It felt very uncomfortable, brown bulky boots, laced too tight with sand kicking in. The boots were too new and too unadjusted to provide any worn comfort. Thud, thud, thud as we entered the dark, empty building. It was comprised of only bricks, no windows, rectangle shaped, with the exit opposite the entrance. We slithered around the wall counterclockwise filling the walls, eventually doubling up a few areas of the wall. The single room was silent except for the noises our body made as we shuffled (pat pat pat pat pat pat ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch gulp) about. Fear and anxiety crippled me as the large heavy door sealed behind us...
ting ting
hiss sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
...
'WHAT IS YOUR NAME."
"WHAT IS YOUR NAME."
"WHAT IS YOUR NAME."
Two guys up, "this" guy fell to the concrete floor on his knees, grasping his neck and screaming, "MY MASK ISN'T WORKING, I'M DYING, I"M DYING, I CAN'T BREATHE."
I found it humorous, but it wasn't my turn yet. The THUD, THUD, THUD was here, proceeded by "WHAT IS YOUR NAME."
I pulled the mask from my face to answer and get my first taste of the smoky gray tear gas that filled the room. It absorbed into my hair follicles, skin, clothes, sweat and now my lungs. It literally hurt to breathe, the motion of inhaling and exhaling became painful. Thick hot cutting smoke entered my body through my lungs. Spit, saliva, mucous and tears exited my face. The gas was irritating like friction between two hot surfaces. The real pain was from the feeling that I was unable to breathe. My body panicked and everything was telling me to get out. After some time it was if an invisible hand was placed on my chest to calm, control and guide my breathing. I could actually breathe in the gas, it just really burned, my skin, hair, throat and lungs. After a few minutes the exit opened. It never felt so good to return to normal...
ting ting
hiss sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
...
'WHAT IS YOUR NAME."
"WHAT IS YOUR NAME."
"WHAT IS YOUR NAME."
Two guys up, "this" guy fell to the concrete floor on his knees, grasping his neck and screaming, "MY MASK ISN'T WORKING, I'M DYING, I"M DYING, I CAN'T BREATHE."
I found it humorous, but it wasn't my turn yet. The THUD, THUD, THUD was here, proceeded by "WHAT IS YOUR NAME."
I pulled the mask from my face to answer and get my first taste of the smoky gray tear gas that filled the room. It absorbed into my hair follicles, skin, clothes, sweat and now my lungs. It literally hurt to breathe, the motion of inhaling and exhaling became painful. Thick hot cutting smoke entered my body through my lungs. Spit, saliva, mucous and tears exited my face. The gas was irritating like friction between two hot surfaces. The real pain was from the feeling that I was unable to breathe. My body panicked and everything was telling me to get out. After some time it was if an invisible hand was placed on my chest to calm, control and guide my breathing. I could actually breathe in the gas, it just really burned, my skin, hair, throat and lungs. After a few minutes the exit opened. It never felt so good to return to normal...
It took me a long time to get over this.
In "The Cosmopolitan Tongue: The Universality of English," John McWhorter claims that language death is a natural process and is based more on geography then culture. This means that you can have two groups of people, each with the same culture, norms, and traditions. If group A migrates to the Himalayas' Mountains and group B migrates to the Miami coastline, over time due to chance or usage necessity these two groups with the same underlying culture may pronounce words differently or even invent new words. Necessity usage may be due to climate/seasonal changes that is the direct result of differing geography. For example group A may develop a word,"bigmount," to describe a big mountain. Likewise, group B may alter the pronunciation of women to "wooooomen" to describe a hot girl at the beach. With thousands of years passing these languages become completely different and foreign to each other. I believe that this holds true today, however I feel due to technology and the ease with which we can communicate language death due to geography is limited to rural and isolated areas.
In the same article, McWhorter claims that a language death "is mostly sad for aesthetic reasons." As disheartening and callous as this claim is I have to agree with McWhorter. McWhorter is stating that no real physical pain is caused nor is language death insurmountable for any culture or people. Language is an everyday reminder put to use of one's culture and roots. However, when one's language dies it does not also indicate the death of its culture. He explains this as putting the "cart before the horse," and he is right. If a culture dies then the language must also, but if a language dies then only part of the culture has died, but the rest of the culture may continue. The culture's people, history, traditions and beliefs will remain intact in the adaptation of a new language and for these reason I agree that language death is "mostly sad for aesthetic reasons." In fact language death has already happened to Native Americans and Black Americans as cited by McWhorter, and he is correct that these cultures are still alive today.
