Some thoughts on Language (a draft)
I have always been intrigued by languages and have had the desire to speak many different ones so I could learn about and connect with people from all over the world.
This is perhaps because I grew up speaking Mexican. For some reason I felt a strong pull, an attraction toward most of the romance languages, the accents, the rhythms of expression. As a child I also got to watch a bit of Brazilian telenovelas and I wanted so much to learn Portuguese. I even taught myself some words before I became an adult and could take myself to school and pay for classes. I tried Italiano and Français and took classes until I could not afford it nor attend anymore as I juggled many responsibilities aside from trying to be a student at Los Angeles Community College.
Over the years I spent tiny segments of my life going to the language department at the Los Angeles Public Library in downtown borrowing dozens of books and teaching myself languages among those Euskera, Català, Gaelic, Maltese and P’urhépecha, the Mother tongue of the indigenous nation inhabiting the territory known as Michoacán, in México. I have been attracted to those distinct languages and specifically their history of resistance, movements and efforts to keep these tongues alive. For decades I have also listened to singers and music from far away countries; languages I could not, and still do not understand and might never learn, but when I listen to the voices and melodies I feel so deeply moved, almost as if I could tell what they sang about.
Why am I writing about my stuff with languages? Well, I am spending several hours writing and editing this text because it is International Mother Language Day today, February 21, but not only that. Languages are a big part of my life, and have been for as long as I can remember.
Languages have marked me as a person, and in many ways and times have come to shape me.
Over 27 years ago I decided to invest lots of energy, work and time into languages and specifically become an active “language worker” or an interpreter and translator and through this work honor communities of speakers and their languages. This opportunity came to me mystically, I’d say. I did not consciously seek it nor did I plan it. This presented itself and I was there, taking a step forward to make it part of my life.
I could probably say that this began in 1994 as I became a full time English learner. I did not particularly want to learn English and I also was in a setting in which I had to. I remember the pressure I would put on myself to learn ‘“quickly.” When learning a language it is easier to understand first. The speaking part of learning, the visible and audible practice, is another whole thing. The learner has to be real courageous and willing to make mistakes in pronunciation and grammar, etc. Around that time I recall being asked to interpret for a relative whose son had been arrested outside Hollywood High School by LAPD officers. Next thing, I was in court doing my best to interpret what was going on to his family. I have never shared about this. I was so impacted by the whole experience that I kept it in a “lost” archive in my mind. I do not remember seeing a court interpreter anywhere there. Something in me tells me there must have been one, but I do not recall anyone coming to this suffering family to explain anything, their rights, the verdict, nothing. I was an ESL student with not even a couple years of English learning under my belt. What did I know about these scary conditions? Not much, but I tried to help. This is a common experience of many children of immigrants. They have had to interface with authorities at school, in public, everywhere. I have heard the stories.
It was in 1997 when I formally, and unknowingly, became a translator and interpreter as I trained to be an organizer. At the time, I was the only native Spanish speaker and the membership, and those we wanted to recruit were largely monolingual Spanish speakers and some Korean members as well. It was a revolutionary time. The organization, the Labor/Community Strategy Center, had made a commitment to language access and communicating with members, the public and everyone in the city to move the needle forward around public transit. The Center invested in purchasing interpretation equipment so that all could speak and listen in the language they knew and be able to participate, in real time, sharing their opinions and making collective campaign decisions at meetings. Now, language access is not only about purchasing expensive equipment. It also required organizing as some members rejected being in bilingual and trilingual meetings. Some would walk out of sessions arguing “This is America and we speak English here.” Others would say they knew or understood Spanish so as not to use the earphones and radios provided thus totally disregarding what non English speakers shared. I also saw this as a race and class issue. Really a xenophobic tendency among some members. It was tough. I have seen this behavior till this decade in other groups I have worked with. Language, creating multilingual settings, can be very threatening to some people.
During those long ago years, the continuum of this language revolution, as I call it, was that members attended public meetings at the then Metropolitan Transportation Authority, MTA (now Metro) to express their concerns about the bus and rail service. We mobilized members and were also ready to interpret because the agency had no interpreters. Public comment in such meetings is very limited; one to two minutes, maximum. We had to split the time between speaker and interpretation to English which greatly reduced the speaking time affecting the message members were conveying. As I learned, it was because of the Center’s efforts that Metro finally hired their own interpreters. Communicating and hearing from bus riders was not a priority for the agency in those years. Here we are talking about a massive public agency that serves thousands upon thousands of riders most of whose first language is not English. We are talking about this taking place in one of the “capitals of the world,” Los Angeles, California. In one of the most, if not the most, diverse state linguistically and culturally in the country. Even still, with interpreters and all, I also witnessed some MTA Board members not using the equipment, nor paying attention when Korean, Chinese or Spanish speaking riders provided comments at the mike. We would call them out on this.
Then came Proposition 227 in 1998. I organized and did education with people around this proposition which centered on eliminating bilingual education in public schools thus limiting other languages based on an anti immigrant narrative for this campaign. I had many heated conversations with voters who argued on the “English only” side of the spectrum. Perhaps because I was so young, an immigrant organizer, a language learner and very idealistic, could not believe what I heard coming out of people’s mouths. Sadly, some of the people were of color, Latinos, specifically. This proposition passed and created, I believe, further stigma, racism, internalized racism and shame about speaking one’s own language.
