I was watching a webcast on the preservation of indigenous languages (as I am wont to do) and a very intelligent federal employee by the name of Mandy sent my mind spinning in a manner few have lately.

It was her assertion that language and culture often have a symbiotic (my words, not hers) relationship, that language forms culture and culture language, that got me thinking, but it was another participant’s story about how frustrated she’d gotten with her grandfather in trying to translate some from his language to English (I’m sorry, I don’t remember the language now), and how he’d responded, that blew my mind.

She wanted a word for resilient, a straight, word-for-word translation and he wouldn’t give it to her, because it doesn’t exist; in his language and culture, resilience wasn’t just a label, an assigned word; like many other things, it required description to truly carry the essence of resilience. A tent that stands up to Arctic winds without tearing. A man with the strength to travel weeks on end to his deer meat caches in order to feed his family in the winter.

That’s resilience. And it struck me that describing things that way resonates the actual meaning so much more clearly than a simple word can. It isn’t literal, as her grandfather told her; it’s felt sense.

Mandy’s assertion from the shores of Great Bear Lake were that in her culture, language comes from a different place, a different mode of thought. Because in her culture, when one speaks and acts, when one considers their lives, it’s never, as it so often is in Western culture, and white North American culture (American culture), solely about you. Every thought, every communication, every action; it’s all in context, with the understanding that we are not separate from the world; we do not live in void. Our actions, our words, our thoughts – they happen as part of the larger universe, of the larger world, the larger community.

The larger family, even.

So, when we speak and when we act, we act and speak with all that in mind. And their language reflected that; the concepts, the methods of speaking, were reflected in the words and style. We speak as we are in relation to the sky, to our elders, to children. To friends and family. To all the things we do not know. Her assertion was that these concepts, this language, needed to be taught, so that the culture of understanding about where we exist in the world, that we are a part of it, and not separate from it, would not be lost in this me-me-me society.

It was a wonderful truth, and I agree – the more we think in terms of ourselves as part of the greater picture, and not as the whole world, the better off this world would be.

(And yes, I recognize the irony/hypocrisy of not knowing what the languages were; I could find them again, but after three days of trying to get to this, I’m squeezing it in where I can, and I’m not in a position to research it just this second – it came from a work site, and I’m not able to log in – I’ll post it later when I have the chance to find it, in addition to any resources I can find that might help keep these languages alive).

Target: 1600 words
Written: 1279 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Castle Of Wizardry, David Eddings
Comics: WildCats 3.0 24, Warblade: Razor's Edge 1-3
Music: Fingertips, They Might Be Giants