Category: Language

Greg Younging—Elements of Indigenous Style

Gregory Younging is a member of Opaskwayak Cree Nation in Northern Manitoba and is a faculty member at the University of British Columbia Okanagan in the Indigenous Studies Program. He has an MA from Carlton University, an MPub from Simon Fraser University, and a PhD from the University of British Columbia. He was the managing editor of Theytus Books between 1990 and 2004 and served as assistant director of research for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.

Younging held a workshop on Indigenous editorial issues last fall for the Association of Book Publishers of BC (ABPBC), and it was one of the most edifying professional development events I’ve ever attended. I learned then that he intended to publish the Indigenous style guide he’s been organically compiling for the past couple of decades. Now that book is available for pre-order. Continue reading “Greg Younging—Elements of Indigenous Style”

Nicki Benson—Reclaiming Indigenous languages (Editors BC meeting)

Nicki Benson is founder of Esperanza Education and education initiatives manager at Kwi Awt Stelmexw, an organization to advance the language and culture of the Squamish people. She spoke at an Editors BC meeting about Indigenous language reclamation.

As the daughter of Jewish immigrants, Benson is not Indigenous herself, but earlier in her language education career she worked in Peru to research bilingual education for Indigenous children there, and she’s applied the best practices from that experience to her work with Kwi Awt Stelmexw.

First, some numbers

Before colonization, there were an estimated 450 languages spoken in what is now Canada. Today, there are 60. Only three—Cree, Ojibwe, and Inuktitut—are predicted to survive without some kind of deliberate intervention.

In BC alone, there are 34 Indigenous languages, reflecting a cultural diversity made possible by the province’s challenging geography and abundant natural resources, which meant populations didn’t have to travel far to find what they needed. These Indigenous languages are in seven language families, with Haida, spoken in Haida Gwaii, and Ktunaxa, spoken in the Kootenays, being language isolates. The Indigenous languages are not necessarily the first languages of people in these communities anymore; many people lost the use of their language because of forced assimilation policies.

Within Vancouver, traditionally the shared territory of the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh, and Squamish people, two languages—Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ (one of the three dialects of Halkomelem)—have been spoken for thousands of years. However, today each of those languages has only seven first-language fluent speakers each.

Why reclaim a language?

Benson is careful not to use morbid language like “endangered” and “dying” to describe languages like Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓. Even “revitalization” implies that something has died and that you’re bringing it back to life. Instead, she talks about “reclamation”: the language is there to be taken back.

Language is an important vehicle for culture and identity, and reclaiming a language can contribute to community health and healing. These languages were not lost as part of a natural process: Indigenous people were killed or displaced, they died from diseases introduced by colonizers, or they were subjected to attempts at assimilation like residential schools or the Sixties Scoop. Culture and language influence health outcomes: communities with higher numbers of Indigenous language speakers have lower rates of substance use and teen suicide.

Other reasons for reclaiming languages are that they carry important historic and scientific information and that, according to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), maintaining one’s traditional language is a human right. There are calls to protect Indigenous languages just as French is protected in Quebec, Acadia, and other French-speaking parts of the country.

How does language reclamation differ from other kinds of language education?

Indigenous languages have historically been marginalized, and that marginalization continues: whereas it’s easy for people to understand why someone would study Mandarin or Spanish, say, for travel or trade, learning Indigenous languages to promote the survival of the language and culture seems to have fewer practical advantages, so Indigenous language reclamation can face a shortage of funding and learning materials.

Also contributing to the lack of learning materials is the fact that most of the languages were oral, with no tradition of writing. Many Indigenous groups are sensitive about committing their language onto paper: historically, when Indigenous people were asked to sign paper, they were unknowingly giving up their rights and lands. Further, many cultural traditions are meant only for ceremony and are never meant to be recorded or transmitted in writing.