The smell of plastic surrounded me, the fluorescent lights blind me from behind my eyelids. All I could think was this ever going to end. The pain was excruciating as if someone was stabbing me repeatedly with an ice pick. My legs were numb, I felt as if I’d been paralyzed from the waist down, giving me a whole new appreciation for those under certain circumstances. Finally I open my eyes, there’s machines, tubes, numbers, lines, sounds, buzzing, beeping, what is this? What’s happening? Is she alright? I hear voices, footsteps, “She’s ready, let’s begin.” The pressure on my stomach is immense as if gravity somehow had it out for me. Then there is crying and tears, its takes me a moment to realize these sounds are coming from me, I had just introduced a new life. My eyes close and I drift off, my body overwhelmed and exhausted.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading ‘The Cosmopolitan Tongue: The Universality of English’ I realized how much I didn’t know about languages throughout the world, on average I would have thought there to be only about 25 different dialects let alone over 6,000. McWhorters explanation for language death makes sense to me in that over generations of adaptions you can lose your native tongue. Geography can affect your language especially if you are living in a very populated area where another, more common language is dominant. If your were living in a small town in northern Germany, or even Alaska, the language that McWhorter mentioned, Eyak, might not have died so much over time; a place that has seen minimal evolution over the generations. My grandmother is full blooded German but having lived in the United States the majority of her life she has lost nearly all of her native language and I have never learned any German despite my heritage.
Standing there in silence while my grandmother lay motionless had to be one of the most painful experiences in my life. My whole family crowd around her staring like they had just seen a bad car accident and couldn't take their eyes off. I stand a few feet back not wanting to lay my eyes on her. As I stand there facing the opposite direction I can feel the room getting light, not me but the room itself. It was almost as if the room was lifting while I stand there heavy as an anchor ready to sink. Thoughts and feelings cloud my head and body. These thoughts are speeding as if they are race cars competing for first prize. To slow all this down I step into the bathroom connected to the hospital room an immediately begin to cry. I turn on the sink to drown out my tears. It was like my tears symbolized precipitation and the water coming from the sink was a river or stream. I turn of the sink to hear what was going on outside, all I heard was silence, cold, hard, crisp silence. Was I ready for what awaited me behind this calm tan door, sure I had prepared myself mentally for this horrible occasion, but the real question was, was I prepared emotionally?
ReplyDeleteWhen McWhorter says language death is due more to geography than culture I do agree. When one is apart of a culture they embody it, they their life by it, follow all its rules, and the culture in a way becomes them. No one would want to just give up something like that, it would be giving up on what they believed in, and essentially giving up on their life, or at least no one should want that. Sure language death is sad, but it can also be a good thing. Like McWhorter said language death "is a symptom of people coming together." Which I completely agree with.
My senior year of high school, my wanderlust plagued mother moved us to Fez, Morocco. A predominantly Muslim country, there was a lack of that special Christmas cheer that I know to accompany the cold fronts of late late December. The high school I attended was a tiny American school with an enrollment of a whopping 100 students: 2 whole American families, a dozen or so American teachers, and the remaining were locals. About a week before school let out for “Christmas Break”, I heard a chorus approaching from the tunnels and pathways that wound around my maze of a gated community. It was not the usual soulful sounding of the Islamic Call to Prayer that rings out over the cities and countryside 5 times a day. It sounded like Christmas carols...Oh god, I thought. Then they came, the herd of candle lit faces preaching Jesus’s glory on a tour of the Ex-pats homes in the community. I felt so embarrassed, greeting them at the front door with my Muslim boyfriend trailing behind trying not to laugh. Then I looked around at all their faces, glowing with happiness and laughter and I realized that it wasn’t about Christmas or carols or caring about what my neighbors thought of us Americans, but instead about the essence of the homes we missed and longed for and enjoying the makeshift family we’d created in absence of our own. So I grabbed a white stick, lit it with a match, linked arms with my brown and white friends, and joined their trek.
ReplyDeleteJust like organisms in Earth’s natural environment have evolved over time, McWhorter claims that language experiences the same evolution. Just as a dog developed from a wolf, Spanish developed from Latin. As dogs were domesticated, their purpose shaped their evolution. Over time and exclusive breeding, dogs used for herding became Border Collies, dogs used for hunting became Pointers, and dogs used for laps became Pugs and Shih-Tzus. Geography, like exclusive breeding, creates isolation that causes variation amongst populations. Imagine the dog’s purpose for breeding is like a culture: herding=Native American, hunting=Arab, lap dogs = North African. Just because a species of herding dog dies, does not mean the whole culture of herding dogs dies too.