by | 4 January 2006 · 5:32 pm

Asian Exam Meritocracies vs. Talent Meritocracies

Fareed Zakaria, whose Foreign Exchange program is now on my regular weekly viewing list, compares educational approaches in his latest column in Newsweek‘s international edition.

Traveling around Asia for most of the past month, I have been struck by the relentless focus on education. It makes sense. Many of these countries have no natural resources, other than their people; making them smarter is the only path for development. China, as always, appears to be moving fastest. When officials there talk about their plans for future growth, they point out that they have increased spending on colleges and universities almost tenfold in the past 10 years. Yale’s president, Richard Levin, notes that Peking University’s two state-of-the-art semiconductor fabrication lines—each employing a different technology—outshine anything in the United States. East Asian countries top virtually every global ranking of students in science and mathematics.

But one thing puzzles me about these oft-made comparisons. I talked to Tharman Shanmugaratnam to understand it better. He’s the minister of Education of Singapore, the country that is No. 1 in the global science and math rankings for schoolchildren. I asked the minister how to explain the fact that even though Singapore’s students do so brilliantly on these tests, when you look at these same students 10 or 20 years later, few of them are worldbeaters anymore. Singapore has few truly top-ranked scientists, entrepreneurs, inventors, business executives or academics. American kids, by contrast, test much worse in the fourth and eighth grades but seem to do better later in life and in the real world. Why?

“We both have meritocracies,” Shanmugaratnam said. “Yours is a talent meritocracy, ours is an exam meritocracy. There are some parts of the intellect that we are not able to test well—like creativity, curiosity, a sense of adventure, ambition. Most of all, America has a culture of learning that challenges conventional wisdom, even if it means challenging authority. These are the areas where Singapore must learn from America.” …

Singapore is now emphasizing factors other than raw testing skills when selecting its top students. But cultures are hard to change. A Singaporean friend recently brought his children back from America and put them in his country’s much-heralded schools. He described the difference. “In the American school, when my son would speak up, he was applauded and encouraged. In Singapore, he’s seen as pushy and weird. The culture of making learning something to love and engage in with gusto is totally absent. Here it is a chore. Work hard, memorize and test well.” He took his child out of the Singapore state school and put him into a private, Western-style one.

Meanwhile, elite prep schools in the U.S. are increasingly emulating the Singapore model, and so are many top universities (like Levin’s) who recruit buy their students products.

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by | 3 January 2006 · 8:56 am

Where China’s West Meets Myanmar’s East

It’s instantly obvious that gambling is the main industry of Mongla. Casinos proliferate and, as we turn a corner, we come across a gaggle of about a hundred young people dressed in black trousers or skirts, maroon jumpers and white shirts with black bow ties. They’re just one shift of croupiers on their lunch break from just one casino.

The L.T. Casino on the edge of town is a garish monstrosity of Las-Vegas-Meets-the-Orient architecture, featuring one-storey-high panels that depict glamorous gamblers in black evening garb silhouetted against a lurid lolly-pink back- ground. The building’s façade is a messy scramble of roulette wheels, dice and decks-of-cards motifs. The entrance ways are bordered by sickly bright-blue columns and arches which drip gilt, and the long sweeping driveway is bordered by profusely flowering hedges.

We pop into a lavish casino in the centre of town, the Oriental, to encounter acre after acre of cavernous rooms choking with faux marble, fake ornate pillars and gilt chandeliers. Oriental kitsch to the max.

We leave the casino and drive to the Chinese border. Mongla is confusing, but the border confuses me even more. It is a strange case of West meets East, East being Myanmar and West being China. The Chinese tourists who pour across the border are well heeled and fashionable in a Western style, arriving in gleaming new cars like downtown cosmopolitans from a fashionable Western city.

The last stand for Myanmar at the border is a drab roadside office, and [my driver] Sai Zoom suggests we check with the officials in case we need to report our presence. We enter a dim interior where officials are partitioned from civilians by old ornate iron scrollwork. A sign hanging from the scrollwork is the only example of the Myanmar language I’ve spotted in Mongla. An English translation informs me this is a ‘Saniton and Antiepedemic Station’. The officials laboriously enter information by hand in large antique ledgers, but they wave us out of the office as though we are nuisances intruding upon their Dickensian clerical duties.

