Señorita Ruth

Nations & Language
It’s easy to trace and understand the connection between the ideas of “one nation” and “one language.” These simple associations have outlined the language policies of western European countries from the middle of the 19th century forward. Even before that, conquering powers have understood the fundamental need to establish a common tongue amongst the newly conquered, often wildly different peoples they controlled. While effective in building a nation, these policies have also negatively affected countless languages and cultures across the world. It’s true that the motivations for the expansion of any given nation or empire are usually money, trade, and commerce. However, the underlying structure of such endeavors is language. In order to successfully interact with other cultures, even in the role of conquering or colonizing power, the language “issue” must be addressed.

It would be difficult to enumerate all the instances of languages being abandoned, by either will or force, for another as a result of cultural and social pressure. However, I don’t have to stray far from the Southwest to find evidence of multiple efforts throughout history to establish, through force, the use of the European language of power. First it was Spanish, and then it was English. The first established a trans-continental identity for a large number of inhabitants of the Americas, and the second redefined that identity as political borders changed and nations exchanged land for peace. As an example, New Mexico has belonged to the Spanish Empire, the Mexican nation, and of course the United States.

In this history, we have instances of Native Americans being forcefully acculturated into both Spanish and English speaking roles. A direct result of this forced acculturation is the loss of Native American languages. Across the country and the Americas, the status of native tongues is dire as they are constantly decreasing in usage. This situation is detrimental to those that study the world’s languages, but is more immediately a blow to the cultural and self-identity of the speakers. The punitive nature of forced acculturation becomes a deterrent when people that have suffered punishment are unwilling to pass on a minority tongue to their children for fear of similar repercussions on them.

Native Americans were introduced to Spanish in the 1600s, and it’s effected a notable difference in their respective languages from that time forward. Resistance to learn Spanish helped preserve Navajo, Apache, the Pueblo languages and others for 400 years. Yet it was impossible to successfully fend off the Spanish and later English language influences. There exist records, as they do all across the Americas, of priests and other workers collecting the words and meanings of these unfamiliar, radically different languages. These records are invaluable as linguists try to piece together languages that are no longer fully realized in conversation. Words and meaning have been lost beneath the wheels of progress in the majority language of the day, and eventually century.

Currently, in the same geographical area, English plays that role, surrounding communities that speak Native American languages, as well as Spanish, Vietnamese, and other immigrant languages. What are the effects of having English as a non-official majority language surrounding Native American languages that are on the decline in speakers? What are the effects of having linguistic and cultural contact with other major languages of the world where English is the majority and Spanish, Hindi, Farsi, German or Korean are the minority? These interactions breed consternation and worry in some, interest and research questions in linguists. For the sake of both, these issues must be addressed.

While the U.S. has never had an official language, a rarity in the day and age of the modern nation-state, the question whether to adopt English as the official language seems to remain uneasily unanswered.