Working to Keep Nᨵat, the Language of the Pipil People, from Vanishing in El Salvador — Global Issues

by Edgardo Ayala (nahuizalco, el salvador)Monday, Might 06, 2024Inter Press Service

“This effort goals to maintain Náhuat alive and that’s the reason we give attention to the youngsters, for them to proceed and protect this vital a part of our tradition,” Elena López informed IPS throughout a brief snack break for the preschoolers she teaches.

López is a part of the Náhuat Cuna mission, which since 2010 has sought to protect and revive the endangered indigenous language by early immersion. She is one in all two lecturers who educate it to kids between the ages of three and 5 at a preschool middle in Nahuizalco, a municipality within the division of Sonsonate in western El Salvador.

Liable to disappearing

“When a language dies, the premise of indigenous cultures and territories turns into extinct with it,” says the report Revitalization of Indigenous Languages, in accordance with which the five hundred Amerindian languages nonetheless spoken in Latin America are all in a state of affairs of higher or lesser menace or threat.

In Mesoamerica, which incorporates Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, 75 indigenous languages are spoken, says the research by the Fund for the Improvement of the Indigenous Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean (FILAC).

Apart from Mexico, Guatemala is probably the most linguistically various on this group of nations, with 24 native languages. Probably the most extensively spoken is Ok’iche’, of Mayan origin, and the least is Xinca, of unknown origin.

Brazil is probably the most ethnically and linguistically various nation in Latin America, with between 241 and 256 indigenous peoples and between 150 and 186 languages.

Round 25 p.c of those languages are prone to extinction until one thing is urgently finished, the report warns. It’s estimated that Latin America is residence to greater than 50 million individuals who self-identify as indigenous.

“These languages are dropping their utilization worth…households are more and more interrupting the pure intergenerational transmission of the languages of their elders, and a gradual however positive strategy of shifting in direction of the hegemonic language is noticed, with audio system making Spanish or Portuguese their predominant language of use,” the report states.

The causes of the hazard of the disappearance of those Amerindian languages are diverse, the report factors out, such because the interruption of intergenerational transmission, when the language is not handed on from technology to technology.

And that’s precisely what the Náhuat Cuna mission goals to revert by specializing in younger kids, who can be taught from Náhuat audio system who did obtain the language from their dad and mom and grandparents and converse it fluently.

López is one in all these individuals. She belongs to the final technology of audio system who acquired it naturally, as a mom tongue, talking it from a really younger age together with her dad and mom and grandparents, in her native Santo Domingo de Guzmán, additionally within the division of Sonsonate.

“That is how I used to be born and grew up, talking it at residence. And we by no means stopped talking it, amongst my sisters and brothers, however not with individuals exterior the home, as a result of they discriminated towards us, they handled us as Indians however in a derogatory manner, however we by no means stopped talking it,” stated Lopez, 65.

Certainly, for causes of racism and classism, indigenous populations have been marked by rejection and contempt not solely from the political and financial elites, but additionally by the remainder of the mestizo or mixed-race inhabitants, which resulted from the combination of indigenous individuals with the Spaniards who began arriving in Latin America within the sixteenth century.

“They’ve all the time seemed down on us, they’ve discriminated towards us,” Elsa Cortez, 43, the opposite instructor on the Nahuizalco Náhuat Cuna, informed IPS.

And he or she added: “I really feel glad and proud, at my age it’s a luxurious to show our little ones.”

Each López and Cortez stated they had been grateful that the mission employed them as lecturers, since that they had no prior educating expertise, and in a context through which discrimination and social rejection, along with ageism, make it harder to seek out formal employment.

Earlier than becoming a member of the mission, Cortez labored full time making comales, that are round clay griddles which are positioned over a wooden hearth to prepare dinner corn tortillas. She additionally offered baked items, and continues to bake bread on weekends.

López additionally labored making comales and making ready native dishes, which she offered in her neighborhood. Now she prefers to relaxation on the weekends.