SOURCE: Land of a Thousand Eyes: The subtle pleasures of everyday life in Myanmar, by Peter Olszewski (Allen & Unwin, 2005), pp. 189-190

China’s gambling epidemic has now also spilled over its northern borders with Korea, Russia, and even Mongolia.

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by | 2 January 2006 · 5:25 am

Myanmar vs. Cuba, Olszewski vs. Pilger

I’m standing on million-dollar grass in front of a million-dollar restaurant overlooking a million-dollar beach at the million-dollar Australian beach resort, Noosa, my home town.

I’m home, in between contracts in Yangon [Rangoon], and I’m taking part in a media event ushering in the high point of the year for Noosa’s well-heeled culturati: the Noosa Longweekend Festival….

I am waiting for John Pilger because we have a mutual friend, and I’ve sent the message that I’d perhaps like to have a coffee with him and talk about Myanmar. Pilger is a strong campaigner against the Myanmar military junta and I figure I can update him on the political machinations and manoeuvrings….

Meanwhile, back at the million-dollar restaurant in million-dollar Noosa, the star has arrived, scowling and skulking, looking very much like the creative director of a fashionable ad agency. He chats for a while with a fan-cum-journalist. During a lull in proceedings, I slip over and introduce myself.

He looks at me reproachfully and accusingly. He says, ‘If you are working for a newspaper in Burma, then you must be working for the military. They own the newspapers.’ I explain that some newspapers and journals are owned by private enterprise, including the Myanmar Times, which employs me as a journalism trainer. He counters by saying that all press is subject to military censorship, and I tell him how different factions censor different publications and that the Myanmar Times is censored by Military Intelligence.

‘Military Intelligence! Then you are working for Military Intelligence.’

‘No. I’m working for a privately owned newspaper that is censored by Military Intelligence.’

The conversation goes nowhere. Pilger scowls and raises his eyebrows in an exaggerated manner. He stalks off across the million-dollar grass.

So much for heroes. I admire Pilger’s work, but I understand from this exchange that he is not a journalist with an inquiring mind. He is an advocate with a set agenda, a pre-written script. And I’d begun to worry about advocates, understanding that in the new emerging world such black-and-white thinking is outmoded. He stands for good against evil, but in the new world good and evil are often the flip sides of the same coin.

Leftists (and I’m a sympathiser in that house of cant, but not a worshipper) are usually by their very nature infracaninophiliacs–given a struggle they’ll almost inevitably, and nearly always emotionally, champion the underdogs, the minorities or perceived minorities, the powerless or perceived powerless. In some cases the stance is merely fashionable, the ’cause of the day’ amongst the chattering classes, as they’ve been dubbed, or the chardonnay socialists. But in the modern world there is no doctrine that is pure, unerringly fair to all, and universally applicable, and the world isn’t left or right or even wrong, just as it isn’t black or white or always right. It’s all sort of shades in between and, at times, as with the attitudes towards such nations as Myanmar, the left unwittingly converges with the right: it virtuously lashes out against oppressive regimes in a manner that prepares the path for the right to invade, invoke regime change, and impose democracy.

On the subject of left and right and what is wrong and what is right, what difference is there really, I wonder, in the day-to-day life of the grassroots people of Myanmar as compared to their counterparts in, say, Cuba? Both are repressed by a militaristic centralist regime, yet the people of Cuba are regarded by many left-leaning thinkers and liberals as beneficiaries of the leadership of a glorious socialist revolution, while the people of Myanmar are viewed as the hapless victims of a cruel military junta.

My stance could be perceived as the stance of a person who is prepared to do nothing but that’s not the case; I’m a person who believes we should do something, but something that’s different from what we’ve already been doing with such harrowing consequences.

Saving the world seems so clear-cut when watching world news through the filter of a television screen in the safety of a cosy Western domicile, but I was no longer watching Yangon via remote control. I was up close and personal. Very personal. There were people I knew and loved in Yangon and I didn’t want to see them die in a revolution that would prove to be bloody. Or in an invasion that would also exact ‘collateral damage’, as the Americans so coyly describe the civilian slaughter of war.

