Dying Languages

Someone left a copy of National Geographic in the employee lounge the other day, and it had a sad and fascinating article about languages in the world. According to the article, there are 7,000 languages spoken on Earth, but half of them are expected to pass into oblivion by the end of the century.

In Papua New Guinea, only 15 speakers still use Abom. None of them are children. In the Americas, 170 languages may soon pass out of use, including Tataina in southern Alaska, where only 75 people speak the language, most of them older adults. The Native American language of the Wintu peoples, where I live in northern California, has fewer than a half-dozen speakers remaining.

In Asia, only 15 speakers of Ainu remain on the Kuril Islands. In Africa, only 8 people still speak El Mono on the shores of Lake Turkana.

In Europe, only 25 speakers of Vod remain in Russia. Vod has never had a written language, so hopes for its survival are especially dim.

So what's so bad about a language dying out? Isn't that just the natural order of things? Wouldn't we be better off with fewer languages? 

I don't think so. I think the world will be a poorer place with fewer languages. Sometimes, particular words in a language can offer meanings about nature, the world, and life that simply have no translation. Once a language is gone, a unique take on life is gone. Forever.

Particularly sad to me is the possible demise of the Cajun dialect of French in south Louisiana. When I was a new guy with my employer in the late 1970's, such a thought would have been silly. All you had to do on a busy crew change day was open your ears, and you'd hear Cajun French in conversations between oil workers waiting for their offshore flights. You could go into a bar in Lafayette and hear the bartender speaking Cajun French to a patron next to you, seemlessly changing from French to English and back again.

I don't hear Cajun French much anymore. People who live in Lafayette, the "capital of Acadiana," tell me that most children there aren't growing up bilingual as was typical thirty years ago. The Council for the Development of French in Louisiana says that the number of speakers of Cajun French has fallen markedly over the last fifty years, and that body is trying to get the dialect reintroduced in south Louisana schools.

It seems many folks in Louisiana doubt that the Cajun language will even last another generation. I hope they're wrong.

Sean Jacobs Returns Home

I'd gone to the airport to rent a car, and I knew someone was coming home when I spotted the Patriot Guard Riders lined up, starting about a mile from the airport.

Sean Jacobs was his name. He graduated from local Foothill High School in 2006, and graduated from West Point in 2010. He deployed to Afghanistan in April of this year, and returned home on August 6. Sean was a U.S. Army 1st lieutenant when he died.

I learned all of that when I got out of my car to ask about the returning soldier. I stood next to a retired couple, and the wife filled me in.

Most of the Patriot Guard Riders mounted up on their motorcycles and followed the hearse, but as I walked back across the street, I saw one guy standing next to his bike, weeping. He was a mountain of a guy, and wore a Vietnam veteran patch. I felt like I had to say something to him, but all I could manage was "thanks." He offered his hand, and tried to say something. He took a deep breath, and finally said, "He was an only child."

I felt like I'd been punched in the gut. I saw Dylan's face, and wondered what Sean looked like at the same age. I walked to my car and sat inside, pretty much going to pieces.

I heard the mountain man crank his Harley, so I gathered myself, started the car, and followed him out toward Highway 44. For a few miles, I had his back.

Meeting a Hero

One day back in the late 80's, a few of us helicopter pilot types met at the Hitching Post Saloon in Camarillo, California. We played pool and drank beer, but when we paused, my friend and coworker Roger said, "I want you to meet someone."

He led me to the end of the bar where an older gentleman sat sipping whiskey and reading the newspaper.
"Hal, this is R.J." I shook his hand, and was surprised by the strong grip from the slight, weathered-looking man.
"R.J. was one of the Tuskegee Airmen."

I was stunned. There, in front of me, was a man who played a part in military aviation history.

I sat with R.J. for a while. After a couple of beers, I get nosy, so I zeroed in on trying to understand what it was like to be a black man trying to become a pilot in a military where racism was still institutionalized.

The quiet, soft-spoken man had stories. Stories about how some of the training cadre made life unbearable for the Tuskegee cadets, and stories about how ill-received they were upon their deployment to combat.

But, there were also stories of training cadre and commanders who sought to compensate for the hatred the Tuskegee Airmen faced day in and day out. I asked R.J. if anything he encountered during his time as a black aviator had left him bitter.
"Not really," he said. "Except . . ."

He looked at me, seeming to weigh his words.

"They sent several of us to a different base by ground transportation to pick up some P-51's to ferry back to our base. There were only a few of us, with empty seats all around. About halfway there, we stopped at a camp to pick up some German P.O.W.'s. Even after everything we'd lived through, we were still shocked when we were ordered to stand to allow the Germans to sit."

R.J. paused, looking like he was somewhere far away, took a sip of whiskey, and met my eyes again.
"We were fighting for our country. They shouldn't have done that." He didn't look angry. He only looked sad.

He shook my hand again. I'd been dismissed, and I left R.J. alone with his whiskey, his newspaper, and his memories.

Race and the Media

I was heading home on an airline flight, having a engaging conversation with a man who was quite the history buff. We talked about the state of race relations in the United States. I remarked that as far as we'd come in our country, I still felt that it was harder to grow up black in America instead of white.

My friend for a flight ("McFriends" I call them) agreed. We talked about President Obama, and the significance of his election.

Then the conversation turned to the Civil War, and that's when my row mate decided we were no longer McFriends. I remarked that it appeared that Abraham Lincoln was no friend of the black man during his tenure as a congressman. I went on to state my belief that although Lincoln later embraced emancipation, he was not largely motivated to preserve the Union by a desire to end slavery. Instead, I said, it was mostly about money and power, as are most wars.

Not immediately noticing the chill that had come over our conversation, I dropped the real bomb.

"I think the state of race relations would be much better in our country had the Civil War never happened. Between the Civil War itself, and the way that the black man was used as a pawn against southern whites during Reconstruction, it set the stage for a hardened, institutionalized racism in the South that's still there."

The man looked at me with what seemed to be disgust.
"You know, until now, I wouldn't have fingered you as a racist."
"As far as I'm aware, I'm not a racist," I said.
"If you think we'd be better off had the Civil War never happened, you're a racist."

I tried to point out that I was only speaking in terms of how the Civil War and its aftermath affected race relations for generations to come, and that obviously there would have been a plethora of ramifications beyond race relations.

No matter. My McFriend was no longer my McFriend, and in his eyes, I might as well have flashed a KKK membership card.

I'm thinking about that encounter today after reading Bob Barbanes' blog post regarding the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin affair. It appears that the "mainsteam media" has followed the lead of Fox News, deciding to discard the truth to build a big news story.

My God, I hope I never have to take another person's life while defending myself or my family. I remember talking to a retired cop who'd once shot and killed a young man who'd robbed a liquor store, and even though he was a Vietnam veteran, it was evident that the shooting would haunt that man for life.

But I've also had this thought: "If it ever happens, I hope the bad guy is white."

Maybe, in your eyes, that makes me a racist. I think of it as facing reality.

(Thanks to Bob for the link to NBC's apology for their "mistake.")