All is just not misplaced

When IPS visited the Náhuat Cuna preschool in Nahuizalco, the three-year-olds had been performing an train: they stood in entrance of the remainder of the category of about ten kids and launched themselves by saying their first identify, final identify and different primary greetings in Náhuat.

Later they recognized, in Náhuat, footage of animals and parts of nature, corresponding to “mistun” (cat), “qawit” (tree) and “xutxit” (flower). The scholars began their first yr within the middle in February, and can spend two years there.

The five-year-olds are probably the most superior. Collectively, the 2 teams totaled about twenty kids.

On the finish of their time on the Cuna, they may go to common faculty in Spanish, with the chance that they may neglect what they’ve discovered. Nevertheless, to maintain them linked to the language, the mission gives Saturday programs the place they start to be taught grammar and how one can write the language.

There’s a group of 15 youngsters, principally ladies, who began in the beginning of the mission and converse the language fluently, and a few even educate it on-line.

The initiative is promoted by the Don Bosco College of El Salvador, and supported by the municipalities the place they function, in Nahuizalco and Santo Domingo de Guzmán. The Santa Catarina Masahuat department may also be reopened quickly.

Santo Domingo de Guzmán is residence to 99 p.c of the nation’s few Náhuat audio system, who quantity round 60 individuals, Jorge Lemus, director of El Salvador’s Náhuat/Pipil Language Revitalization Program and primary promoter of the Náhuat Cuna mission, informed IPS.

“In three a long time I’ve seen how Náhuat has been in decline, and the way the individuals who converse it have been dying out,” harassed Lemus, who can be a professor and researcher of linguistics on the Faculty of Languages and Schooling at Don Bosco College, run by the Salesian Catholic order.

In accordance with the tutorial, the final three indigenous languages in El Salvador within the twentieth century had been Lenca, Cacaopera and Náhuat, however the first two disappeared by the center of that century, and solely the final one survives.

“The one one which has survived is Náhuat, however barely, as there are maybe simply 60 audio system of the language. After I began engaged on this there have been about 200 and the quantity continues to shrink,” stated Lemus.

The one approach to hold the language alive, he stated, is for a brand new technology to select it up. Nevertheless it is not going to be adults, who might be taught it as a second language however will proceed talking Spanish; it should be a bunch of kids who can be taught it as native audio system.

The skilled clarified that, though they arrive from the identical linguistic trunk, the Náhuat spoken in El Salvador is just not the identical because the Nahuatl spoken in Mexico, and actually the spelling is completely different.

In Mexico, Nahuatl has multiple million audio system within the Central Valley, he stated.

In El Salvador, in 1932, the Pipil individuals stopped talking their language in public for concern of being killed by the federal government forces of Common Maximiliano Hernández, who that yr brutally cracked down on an indigenous and peasant rebellion demanding higher dwelling situations.

At the moment, society was dominated by aristocratic households devoted to espresso cultivation, whose manufacturing system plunged a big a part of Salvadorans, particularly peasants and indigenous individuals, into poverty.

Lemus argued that for a language to make a decisive comeback and turn out to be a car for on a regular basis communication would require a titanic effort by the State, much like the revival of the Basque language in Spain, Maori in New Zealand and even Israel’s resuscitation of Hebrew, which was already a useless language.

However that’s not going to occur in El Salvador, he stated.

“Probably the most sensible factor we need to obtain is to maintain the language from disappearing, and for the brand new technology of Náhuat-speaking individuals to develop and multiply. If we’ve got 60 audio system now, in just a few years we are going to hopefully nonetheless have 50 or 60 audio system, from this new technology, and they’re going to hold it alive within the communities and proceed talking it,” he stated.

For her half, López needs to proceed working in direction of this purpose with the intention to go away the nation her legacy.

Talking in Náhuat, the preschool instructor stated: “I actually like educating this language as a result of I do not need it to die, I need the youngsters to be taught and converse it when I’m useless.”

© Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal supply: Inter Press Service

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