I didn’t want to sit in front of a TV set in ten years time watching a heartfelt and moving John Pilger documentary about the evils perpetrated by invasion forces entering Myanmar, intent on bringing about regime change and imposing democracy. There has to be a better way, a more subtle way.

SOURCE: Land of a Thousand Eyes: The subtle pleasures of everyday life in Myanmar, by Peter Olszewski (Allen & Unwin, 2005), pp. 82-83, 89-91

Although I sympathize a bit more with Olszewski than Pilger in this instance, especially in equating Myanmar with Cuba (both socialist in name, dictatorial in practice), neither of them have any adequate answer to Lenin’s burning question, What Is to Be Done? Nor do I. It’s much easier to achieve near-universal consensus on What Is Not to Be Done. Just ask the U.N.

Unfortunately, Olszewski indulges in a lame running joke throughout his book, wherein he repeatedly manages narrowly to escape yet another Burmese citizen who wants to talk with a Westerner about democracy. What exactly was he trying to accomplish in Myanmar? Whatever it was, it all went down the drain in the wake of a massive purge in October 2004, with examples provided in the book’s epilogue.

It was during my year in Romania in 1983-84 that I became acquainted with the term “actually existing socialism” used by true believers to distinguish their utopian ideals from the cynical implementations of socialist principles by so many real-world regimes. I’m sure libertarian true believers similarly distinguish “actually existing” market economies from their utopian ideals. Although far from a utopian idealist, Olszewski is the type of person who sneers at “actually existing democracy” without offering any better alternative.

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by | 1 January 2006 · 4:27 pm

Coxinga’s Sino-Japanese Parentage

In infancy, Coxinga was known as Fukumatsu, literally Lucky Pine, though the name is loaded with other meanings. To a Chinese reader, the two characters of the name combine the Fu of Fujian with the Matsu of Matsuura, the feudal family that ruled the Hirado area. Matsu could even have been a pun on the name of the goddess of the seas so revered by [Coxinga’s father Nicholas] Iquan and his fellow sailors, divine patron of Fujian and Macao. In later centuries, legends linked Coxinga directly with her, claiming that while Miss Tagawa gave him life, his true mother was the goddess herself, who appeared in the spirit of the storm and the great whale on the morning of his birth, and who watched over his ships throughout his life.

The pine was also a symbol of longevity, and of loneliness, since a different kind of matsu was also the Japanese verb ‘to wait’. If a pun was intended, then perhaps we can guess at which of the many possible readings of Miss Tagawa’s first name is correct–Fukumatsu also means ‘Fuku Waits’, and wait she did. [This seems a bit silly and a bit garbled.–J.]

Miss Tagawa and her son remained in Hirado, where their means of support are unknown–presumably either through occasional stipends from Iquan, or on the mercy of her stepfather. Though contemporary sources record that Iquan visited his former lover on occasion, he was occupied with the Taiwanese operation, and now had a prominent wife in Fujian who demanded more of his attention. In modern parlance, he was an absentee father.

SOURCE: Coxinga and the Fall of the Ming Dynasty, by Jonathan Clements (Sutton, 2005), p. 52

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by | 1 January 2006 · 9:08 am

Chaucer on Latvians

In the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer (1340-1400) mentions Latvia in the Knight’s Tale:

Ful ofte tyme he hadde the bord bigonne
Aboven alle nacions in pruce;
In lettow hadde he reysed and in ruce, …

Full oft the table’s roster he’d begun
Above all nations’ knights in Prussia.
In Latvia raided he, and Russia, …

Chaucer’s reputed model for the Knight, King Henry IV of England, made it to Latvia in July, 1390, while temporarily attached to the Knights of the Livonian Order. Even earlier, a Latvian who had come to England with a party of Norse invaders wound up battling against William the Conqueror around 1070.

via Latvians.com, a well-done site that offers a lot of things you won’t find in the CIA World Factbook, such as:

  • Latvia is about the size of West Virginia, or Belgium plus the Netherlands.
  • About 2,500,000 people live in Latvia, mostly Latvian; and about 1/3rd Russian, the result of intense Russification during the 50 year Soviet occupation; students of history will note this was not the first campaign to Russify Latvia, the prior one being conducted by Czar Alexander III in the late 1800’s — motivated more by fear of Germanic ambitions, but also a time during which speaking Latvian in public was grounds for imprisonment.

