Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
to speak the language of the colonizer. These language
policies continued in many places until recently and were
enforced primarily through public (government) and
church (mission) schools.
American, Canadian, Australian, Russian, and New
Zealand governments each had policies of forced assimila-
tion during the twentieth century, including not allowing
indigenous peoples to speak native languages. For example,
the United States forced American Indians to learn and speak
English. Both mission schools and government schools
enforced English-only policies in hopes of assimilating
American Indians into the dominant culture. In an interview
with the producers of an educational video, Clare Swan, an
elder in the Kenaitze band of the Dena'ina Indians in Alaska,
eloquently described the role of language in culture:
INTERNET CONTENT, BY LANGUAGE
Other
9%
Russian
2%
Spanish
2%
French
3%
Chinese
4%
German
6%
Japanese
6%
English
68%
INTERNET USERS, BY LANGUAGE SPOKEN
No one was allowed to speak the language—the Dena'ina
language. They [the American government] didn't allow
it in schools, and a lot of the women had married non-
native men, and the men said, “You're American now so
you can't speak the language.” So, we became invisible in
the community. Invisible to each other. And, then, because
we couldn't speak the language
—what happens when
you can't speak your own language is you have to
think with someone else's words, and that's a dread-
ful kind of isolation
[emphasis added].
Other
18%
English
27%
Korean
2%
Russian
3%
French
3%
Arabic
3%
German
4%
Portuguese
4%
Shared language makes people in a culture visible to each
other and to the rest of the world. Language helps to bind
a cultural identity. Language is also quite personal. Our
thoughts, expressions, and dreams are articulated in our
language; to lose that ability is to lose a lot.
Language can reveal much about the way people
and cultures view reality. Some African languages have no
word or term for the concept of a god. Some Asian lan-
guages have no tenses and no system for reporting chron-
ological events, refl ecting the lack of cultural distinction
between then and now. Given the American culture's pre-
occupation with dating and timing, it is diffi cult for many
in the United States to understand how speakers of these
languages perceive the world.
Language is so closely tied to culture that people use
language as a weapon in cultural confl ict and political strife.
In the United States, where the Spanish-speaking popula-
tion is growing (Fig. 6.5), some Spanish speakers and their
advocates are demanding the use of Spanish in public affairs.
In turn, people opposed to the use of Spanish in the United
States are leading countermovements to promote “Offi cial
English” policies, where English would be the offi cial lan-
guage of government. Of course, Spanish is one of many
non-English languages spoken in the United States, but it
overshadows all others in terms of number of speakers and
is therefore the focus of the offi cial English movement
(Table 6.1). During the 1980s, over 30 different States con-
sidered passing laws declaring English the State's offi cial
Chinese
23%
Japanese
5%
Spanish
8%
TOP 10 LANGUAGES, BY MILLIONS OF SPEAKERS
German
100
Japanese
125
Russian
167
Portuguese
176
Chinese
1,213
Bengali
207
Spanish
322
English
341
Arabic
422
Hindi
366
Figure 6.4
Languages used on the Internet.
Data from
: Internet World
Stats: Usage and Population Statistics. www.internetworldstats.
com/stats7.htm.
