Language is
our unique relationship to the Creator,
our attitudes, beliefs, values, and
fundamental notions of what is truth.
Our languages are the cornerstone of
who we are as a People.
Without our languages,
our cultures cannot survive. (Towards Linguistic Justice for First Nations, Principles for Revitalization of First Nations Languages, Canada, 1990)
When another nation comes
and destroys your language
they are sinning on more fronts
than they can ever imagine. (Pat Ingoldsby, 2005)
Many Arapaho see the loss of their language as a kind of spiritual test. Without it, the tribe's ceremonies can't be conducted correctly. “You lose the language, you lose the soul”. (Sergio Maldonaldo, director of Northern Arapaho tribal education, Wind River Reservation, Wyoming, 2009)
When you lose a language, you lose a culture, intellectual wealth, a work of art. It's like dropping a bomb on … the Louvre. (Ken Hale, quoted in his obituary, 1 November 2001)
[T]he ancestral language connects a people to its heritage in ways that there is simply no substitute for … There is something inexpressibly sad about watching the disappearance of a unique local language that will never again be heard flowing in its full magnificence from the tongue of a verbally gifted speaker. I conversed with a number of speakers of East Sutherland Gaelic who had just such exceptional verbal gifts. … The sadness lies in the realization that the great-grandchildren of those magnificent speakers will never have the chance to hear the like of what I heard. (Nancy Dorian, 1999)
This is the first of two “So what?” chapters, which attempt to answer the question of why endangered languages are worth saving. All over the world, endangered-language communities are coming to the realization that their cultures cannot fully survive if their languages die. This chapter considers the implications of language loss for a community's sense of cultural identity and also – more concretely – for its links to the natural world, especially in the form of ethnozoological and ethnobotanical knowledge.