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by | 31 December 2005 · 9:09 am

Betel Chewing in Myanmar (and Elsewhere)

Betel nut is ubiquitous in Myanmar. Many people chew betel incessantly, despite half-hearted government attempts to curb the practice, or at least to stop the spitting associated with chewing. The streets are covered with big red blotches because, when locals finish chewing their quids, they hawk red gobs and streams of juice onto the roads and walkways, permanently staining the concrete.

The legendary British colonial chronicler of Burma, Sir James George Scott, also known as Shway Yoe, wrote, ‘No one can speak Burmese well till he chews betel’. That’s probably because ardent adherents have a quid stuck permanently in their cheek and this impediment affects their speech. It also affects their breath because it rots the teeth, turning them into gruesome reddish stumps, and it’s best to stay downwind from chronic chewers so as to avoid a whiff of the rank ‘betel breath’, as it’s called.

Thousands of one-man betel nut stalls are dotted throughout Yangon. Betel quid makers have a stack of small, green betel vine leaves, a pot of white, gloopy slaked-lime paste and an array of herbs and fillings, including cloves, aniseed, grated coconut, cinnamon, camphor, cardamom seeds, cumin and tobacco, plus small, broken pieces of the actual nut.

The ingredients are mixed on the leaf and a stick is scraped through the white gloop, which is liberally daubed over the leaf. The leaf is then carefully folded into a small packet or quid, and enclosed in a small cellophane pouch. Users place the betel nut quid in their mouth and slowly suck. The lime breaks down the ingredients quickly, leaving a pleasant but bitter spearmint-like taste in your mouth.

By the time the betel nut quid U Tun Htun has given me has totally dissolved in my mouth, with the hard nubs of nut softened into a mush, we have reached the outskirts of Yangon and it is time for me to do what all betel nut chewers do. When we stop at traffic lights I open the passenger door, lean out and expectorate a rancid red stream onto the road. Some Myanmar people in the car next to me are watching. They laugh and give me their version of a thumbs-up.

SOURCE: Land of a Thousand Eyes: The subtle pleasures of everyday life in Myanmar, by Peter Olszewski (Allen & Unwin, 2005), pp. 74-75

Well, I don’t know much about Burma, but I do know a bit about chewing betel. It sounds like the Burmese chew (or suck) just the dried pulpy core of the areca nut, and not the fibrous husk. Chamorros on Guam do the same, but as far as I know they don’t add spices, unless you count tobacco.

I first learned to chew in Yap, the betel chewing capital of the Pacific, where men, women, and children chew day and night, if supplies permit. Yapese prefer to chew young areca nuts, husk and all, wrapped in betel pepper leaf and sprinkled with dry slaked-lime powder. Baby bottles or babyfood jars are favorite lime containers these days, supplanting the small, hollow coconut or bamboo containers of old. If the nuts are small and plentiful, people will chew the whole thing, but people often bite the nut in two, then share half. Larger nuts might be quartered with a machete. In fact, the sharing of betel ingredients is a typical icebreaker in any kind of social interaction. People rarely have exactly equal supplies of nuts, leaves, and lime in the woven baskets everyone carries on Yap. (Brown paper bags often substitute when not in Yap.) The only additional flavoring Yapese sometimes use is tobacco. Dark, sticky twist tobacco is best, but some people will also bite off the end of a cigarette after popping the betel quid into their mouths. Yapese will often spit to clear the first, inadequately mixed juice from their mouths, but usually swallow after the juice gets redder and thicker. The betel mixture, especially with tobacco, is supposed to be a vermifuge of sorts, but chewing also helps to suppress hunger pangs. Betel makes your heart beat faster, and strong betel can make your head spin and your forehead sweat, but only for a short while.