Today, different Indigenous languages use different orthographies: many were adopted after non-Indigenous linguists and anthropologists worked with the communities to develop them, and so they carry residues of colonization, but most communities acknowledge that their language has a better chance of being perpetuated if it is written down. Some languages, like Dene, use a syllabary, whereas others use some form of adapted alphabet, whether based on the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) or an alphabet that makes it easier to type the language on mainstream keyboards. hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓, for example, uses a system close to IPA and so is transparent about its pronunciation, but Hul’q’umi’num’, the Vancouver Island dialect, opted for an orthography that would be more practical to type.

Another challenge for reclamation is that there are few teachers, and many of them are elderly. They’re limited in how much time and energy they can devote to educating new speakers.

How does language reclamation work?

Linguist Joshua Fishman travelled the world studying reclamation and, based on what he observed, developed the Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (GIDS) to describe the various stages at which a language can be. Other linguists expanded the scale, with level 0 being “International,” where the language is used in several countries for many different functions to 10 being “Extinct.” When reclaiming a language, you want to meet languages where they are, then support them in reaching the next level up. It is too ambitious for a language at level 7 (“Shifting”) where the child-bearing generation knows the language but are not transmitting it to their children, to move directly to level 4 (“Educational”), say, where the language is taught through public school and literacy is considered sustainable. Instead, we want to help it reach level 6, where the language is used by all generations but not necessarily outside the family.

At this point, when the language is being spoken in the family but not at school or in the media, it is considered orally sustainable. The opposite is not true: language taught in school but not used in the home is not considered sustainable.

What works in British Columbia?

The First Peoples’ Cultural Council has supported a number of language reclamation initiatives:

  • Language nests began in New Zealand to help Indigenous groups reclaim Māori and have been incredibly successful there. Some communities in BC have adopted the model, in which parents bring their children to immersion preschools, where elders speak the language to both parents and children and only that language is used.
  • Master–apprentice programs pair a teacher with a single learner or a small group where participants must learn for a certain number of hours but can do so on a flexible schedule. These programs make the most of the masters’ limited time and availability.
  • FirstVoices released a series of keyboards for Indigenous orthography that can be used on desktop and mobile.

Across the province, Indigenous communities have established school programs, which vary across the province. In some districts, Indigenous languages are offered to all students, including non-Indigenous children. Squamish students can opt out of learning French and learn Sḵwx̱wú7mesh instead. The most successful programs are immersion programs, such as the one at Chief Atahm School in Chase.

Kwi Awt Stelmexw, the organization Benson works for, was founded by Khelsilem, and it:

  • runs workshops to help Squamish people reconnect with their culture,
  • works with people in the community to develop a strategic plan to develop their language resources,
  • a “Languages in the Homes” project, which recognizes barriers people face in attending language classes and brings the language education to them,
  • a Squamish place names map, and
  • a full-time adult immersion program hosted by SFU.

Benson elaborated on the place name recognition work at Oh the Places You Should Know, showing, for example, how the name Ch’ich’iyuy (“twins”)—the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh name for what settlers call the Lions—carries with it the story of how a coming-of-age celebration for the chief’s beloved daughters helped broker peace with tribes to the north. “Place names can be really significant,” said Benson. They can give insight into cultures and offer different perspectives on the importance of place.

Audience questions

I asked Benson about the parallels and differences between Hebrew revitalization efforts at the end of the nineteenth century and Indigenous language reclamation. She said Hebrew’s revival is considered a great success story, made possible by the tireless efforts of activists. Indigenous language reclamation is using some of the same strategies—including language documentation and dedicated spaces for immersion—but key differences make it more challenging. For Hebrew (and for Māori in New Zealand), there is only one language that people focus on, and the fact that Israel is an independent political state made it easier for government to enact policies ensuring the language would get used. In contrast, with 34 Indigenous languages in BC, different communities must compete for many of the same resources, and their reclamation efforts don’t have as much political support.

