Monthly Archives: December 2009

Language revitalization doesn’t happen once; it signifies a necessary and continual process throughout the life of a language. Revitalization happens every time a new person learns the language, every time a child becomes an adult and attains a “Superior” proficiency. Language and culture must constantly internally expand and renew, in order to account for the natural cycles of death and birth, along with competing cultural pressures that have always exist between communities.

In a memetic sense, memes that don’t stick, don’t last beyond a human lifetime. Successful culture (meaning successfully regenerating culture, not in the sense of “gross national product” or some other modern commercial or militaristic measure) always has a spreading mechanism amongst its members, always sticks like burrs on the coat of a passing dog.

In the face of imperial, modern pressure, globalized cultures speaking languages such as English, Chinese, and Hindi (though even Chinese and Hindi speakers have expressed concerns about the endangerment of their languages), suffocate and overrun indigenous, small-scale cultures and languages. In essence, rather than sticky, modern imperial culture moves more like an oil spill. Stickiness becomes too delicate of a word for the memetic immersion perpetuated on the more human-scale village and tribal societies by globalizing culture.

To outcompete the cultural onslaught, to revitalize an endangered language, a community must first revitalize their culture of interaction. Revitalizing their language, for at least a core group, but eventually for the entire community, must become a central obsession. In the face of day-to-day struggles and economic pressure, along with conventional views on the extreme difficulty of learning a language, this presents too great a challenge to an average community.

However, if we focus on the twin issues of “immersion”, and “stickiness”, and see the connection to community interaction, we can begin to understand how an extremely immersive, sticky language game can finally outcompete other concerns that have so far suppressed language revitalization.

This means that language revitalization all comes down to how long it takes a small community core to build fundamentally different habits around their language, and to pick up and master a grassroots mentoring language toolkit; a game that seamlessly integrates several hundred of the most powerful, cutting edge understandings commonly known in the world of education, but rarely used in institutional environments, and never in the form an integrated system as we have developed in the “Where Are Your Keys?” fluency game.

Even in very dire situations, with only a dozen fluent speakers left, we believe we can often support a community making a radical transformation in a matter of weeks.

In this sense, though at this point of course we don’t see a “Novice” attaining a “Superior” proficiency level in that time, we do see them acquiring the community habits and teaching skillsets that make “Superior” level inevitable for them and those they bring along with them, and every week thereafter that passes, the entire community strengthens and becomes more bulletproof to the slings and arrows of modern culture. The infectious nature of renewing and strengthening their web of language and identity creates an overwhelming momentum. The ability to successfully transmit skills and fluency through play and social interaction make language revitalization contagious.

Can you help us fill these seats in time?

We now live in a time where, in the next 5-10 years, we will see a massive die-off of language diversity as globalization and modern forces have their final impacts among aging speakers of the world’s traditional, wisdom-bearing, indigenous languages. Unless we act now.

In this article, following forward from the triage of a particular language’s need, Evan and I look at what it takes to turn around the momentum of a language; from more or less inevitable extinction through loss of aging fluent speakers, transformed into a self-sustaining, vital, generative learning community that creates more “Superior” level speakers every year at an accelerating rate.

We strongly believe that, though documentation and recording of fluent speakers by linguists provides valuable historical information, it does not address a fundamental issue:

In order for a language to survive, an increasing group of people must start having conversations in that language right now, and they must continually in day-to-day conversation, from the first moment, work to increase their fluent proficiency level, and the overall fluent proficiency of their community.

We don’t revitalize language when we archive and document them, or when we create written orthographies, or translate literature; we revitalize a language when we converse in it. First and foremost, revitalization begins with daily oral culture.

So, to support a community’s decision to radically transform its momentum, using the fluency game, we have to make several more assessments of the language and its community:

How complex is the language? If it is a language with a lot of up-front complexity, like Kiksht or Hungarian, we’ll spend more time building a stronger base at the beginning (though this will pay off later as the community moves through higher proficiency levels on its own). This means a greater initial time investment.