Palauans chew a lot of betel, too, but they don’t tend to swallow, so people often carry around an empty beer or soda can to spit into, especially if they’re indoors. When I was in grad school at the University of Hawai‘i, you usually had to find a Palauan connection to supply your betelnut fixings, but nowadays in Hawai‘i little Korean convenience stores will often stock betel supplies in neighborhoods where a lot of Micronesians hang out.

But nowhere is betel more commercialized than in Taiwan. When we passed through Taiwan on the way back from Guangdong in 1988, my wife and I were pleased to find prepared quids available for sale from most small tobacconists. Chewing was common enough to prompt fastfood outlets like MacDonald’s or KFC to post “No betel chewing” signs on their premises. But our impression at the time was that betel chewing was more common in rural areas and among older women. Well, that seems to have changed, thanks to the marketing efforts of scantily clad binlang xishi (檳榔西施). Taiwanese betel quids are sold ready to pop into one’s mouth. The quid consists of a small split areca nut holding dab of lime paste and either a piece of betel pepper catkin inside or a wrap of pepper leaf outside.

UPDATE: Reader Lirelou’s comment needs to be prevented from vanishing into Haloscan’s black hole.

My first experience with betel nut was in Vietnam. With only a few days in country, I tagged along with a Vietnamese reconnaissance platoon and one US Sergeant for an ambush. Moving up into our position at about 02:00 in the morning, we were in turn ambushed. After much firing with no casualties, the VC withdrew. We followed after them and caught site of movement within a small nearby hamlet. The sergeant sent a squad up along the edge of the hamlet, and put an observation post on the river ford at the other side. A quick glassing with our starlight scope (early version of night vision goggles) led him to believe that our ambushers had sought shelter within the hamlet. At dawn we moved up, cordoned off the hamlet, and began our house to house search, just as the village path began to fill with people about their daily chores. As I approached a house with half a squad of Vietnamese, I looked down and saw a large splotch of red colored liquid with I took to be fresh blood. Motioning for the squad to stand fast, I excitedly called up the sergeant, reporting that I had found a blood trail. The Vietnamese troopers looked at me and grinned, which seemed a bit strange considering that there must be a badly wounded and presusmably armed VC nearby. As the sergeant approached, I excitedly pointed out my discovery. He laughed, and was about to explain my “blood trail” when a passing peasant woman let loose a long stream of liquid that splashed an identical red splotch on the pathway. The Vietnamese troopers now laughed hysterically, and quickly spread the news throughout the platoon. Needless to say, our search was fruitless, and over the next few months I would hear his congenial “Hey Lieutenant, seen any more blood trails?” whenever he judged that I was getting a bit too big for my britches. As a postscript, on a walk through the village two years ago I discovered that it was not only larger, but that the habit of betel nut chewing had disappeared.

My first impression from walking the paths of Yap in Micronesia was that I was on an island sanitarium for tuberculosis patients.

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by | 29 December 2005 · 11:06 am

Hoder on Admadinejad and Blogging in Iran

Persian blogfather Hossein Derakhshan (Hoder) was interviewed last week by Sueddeutsche Zeitung‘s youth e-zine, Jetzt.de, under the headline, Iranische Opposition ist im Netz. A translation is available on Hoder’s English-language blog: Editor: Myself.

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by | 29 December 2005 · 10:39 am

Vytautas Landsbergis on Putin’s Pipeline Politics

David McDuff of A Step at a Time performs an invaluable service by unearthing (and often translating) less accessible publications about the former Soviet realm. On 17 December, he posted a Korea Herald op-ed by Vytautas Landsbergis, Lithuania’s first president after the restoration of independence, and now a member of the European Parliament, who warns the EU about Putin’s plans for a new oil pipeline under the Baltic Sea linking Russia directly to Germany.

Russia’s strategic task is obvious: cutting off Ukraine’s gas currently means cutting off much of Europe’s gas as well, because some of its biggest gas pipelines pass through Ukraine. By circumventing Ukraine, Poland, and of course, the Baltic countries, the new pipeline promises greater leverage to the Kremlin as it seeks to reassert itself regionally. President Vladimir Putin and his administration of ex-KGB clones will no longer have to worry about Western Europe when deciding how hard to squeeze Russia’s postcommunist neighbors.