Another audience member asked whether settlers are welcome in Indigenous language classes. Benson said that opinions differ and that the best thing to do would be to consult the community. Some communities welcome everyone, because they recognize that getting as many people as possible to speak the language increases the odds of its preservation. Other communities accept settler learners as long as they are not taking away the opportunity from an Indigenous person.

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Related post: Greg Younging—Indigenous editorial issues

Collapsing the dimensions of communication space

In June, I was lucky enough to attend Information+, a phenomenal data visualization and information design conference at Emily Carr University. One of the keynote speakers was Colin Ware, renowned for his pioneering work on visual thinking and cognitive processing. At the end of Ware’s talk, Yanni Loukissas, assistant professor of digital media at Georgia Tech, asked him: “Don’t we have an ethical obligation to consider people who have colourblindness or stereoblindness in our visualizations?”

Ware responded, “As a designer, I always want to use of all of design space,” suggesting that limiting the palette only to the colours that people with colourblindness can discern, for example, would be too restrictive.

I’ll come back to Ware’s comment in a bit, but first I want to focus on the concept of design space, which refers to the universe of choices—media, typeface, type size, colour, and so on—available to the designer. The metaphor doesn’t tend to be used outside of design, which is a pity, because it’s handy. I’ve found it useful to think of design space as a subset of communication space, which itself is a subset of creation space. Continue reading “Collapsing the dimensions of communication space”

Katherine Barber—Bachelor for rent: things you never suspected about Canadian English (Editing Goes Global, 2015)

Disclaimer: I am utterly incapable of replicating Katherine Barber’s humour and delivery, but she said some important things about language that editors would find valuable, which is what I’ve summarized here. (I’d previously had the privilege of hearing her speak at the PLAIN 2013 conference.) If you ever get the opportunity to hear the Word Lady speak in person, don’t let it pass you by!

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Katherine Barber was the editor-in-chief of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary when it became the first dictionary to change its definition of marriage to “the legal or religious union of two people,” in 2004. At her keynote to close Editing Goes Global, Barber, bestselling author of Only in Canada, You Say: A Treasury of Canadian Language and Six Words You Never Knew Had Something to Do with Pigs, told us she was very proud of that change. “And I can tell you—we got letters,” she said, to laughter. “We also got letters saying, ‘Thank you so much for doing this.’” This milestone shows the importance of dictionaries; they’re not just about looking something up.

Barber joked that her job as a lexicographer was easy, compared with our jobs as editors: “Lexicographers only have to write sentence fragments,” she said. “We don’t have to worry about transitions or plots or character development.” What they do have to worry about, though, is capturing the regional differences in language that can help define a culture or a nation. Canadian English is a good example: “You must not confuse Canadian English with American English,” Barber told the international crowd, “because Canadians will hate you! We’re unclear about what our identity is. One thing we’re sure of is that we’re not American. And I say that with all respect and fondness for Americans.”

Differentiating ourselves from Americans is why we stick a u in colour, for instance. Barber enjoys checking dictionaries to see if they’ve included the colour variant. In one “Webster’s” dictionary at a discount store, she didn’t find a u in colour because colo(u)r wasn’t listed at all! A lot of so-called Webster’s dictionaries aren’t legitimate—anyone can claim to have created a Webster’s dictionary. “Merriam-Webster is the real deal,” said Barber.

Merriam-Webster doesn’t always capture Canadianisms, though: its entry on toque defines the word as “a woman’s small hat without a brim made in any of various soft close-fitting shapes” and claims that the word is pronounced “toke.”

We may recognize toque as a Canadianism, but we use many terms without realizing that they’re unique to Canada (or to certain parts of Canada). What do foreigners think when they first see signs advertising “bachelor for rent”?

Barber closed with a plea that editors retain regionalisms when their meaning is clear. Huck, meaning throw, in Western Canada and jambuster, meaning jelly donut, in Manitoba are not only valuable data for lexicographers, but they add to the vibrancy of our linguistic tapestry.