How diffuse is the community? How much of a diaspora exists? If the community has a densely populated core, with frequent and well attended social events, this profoundly supports the work. This doesn’t refer to the fluent speaker population, but the population of potential fluent speakers. In order to really drive the game and turn around the destiny of a language, you need a community to enact this transformation. The smaller and more diffuse the community, the more work this will take.

How many willing fluent speakers exist? Like in any small community, politics, feuds, and personalities play a large role in how many truly available fluent speakers can support revitalization. What if the fluent speakers don’t like each other? What if they’re very private people? Culturally, what if humility and reserve limit their willingness to participate in an (admittedly) highly social, noisy, interactive language game? Perhaps (for example) 50 fluent Superior speakers then become, in actuality, 10 speakers who can realistically participate in revitalization (at least in the initial stages). Or 10 speakers may then become 1. This kind of assessment, though a hard pill to swallow, helps us to create a realistic picture of just how much up-front time we need to invest to transform the momentum of a language and support the realization of a bright future, rather than a tragic one.

How many community members become key revitalizers? Since we purpose to have the community carry the expertise and competency to revitalize their own language, inevitably we’ll need key members who stand out in terms of participating in conversations, showing grassroots leadership, and role-modeling a level of commitment required to revitalize their language. Evan and I will only participate long enough in a community’s language revitalization to unload the grassroots skill-set of WAYK; who then takes over after we leave? We groom these key players from the start, and if they don’t show up, if the general community doesn’t show enough commitment early in the process, that means more time invested on our part to find those key revitalizers that will create the momentum.

An example case. We’ve spent the past few weeks assessing several local Pacific Northwest native languages. Here we offer one assessment from that batch. Looking at the above factors (complexity, community core, willing fluent speakers, key revitalizers), we have estimated a “Superior” level language death of the language in 4 years, and “Advanced”/”Intermediate” level death (and thus the death of the language itself, as the language can’t feasibly revive from “Novice”  level) in 6 years.  This particular estimate, though certainly grim, perhaps counter-intuitively also reveals a lot of opportunity, as this particular community has a lot of key strengths that will carry the language farther than it might otherwise, in spite of a very small population of fluent “Superior” speakers.

So, for this example language, what will it take to turn its destiny around?

After 8 weeks of the community working with WAYK, we predict a full (near 100%) momentum change for the language, assuming the following community actions:

1. Every weekend during that time, Evan and I hold a Saturday and Sunday teacher-training WAYK workshop.
2. Every week, three times a week (Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays), the community holds a two hour conversation group, preferably centered around a cultural activity/event (basketry, drumming, cooking, canoeing, harvesting/making medicine, etc.).
3. Every conversation evening run by at least three different game leaders/teachers, one for each night (Monday Teacher A, Wednesday Teacher B, Friday Teacher C).

So, when we say “near 100% momentum change”, what do we mean? What does a change in momentum look like? We essentially mean that the community has taken on new habits, as a language community, and that they have a minimum grassroots language learning toolkit to make the most of those new habits.

1. The community has a regular, scheduled conversation space, several evenings a week, in which to speak their language. This, frankly, is the most difficult piece to accomplish, and a very big deal, as any community organizer can attest.
2. At least 5 key community members have gone up one sub-level on the “Travels with Charlie”/ACTFL scale; Novices go to Intermediate-low, Intermediate-low goes to Intermediate-mid, Intermediate-mid goes to Intermediate-high, Intermediate-high goes to Advanced-low, etc. In doing so they’ve gained the essential grasp of the WAYK game.
3. In this case, for our example language, this then generates a self-sustaining population of “Superior” speakers in approximately 3 years.

One of our local games of WAYK held for the community

Of course, Evan and I don’t have a crystal ball; all kinds of chaotic events can and do happen, and we’ve made these estimates as conservatively as possible. Barring any truly unusual events, like civil wars, tsunamis, or even immortality pills, we stand by these estimates. In the end, the most fragile element in the equation comes down to the fluent, elderly, “Superior” speakers. Beyond their value as community elders, family, and unique people with their own talents and gifts (such as jazz musician Edward Tatoosh), they are truly the future of the language.

