Corona Daily 303: No Words Left

Aritana Yawalapiti, 71, one of Brazil’s influential indigenous leaders died of covid-19 in August. A quiet, dignified man, the tribal chief was successful in resolving conflicts between tribes and dealing with non-indigenous people.

“Awiri Nuha”, said the dying man to his son, in Yawalapiti, “take care of the people. Take care of the land. Take care of the forest.” With Aritana’s death, his language moved closer to extinction. Only two people in their late seventies speak it, but they live in different villages. With chronological precision, covid-19 picked off Aritana’s mother, then uncle, aunt and finally Aritana himself.

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India has more endangered languages than Brazil. India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands are home to some of the oldest tribes in the world. Two years ago, on the Sentinel islands, (part of the Andaman range), a young American missionary went to save the souls of the tribals. They instantly killed him with an arrow. They have been practicing social distancing for centuries.

Mrs Licho, a resident of Port Blair, recently died in a hospital there. In her sixties, she was the last speaker of “Sare”. The language Sare was 70000 years old, and with Mrs Licho’s death, it is now extinct. Mrs Licho often spoke to birds and animals in her language. She said they were her ancestors who understood what she was saying. When a single speaker is left, it is a tragedy for her not to be able to converse in her native tongue.

Each language has special words that highlight subtle nuances about the community. Sare had a word ‘raupuch’ for a person who has lost his/her sibling. In our languages, we have widow/widower (loss of spouse), orphan (loss of parents), but rarely loss of a sibling. It tells us how important the sibling relationship was among Sare speakers.

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The world has around 6800 languages. Almost 600 are critically endangered. Nearly 150 are spoken by no more than ten people. As a rule, those are elderly people, in fact they are called ancients. Covid-19 threatens to speed up the process of making them and their languages extinct. In the state of Mississippi, Choctaw Indians is the only recognized native American tribe. It has lost 81 members so far to the virus. Navajo nation, America’s largest reservation, has recorded more than 560 deaths.

In Australia, Peter Salmon, an 86-year-old man is the last fluent speaker of two languages, Warriyangga and Thiinmato. Recently, a group of linguists had planned an expedition to meet him to record those languages. They cancelled it for fear of infecting the old man.

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When a language dies, the world loses a lot more than merely words. The concepts. History. Philosophy. Stories and fairytales. Lullabies. Music. Nuances.

My mother, 82, is a Sanskrit professor. She is among a few hundred survivors who can speak the language. Sanskrit has at least 20 different words for the sun, the moon, water, a mountain or a river. How many words does English have for them? This nuance tells us that Hindus, even the priests who spoke in Sanskrit, and the sages who created the Vedas were pagans. Nature was probably more important for them than Gods.

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When an animal species becomes extinct, it is immensely sad. We don’t want to live in a world that has only dogs, cats and rats. It is the same with languages. Bigger languages gradually crush the minor languages. But the death of any language, however small, is a loss for the human race.

Ravi