Language Matters

"Linguistic Diversity in Children in Indigenous Elementary Schools in Baja California (percentages)" from a study done by Laura Velasco Ortiz and Daniela Renteria from the Autonomous University of Baja California. Creative Commons license 4.0 International

The beginning section of Ackerman's chapter on hearing fascinated me in ways I didn't quite expect. I love learning weird facts about the etymology of words and I also enjoy learning about the use of language across history. It's a bit strange, but fascinating nonetheless. The beginning of 'Jaguar of Sweet Laughter,' then, was quite literally the perfect intersection of those two interests. 

It got me thinking about how common it is for the "conquerors" of a country to change the language, and even create a stigma around the indigenous way of speaking. Irish Gaelige was banned in Ireland by the English, as was Welsh, Scots, and other Celtic languages in order to control the indigenous populations. In Mexico, Spanish has a mix of indigenous words that make a vocabulary unique to the country (as do most other countries in Latinoamerica). My family is from Baja California, right near the San Ysidro border with California. We'll use words like catsup (ketchup) that are clearly coming from English. I speak better Spanglish than I do proper Spanish, despite how much I'd like to. Yet words like chamaco, comal, and molcajete come from Nahuatl, but so do words that we have in English like aguacate, chocolate, tomate (avocado, chocolate, tomato). 

Despite the fact that Mexican Spanish has so many words from Nahuatl, indigenous peoples who speak their languages (about 62 recognized native languages spoken in Mexico alone, see image above for information about Baja California) still face discrimination as a result of the systems put in place by the Spanish. Spanish missionaries would learn indigenous languages as a means to convert the native population to Christianity. Bernadino de Sahagun wrote down the religious traditions of the Mexica as a means to warn other missionaries if they were still practicing their indigenous religion. He had to learn Nahuatl in order to do that, and thus used language as a weapon, a way to forcibly convert people. Now, many indigenous languages are on the verge of becoming endangered, if they aren't already. 

Even in the U.S., immigrant parents sometimes don't teach their children their own native languages for fear they'll be discriminated against. My mother often asks me to make phone calls for her because some people have trouble understanding her accent over calls. Siri certainly has trouble, as does Alexa. We laugh about it most nights because it's funny how she'll say something like "Siri, play 'American Housewife'" or one of our family T.V. shows and Siri'll come up with something entirely wrong. My mom always has a good sense of humor relating to herself. It's easy to make her laugh with silly little things, like how Siri doesn't quite understand her. She made it a game, almost. There was one time, when I was a freshman in High School, when, during a neighborhood potluck, one of our neighbors was speaking to her slowly, as if she thought my mom didn't speak English well enough to understand her. It stopped being a game then. I don't remember how my mom reacted, but I remember how annoyed my dad, sister, and I were. 

Codeswitching is also an important result of how hearing affects the way we experience the world. Listening to my friend slip effortlessly into Jamaican Patois while on the phone with her mother is different-but-not from the way my roommate moves back and forth between Haitian Creole and English when she's talking to her mother as opposed to talking to me. Even the way we speak when we're around strangers as opposed to our friends changes. My voice goes up much higher, enough so that I can't have a phone call around my friends without them teasing me after. I lose that sort of dragged-out, rounder L.A. talk influenced by the rhythm of speaking Spanish. Around familiar company, everything returns again as if nothing happened. If I spend enough time with people, I'll start adapting to their way of speaking, their rhythms, and their vocabulary. 

Ackerman's chapter brought up this memory, along with the idea that what people hear can often affect the way they treat others. Our neighbor heard my mom's accent, then spoke to her differently than she would my white, somewhat mono-lingual father. Sound is important to the way we move through the world, but not necessarily in the way I thought of first.