A Language Long Believed Lost is Revitalized by one Heritage Speaker
UNESCO, which works to protect languages, reports that 40 percent of the 6,700 languages spoken today are in danger of disappearing. In fact, the organization notes that the “rate of language endangerment and disappearance has increased significantly in the past decade due to rapid social, political, and economic transformations in the world.” (UNESCO, 2016).
One language that was thought to have been lost was Chaná, spoken by indigenous people in Argentina and Uruguay. Chaná is believed to have originated 2,000 years ago and was spoken by the nomadic Chaná people. However, with colonization from Spain, settlers came to the Chaná territory and the Chaná people were forced from their land, many were killed, and others assimilated into the dominant culture. These factors caused the number of people speaking the language to sharply decline. The last official documentation of the language occurred in 1815.
It was thus of great surprise when an Argentinian man, Blas Omar Jaime, who had recently retired, began publicly seeking out people to converse in Chaná with. The fact that someone was speaking a language thought to have died almost two hundred years ago created a ground swell of interest among academics and later the public.
Mr. Jaime began working with a linguist to identify and catalog words in Chaná. The result is a dictionary of about 1,000 Chaná words. He has talked about his experience in several documentaries, in a Ted talk, and been the subject of a New York Times article. Mr. Jaime has become an advocate for protecting heritage languages saying, “Language is what gives you identity.” (The New York Times). He taught Chaná at a local museum and taught his daughter the language. Mr. Jaime’s daughter has become an advocate for protecting Chaná and is now teaching the language online to academics and others.
The story of Chaná is inspiring. It serves as a sobering reminder of how languages can decline and the important role each speaker can play in maintaining their heritage language.
Photo Credit: Hector Ramon on Unsplash
Information from this piece was sourced from:
Jaime, Blas Wilfredo. “El Último Hablante de la Lengua Chaná.” Ted Talk. November 2018.