In the past month, two critical members of the Hupacasath First Nation died; they numbered among the last who spoke the language native to Vancouver island fluently from childhood.

Hupacasath speaker Dorothy Unger died Nov. 21 and Edward Tatoosh died more recently in December.

This caused a triple tragedy; the loss felt by their families, the loss felt by the Hupacasath, and the loss felt by those of us who will experience that much more cultural poverty, because we cannot benefit from the cultural wealth and wisdom encoded in the language fluently spoken by Ms. Unger or Mr. Tatoosh.

We, Evan Gardner and Willem Larsen, truly believe that the WAYK game offers the most powerful opportunity for supporting the revitalization of languages on the brink of extinction. In a matter of months WAYK can materially support an endangered language turning away from the brink, and the formation of a substantive fluent speaker population, with a bright future based on the easy and infectious quality of the language acquisition caused by playing the game in a language learning community.

It seems a long, slow road to spreading awareness of something so innocuous as a “language game” amongst endangered language communities; a long, slow road towards increasing perception of the WAYK game as a real force for profound transformation of the seeming tragic destinies of the many endangered languages around the world.

Even then, once many folks know about the game and want to use it to help their own endangered language, then still the work remains to actually use the game to help revitalize the languages in question.

This has all made Evan and me somewhat ruthlessly practical. We wish we could wave a magic wand and get the word out there; the more you, who support WAYK, do to spread word, the more we, in the end, will accomplish, of course. And we thank you for helping us to do the work that we feel so passionate about.

But we also have had to create a possibly grim triage for language revitalization, though we see it as full of both grief and hope.

We’ve trained an eye for the possible revitalization of any particular endangered language. According to the “Travels with Charlie” roadmap of fluent proficiency, the language can revitalize according to the proficiency level at which you still have speakers. Ideally you have a rich, diverse language community with plenty of male and female speakers at a “Superior”/”Charlie Rose” level.

But we can work with one.

If you don’t even have one left, your community essentially must “reinvent” the Superior level of speech for that language, a process rife with heavy cultural impact from the modern world; a culture world with very distinct values and paradigms. Decolonization becomes much more difficult. Not impossible, but much more difficult.

However, if you still have a diverse community of speakers at “Advanced”/”Larry King” level, then we still have hope.

But we can even work with just one.

If not even a single speaker at Advanced level exists, then that means no storytelling in that language exists any longer. To resuscitate the language at this point means to reinvent an entire tradition of storytelling and Advanced interaction. But still, you can do it. The language will change according to the impact of the modern world, but still a lot of beautiful expression will exist, and the language can rise again, in a somewhat new form.

If not even a single speaker of “Intermediate”/”Get to the Party” exists, then we have real problems. If you can’t ask “What is that? Is that a stone?”, there’s not much we can do. In order for us to help, you must be able to still ask “what is that?” in your language, however your language asks that most basic of questions. If you can’t, then we have nothing left but the Novice world of single words and memorized phrases, outside of fluent conversation.

Though one could perhaps still, regardless, with sufficient linguistic documentation, resurrect the language from Novice in some form, the strength of WAYK lies in its ability to maintain the vitality and lineage of the oral tradition, the spoken rhythm and song of the actual living conversation of the language.

So, don’t break our hearts. Don’t wait too long. Invite us as soon as possible, hopefully while you still have Superior speakers, and all the beautiful, diverse, and ever-learning community of Advanced, Intermediate, and baby Novices that go along with the rich, mature speech of the Superior adults.

But whomever you have still speaking, at whatever level, don’t wait; allow us to give you vital tools for turning the destiny of your language around, so we can keep alive as much of your rich legacy as possible.

Languages are dying, right now; yet still we have hope.