Superbowl XLVIII ignited a firestorm of controversy, but it wasn't for a referee call. It was for a commercial. Coca Cola broadcast, "It's Beautiful," an ad featuring "America the Beautiful" as its soundtrack. Where's the controversy? In addition to English, the commercial included translations sung in Spanish, Tagalog, Hindi, Hebrew, Senegalese-French and Keres by young women from all over America. Social media broke out with complaints against using other languages, with hashtags like #SpeakAmerican or #speakenglish.
Another tweet cropped up: #SpeakNativeAmerican. Speaking American, some say, means speaking the first languages of America. Christy Bird from Santo Domingo Pueblo in New Mexico sang in Keres. Her aunts and uncles helped her translate. Keres and other Native American languages predate English. At European contact, linguists estimate there were perhaps 300 languages coming from more than 50 distinct families indigenous to the U.S. and Canada. This tremendous diversity winnowed rapidly, as indigenous people were moved off their lands, lost children and grandparents when removed, often forcibly, into new territories with unfamiliar plants and animals, and later, were taken from their families and sent to boarding schools where beatings and punishments for speaking indigenous languages were common. No surprise, many children grew up and refused to speak or teach their language to their children. Separated from families, separated from language, separated from traditions, Native American communities began a widespread shift to English. Now these languages are endangered, often no longer spoken in the home or by fluent first language speakers.
We face a global crisis of language endangerment. Many of the estimated 6,000 languages currently spoken will not survive into the 22nd century. FridayCommunities mobilize by raising their children in the language, teaching it in school, and documenting it while speakers remain. In projects at The University of Texas at Arlington, faculty and students support these efforts by collaborating with many Native American communities and provide training to teachers and language activists. We have service projects where linguistics students volunteer and learn to give back. With Joshua Hinson and the Chickasaw Language Revitalization Program, we document the language, which has 70 or fewer speakers. With University of Oklahoma linguist Mary Linn, we lead the Oklahoma Breath of Life Workshop, where linguistic training unlocks archival materials for tribes with few or no fluent first language speakers. And in June, UT Arlington will host CoLang 2014, the Institute on Collaborative Language Research. This international institute provides training for documentation, revitalization and teaching. Our campus and the Metroplex itself will be even more vibrant with indigenous languages of the Americas, Australia, Africa and beyond.
On Friday, February 21 we will celebrate International Mother Language Day. A new hashtag for your tweet, and a better one for indigenous languages is on its way. Rising Voices, Indigenous Tweets, CoLang 2014 and University of Arlington's Native American Languages Lab and many more support indigenous languages and their use and ask you to tweet in your language and add two things: #IMLD2014 and #languagename, so #Chickasaw or #Navajo or whatever your language is.
Losing a language means losing a tremendous intellectual repository and so much more. Language encodes cultural practices, and traditional knowledge about plants, animals, weather, and healing. The loss of a language is profound. Imagine being unable to speak with your grandparents in their language. Imagine being unable to pray with your parents in their language. Imagine having no songs in your language to sing your children to sleep. Language is intensely personal, familial, cultural, sacred.
Speak American? Cody Pata would say he did just that, when he translated and sang "America the Beautiful" in Nomlaki, a California language and spoken by his late grandmother, her mother language.
Colleen Fitzgerald is a professor at University of Texas, Arlington. She also co-directs the Oklahoma Breath of Life Day.