I could continue on and on, and so here is where I want to connect some dots on the importance of Language Justice as a vital element in a person’s, a people’s experience not only in communicating, but in strengthening belonging, ties and connections, rooting-ness, pride and actually amplifying visibility. Of course, we may only think of Language Justice when engaging diverse multiracial communities. That is totally fine and very much needed. At the same time here I am proposing to expand and see Language Justice as vital even if the work does not involve multiracial and multilingual speakers. The fact is that, opposite to what we are told, we do not live or work in a vacuum or in separate worlds. We do need to come in contact, even if on limited occasions, with people who have different experiences and live lives in a variety of languages. We do happen to live on a single planet and billions of people live here also. If anything, we live in a world that is ever smaller given the many social media channels and loads of information, or disinformation, we may have access to and consume.
Language Justice is creating spaces where hearing people’s actual voices, experiences, and culturally unique expressions and languages is central. It sets the stage for those speakers who historically would not participate (because they do not speak English) and creates conditions that encourage them to take space and be visible in their own language(s). This creates an awareness of the fact that there are many ways of seeing the world, that there exist more solutions and ways of living, and being. These are enriching moments of connection and understanding that are not to be limited to benefit those who only speak English as a first language.
Language Justice is bringing equity among languages by committing to the creation of spaces, meetings, sessions, dialogue and conversations that are not English only exclusive, or where English is the main language spoken and read. An example of this can be an agenda that is written in a language other than English, having diverse leaders lead conversations in their own language. Sessions that are set-up and run prioritizing English speakers diminish and relegate the rest of the languages and people’s experiences. It is as if we said that other languages are less important. I have seen this happen even when speakers of other languages are more numerous than the monolingual English speakers in a setting. We need to come out of the paradigm that makes us believe, as a society, that English is the universal language, the best and optimal language, that we ought to spend time, money and energy concentrating on and aspiring to learn it in order to be civilized, etc. This to me is as if we participated in a cast system.
Language Justice is investing time, funds and energy so that language access is not an afterthought, nor a burden to speakers of diverse languages, nor a source of shame, or that something is missing or wrong with those communities. When working with diverse and multiracial communities language access is vital if a group is really committed to engaging all peoples and voices. This also requires working with proper and sufficient equipment to facilitate simultaneous exchanges not only for those who don’t speak English, but for all monolingual speakers.
Let us also remember that this is a service that needs not be sought after at the last minute, nor be requested free of charge or underpaid. Throughout my interpreting and translating years I have worked without extra compensation or charging very little given that the community groups I worked or engaged with and cared about had non-to-limited funding monies to secure language workers. This has been the experience of many other organizers and colleagues I have met over time. Appropriate funding for language access has to be part of budgets from the get-go if a group is committed to full participation of multilingual speakers.
Language Justice is ensuring that language workers play a more visible role in which they not only act as the interpreting/communication bridge among speakers of diverse languages, but where they are part of the group versus being in a corner in the back of the room, or invisible, and in a setting in which they can work in teams rotating segments of time to guarantee quality interpretation. It is also ensuring that interpreters not only know how to interpret, but to really connect with the speakers of diverse languages encouraging their participation.
These are only some points on Language Justice that lead me to the topic of the day, The Mother Language. It is my experience that groups and organizations committed to practicing Language Justice actually support people in strengthening ties to their own languages. How? By opening and elevating multilingual spaces where speakers feel invited to express thoughts and experiences in their own languages. This promotes a sense of belonging to one’s own community and culture within the context of participating in a multilingual space where two, three, four languages are spoken and all participants are communicating easily. A space where all belong and no language expression is more or less important or dominant than another. Language Justice practices also further cross-learning among speakers. Language is culture and sharing culture deepens understanding of varied world views as diverse as people are.
We can choose to create multilingual settings that are for us, that benefit us. We see big corporations speaking in our languages for the purpose of selling their products and ideas to us. We can create our own spaces and center ourselves on important issues such as unity, respect, visibility of one another and building community toward common goals for the sake of our wellbeing.
We can choose to support languages that are in danger of disappearing given factors such as having only a few speakers remaining, colonization, being prohibited to or shamed for speaking those languages. We can unlearn colonized notions that there are superior languages and that the rest are just dialects.
We can choose to learn about those in struggle and resistance to save their languages.
We can choose to honor original Mother tongues and do our part in respecting speakers and create or support spaces to expand support for those languages. This could be an action to level the language playing field in a time in which English is a dominant force in communication, and a tool of conquest.
We can choose to promote and elevate the other 7,000 plus languages that are still alive in the world. If the importance of a language was measured by the number of speakers we would then be all speaking Chinese before English.
Finally, let’s not say “Happy International Mother Tongue Day!” It is not a party. It’s a commitment to justice.
More to come…
#mothertongueday
#languagejustice
#languageaccess
#language
#languages
#interpreter
#decolonizelanguage
#decolonizeyourmind
#draft
