionate response isn’t simply because it would put her out of a job. ‘There is a beauty of languages. They are living entities. Each and every language has its own music, its own imagery, its own way of expressing the sentiments and the nature of the people. It would be a loss if that language did not exist. Oh, I’m very much in favour of the Tower of Babel.’

  That Tower of Babel is increasingly under threat as the homogenization of languages seems to be pushing us back to the days of a few proto-languages; and that, as we shall find out in the next chapter, spells the death of many of our micro-languages, each one a repository of knowledge, a definer of culture and identity, exquisitely structured and vastly complex.

  The United Nations headquarters in New York, 2010

  CHAPTER 2

  Identity

  There are around 195 countries in the world, and for many the name of the country refers to the language they speak – English for England, German for Germany, Chinese for China. Of the more than 6,000 languages on our planet, some are spoken by only a score of people living in a valley in Papua New Guinea, others, like Chinese, by over a billion. But scratch beneath the surface and, of course, even the seeming homogeneity of Chinese is an illusion; Chinese has in fact got seven distinct languages with many more dialects, although unified by one writing system. Then there are another 292 distinct ethnic languages within the People’s Republic of China.

  So what has our language, our mother tongue, langue maternelle, Muttersprache, bahasa ibu, to do with our identity? What is certain is that language has been used to unify and oppress, liberate and imprison. It is part and parcel of conquest – be it Latin in the Roman Empire, Spanish in Latin America, Norman in Britain or English in North America. But lest we think it is all about Western imperial powers, over 600 years ago the Incas did it just as effectively, imposing their language, Quechua, on hundreds of tribes on the altiplano that they assimilated during the creation of their empire based around Cuzco in present-day Peru.

  Language has always been a powerful weapon used to dominate and subjugate; far too often this has meant the proscription and eventual demise of the smaller languages. ‘Learn well the language of the whites. Do not rely on our language, there’s no value there. One’s future well-being is dependent on mastering the language of the foreign people.’ So spoke a Hawaiian to her granddaughter in 1896, and it is a tale that could be told all over the world. Little surprise, then, that we are losing languages at the rate of one every fortnight. By the end of the century it’s estimated there will be only 900 languages left in the world.

  It matters because, more than an ID document or a passport, what defines us is our language. Go anywhere in the world and you will find examples of how linguicide, the death of languages, is having a devastating effect on identity. But there are also a few places where minority languages are fighting back.

  Amongst the Turkana

  Africa, the last victim of the colonial period, is a witches’ brew of languages. There are an estimated 1,500 different languages spoken in the fifty-two countries on the continent and for the fragile postcolonial nation-states this Babel is seen as an impediment to forging national identity and development.

  The area round Lake Turkana – the Jade Sea or Lake Rudolph as it used to be called in school geography books – is the sort of habitat where Lucy, our early hominid progenitor, scrabbled about, hunting kudu and eking out a subsistence. The lake, in best postcolonial fashion, is now named after the predominant tribe of the area, the Turkana. They are a feared and uncontrollable lot and, for the British trying to ‘pacify’
this northern area of Kenya, as prickly as the acacia trees that define the landscape.

  The Turkana tribe number some half a million and live in one of the most inhospitable places on earth: a semi-arid desert that stretches across northern Kenya and southern Sudan. They are a fierce and fearsome people who have defied colonization by both whites and blacks for over a hundred years but are now, through education, being brought into the fold of modern Kenya. But a consequence of this development is they risk losing not only their language but also their very identity.

  The Turkana live for their livestock – oxen, camels, goats and sheep, in that order of importance – and will do anything to protect them. As a result they have become toughened warriors, much feared by their neighbours. They are monotheistic in the sense that they have a creator, Akuj, who is the bringer of rain, which to the Turkana is synonymous with life. Their culture is predicated on raiding the livestock of their neighbouring tribes, predominantly the Toposa over the border in Sudan and the Karamajong, who are spread out in an area spanning Kenya and Uganda. They love fighting as much as they do their oxen. All the young men, rather unnervingly, carry Kalashnikovs. Wealth is counted in livestock and not much else for the men whilst the women are adorned with an extravagant number of beaded necklaces – so many that their necks are never seen. A rich woman will wear a good 5 kilos of beads, and they are never taken off.

  Turkana women wear up to 5 kilos of beads around their necks that they never take off

  Being nomadic, the Turkana did not take kindly to the imperial powers’ ludicrous method of creating borders. Their land was split between Sudan, Uganda and Kenya, so the borders were irrational to them. The one with Sudan seemed the work of a particularly indolent cartographer who must have got bored and simply drawn a straight line. Turkanaland was eventually integrated into Kenya, albeit cut off from the rest of the country by the Closed Districts Ordinance, which prevented all but a few officials from entering the area. It was only in 1964, after independence, that President Jomo Kenyatta repealed the Ordinance, and it was deemed safe enough to let people travel there. Few did. The Turkana were left alone for most of the twentieth century, and the changes in their lifestyle were minimal. Their survival continued to rely heavily on the rains, and the excitement of cattle raiding carried on as usual. Isolated from the political and economic life of the rest of the country, they felt little pressure to adapt to the changing face of postcolonial Kenya. Their identity was unchallenged.

  As always in Africa the sheer number of tribes within each nation-state has created linguistic problems. The Turkana language is just one of 69 in Kenya. Tanzania has 128, Congo 242, Nigeria more than 500. Tribal allegiances are still the most powerful forces within these countries, and mutual incomprehension impedes social and political cohesion. You only have to look at the history of civil wars from Biafra to Rwanda to see the tragic consequences. The answer in Kenya, as indeed in much of east Africa, has been to adopt Swahili as a lingua franca, so that at least there’s one language which everyone can speak and understand.

