Sunday, April 10, 2011

A little language goes a long way

So, I'm back at home, in Cape Verde. Life's a lot more relaxed. Don't have to worry about confusing airports, customs and all that stuff. For my flight back to Cape Verde, I actually arrived at the airport 5 hours before my flight just to lighten the stress-load. Airports are definitely not my niche. Felt good though to just chill, watch people and read. I'm definitely a better chiller since arriving on the island. But, the main topic of this blog is going to be language and it's importance. On Cape Verde, Cape Verdeans and I speak Kriolu. For most people in the world it probably seems a useless language and one that will probably disappear as globalization progresses and colonial languages assert their dominance. Globalization is an incredibly powerful force that has a head of steam, however, I'm going to argue that these languages are extremely important in providing diversity amongst humans and empowering the people that speak these languages. Kriolu has been the key to my success in Cape Verde. It creates smiles for young and old cape verdeans when they hear this white guy speaking THEIR language instead of portuguese or just trying to get by in English. I'm sure that gives them pride as well to know that a foreigner has taken the time to learn their language. The same was true in Guatemala. Where I lived, the language was Katchi´kel (excuse the spelling) and just by saying the few words that I knew, rather than speaking Spanish; it brought by smiles to old ladies selling flowers in the streets. But with globalization's power, this linguistic road is more of a one-way street, granting more weight to the colonial languages: english, spanish, portuguese and french (I'm sure there are others, but my history isn't great and I like hating on europeans and americans. So, I'll stick with it). So, we are slowly moving toward a world with fewer and fewer languages. And this effect is felt in the `developing´countries, where everyone wants to learn English, the lingua franca of the world. This is a terrible shame. Without this linguistic diversity, I believe that the world could become less diverse in many other way, eventually, leading to a homogenous population that shares Western values and beliefs. Causing us to appear more like robots than we already do (I can remember looking at the people lining up to take the escalator in London and looked like some other force was controlling everyone and they had no mind of their own). Consumerism would take over the world. Think of the weight of the word "economic" in our language. I hardly hear this word spoken here, and I'm sure it's the case in other languages like Kriolu. This puts more responsibility on us in the western world. We need to take an interest in more of these seemingly unimportant languages of the world. The Kriolus, Foolas, Waloffs and Katchikels that without incentives from the western world could disappear. Buy music, books, take lessons. Use globalization against itself. I imagine that the loss of language diversity could be similar to the loss of biological diversity, on different scales. With those words, Fika fixi (be well) And this coming from a guy who's about to start teaching english. Ah the world is a complicated place, full of contradictions.