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Oct 2, 2024
"Are languages then just a collection of words, syntax, and semantics? I’d like to sometimes see them as seeds and sometimes as fields – alive as the minds, tongues, throats, bodies, and air they pass through; germinating, growing roots, bearing fruit, evolving like beings." --M. Yuvan
Can Social Media Keep Indigenous Languages Alive?
In some cases, only a few elderly speakers of the language remain among seventy Indigenous languages in Canada. Instead of written word, people are using social media to help keep the languages alive by helping people learn the way all babies learn, by speaking one word at a time. “We breathe life into languages by speaking them.” A single Indigenous word can carry “thousands of years of history and meaning.” Author and artist Eden Fineday writes that the Cree word “awâsis” is commonly translated as “child,” but what it really means is “a sacred gift on loan from Creation, for you to raise on behalf of Creation.” Linguists explain, “…connections and relationships between distinct languages can be mapped like a genealogy; in this way, they are our ancestors and, if we carry them forward, our descendants. If a language disappears, an entire world is lost too.”
BE THE CHANGE
Learn more about Indigenous languages. Perhaps learn to speak a few words. In Cree: "kisahkitinawaw" means "I love you all"; "miyo kisikansi" conveys "have a good day". In Lakota: "toksa" translates to "until my heart feels you again".