  Swahili (from the Arabic sahil, meaning ‘coastal dwellers’) is an odd creation. Originally a language for trade, it mixed local Bantu dialects along the east African coast with elements of Arabic, Portuguese, French, German and English. It was barely a written language but after independence it was the natural choice to become the language of the new states. Tanzania, under its first president, the visionary socialist Julius Nyerere, adopted it vigorously, hoping that it would eliminate tribal differences and unite the country. Jomo Kenyatta in next-door Kenya similarly adopted it as the lingua franca and language of instruction in schools, albeit with English still being widely taught and spoken.

  English- and Swahili-language newspapers on sale in Africa

  For the Turkana, Swahili had some uses for trading but not much else. Schools were non-existent until very recently, and it was the work of the Catholic missionaries in the 1960s that introduced a written script into a hitherto entirely oral language

  The market in Loki is a bustle of Turkana, who’ve walked in from the desert to shop at the Arab and Somali stalls selling everything from mobile phones to beads and foodstuffs. All the trade with non-Turkana shopkeepers (about 95 per cent) is being conducted in Swahili. It’s not particularly elegant Swahili but it works. Speaking Swahili is just a practical necessity. But in Loki’s government-run school, it’s evident that Turkana is not being taught at all. Instruction is either in Swahili or English for some subjects. So the young Turkana who do go to school, albeit still a small percentage of the population, are in danger of losing their mother tongue – the pressure to conform and speak either Swahili or English is just too great.

  For those who remain in their traditional manyattas (villages) the chances to do other than be a pastoral nomad are negligible. For the older generation this is not really a dilemma – they have known no other way of life – but for their children, if they don’t embrace the possibilities of education and the chance to become involved in the wider Kenyan society, they are destined to remain on the periphery. The upside to this is they will retain their language culture and identity, but how long they can withstand the somewhat dubious temptations of ‘progress’ is a moot point.

  One of the key factors in preserving the language has been the creation of a script. Thanks mainly to the work of Catholic missionaries like Father Tom, an Irish priest who has been working among the Turkana for nigh on forty years, a standard Turkana orthography has been adopted. It is based on the Roman alphabet and is taught at the mission primary schools. Under the shade of a tree a young teacher gathers her children and, with nothing more than a worn-out blackboard, chalk and the efficacy of using the desert sand as a slate substitute, the children practise writing Turkana. The eagerness with which the young Turkana sing out the vowels and write them down is an inspiring sight. However, unless their language is adopted by the state system it seems it is never going to provide a realistic alternative to Swahili.

  Turkana children learn to write by drawing in the sand

  The manyatta is a world apart from the relative sophistication of Loki, a half day’s walk away. To the west you can see the outline of the Kidopo mountains, which form the border with Uganda and were made famous in the 1970s by director Peter Brook’s play based on the Ik, the tribe that live there. Five miles north across the flat scrub desert lies the border with Sudan (or whatever the new state of Southern Sudan will be called). The fact that Southern Sudan has effectively abrogated the colonial borders and seceded from the very idea of Sudan is indicative of the looseness of nation-state identity in parts of Africa. Tribalism rules. This is an unforgiving landscape, where tribal and clan loyalties are paramount, and the only way to assert security and independence from larger forces is to be united. Language is, as ever, the key to this sense of belonging.

  The manyatta itself is almost invisible from a distance: a scattering of thorn-bush enclosures for the livestock and domed huts made of bendy boughs and stretched animal skins that seem to have grown out of the earth, which of course they have. The giveaway signs are the bleets, baahs and moos of a few hundred quadrupeds and the waft of animal urine from the enclosures.

  The young men here have no intention of giving up their traditional way of life, which means basically cattle raiding. The notion that there is anything more important than Turkanaland and the Turkana language and customs is clearly unthinkable. Cedrac Ekitela is a strikingly handsome warrior who seems to have some authority even in this fiercely consensual society. He has the additional status of being the proud owner of a shiny blue mobile phone, and to add to his skills, speaks passable Swahili with a smattering of English. He explains that to express concepts such as Akuj, their supreme god and bringer of rain, or to sing the naleyo, which honours their emong, a special ox who becomes like an avatar to the warrior, would be impossible in any other language. Turkana is unusually rich in mythology and songs, and it is this inner part of the Turkana which no ot
her language can reach. Anyone watching them perform these ritual songs and dances would see that their language is their culture.

  Early explorers and British administrators must have felt intimidated when confronted by these uncompromising warrior people. It is this that will undoubtedly help them preserve their language and traditions more than anything else; and their half a million plus numbers – relatively substantial by Kenyan standards – will ensure they have enough weight to protect themselves not only from the neighbouring tribes but also political intrusions from Nairobi.

  Their unique voice and vision of the world should not be lost.

  Turkana traditions will hopefully be around for years to come

  Turkana Origin of Stars Myth

  A taboo is broken. Akuj, the bringer of rain, is angry and covers the world in darkness with his cloak. The Turkana warriors all get together and with their spears lift up Akuj’s cloak. The spears make tiny tears in the fabric and those holes are the stars that shine at night.

  The Akha: the Politics of Language

  The Turkana have a good chance of speaking their language in ninety years’ time, but halfway across the world in Thailand a similar sort of story is unfolding which may not have a happy ending.