Should Europe really be providing Putin with this new imperial weapon? Worse, might Russia turn this weapon on an energy-addicted EU? That a German ex-chancellor is going to lead the company that could provide Russia with a means to manipulate the EU economy is testimony to Europe’s dangerous complacency in the face of Putin’s neoimperialist ambitions….

The EU has signed numerous agreements with Russia including one for a “common space” for freedom and justice. The Kremlin is very good at feigning such idealism. Its control of Eastern Europe was always enforced on the basis of “friendship treaties,” and the Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 were “fraternal” missions.

But look how Putin abuses that “common” space: barbaric treatment of Chechens, the businessmen Mikhail Khodorkovsky imprisoned, foreign NGOs hounded, a co-leader of last year’s Orange Revolution, Yuliya Tymoshenko, indicted by Russian military prosecutors on trumped-up charges. If Europeans are serious about their common space for human rights and freedoms, they must recognize that those values are not shared by the calculating placemen of Putin’s Kremlin.

The same is true of viewing Russia as an ally in the fight against terrorism. Is it really conceivable that the homeland of the “Red Terror” with countless unpunished crimes from the Soviet era, and which bears traces of blood from Lithuania to the Caucasus, will provide reliable help in stopping Iran and North Korea from threatening the world? It seems more likely that the Kremlin’s cold minds will merely exploit each crisis as an opportunity to increase their destructive power and influence.

Read the rest at A Step at a Time

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by | 28 December 2005 · 6:17 am

Linguistics & the Law of Unintended Consequences

In 2004, another University of Hawai‘i linguist with long experience of Micronesia, Kenneth L. Rehg, published a follow-up to Donald Topping’s article on attempts by professional linguists to foster the vitality of smaller languages. His article, Linguistics, Literacy, and the Law of Unintended Consequences appeared in Oceanic Linguistics 43:498-518. Here’s a taste of what he had to say.

At present, we have no predictive science of language vitality, and it is unlikely that we will ever have one, given the very large number of factors that impinge upon language survival. Topping was certainly correct, however, when he wrote (2003:527): “Our experience in Micronesia tells me that as long as the indigenous language gives the appearance of being robust, the alarm cries of linguists will go unheeded. It is only when the threat of cultural extinction becomes real that language and cultural retention becomes a serious matter of concern.” Ironically (or perhaps not), it is a fact about Micronesia that the major proponents of English have for the most part been the Micronesians, and the champions of the local languages have for the most part been the foreign linguists and educators. There are, of course, many exceptions on both sides, the most noticeable among the Micronesians being those individuals who participated in the University of Hawai‘i programs described at the beginning of this paper. What is also telling, though, is the fact that most of the funding that has been utilized in support of the Micronesian languages has come from external sources in the form of grants from the United States government. All too often, when these funds dried up, so too did the indigenous language programs they supported.

Thus, while it is clear that the Micronesians have the capacity to sustain their own languages, it is not nearly so obvious that their leaders have the will to do so. Ultimately, of course, the survival of small languages everywhere is beyond the control of foreign linguists. As Topping (2003:527) wrote, “… the real saviors of the endangered languages will be the people who speak them, not the linguists who talk about them.” But, if we are called upon to assist communities that care about the long-term well-being of their language, then we must carefully weigh our actions. In the case of Micronesia, some very good work was done on these languages, but the “Law of Unintended Consequences” also came into play. This is the law that reminds us that the actions of individuals–and especially agencies, institutions, and governments–invariably have effects that are not intended or anticipated. Thus, we set out to promote literacy in the Micronesian languages, but some of our efforts had just the opposite effect. Disputes over orthographies, unrealistic expectations concerning standards, an insufficient understanding of the literacy needs of these communities, and reliance on external funding all hindered progress toward that goal. Consequently, I have come to believe that if the linguistic community is serious about documenting and supporting the threatened languages of the world, we must move such endeavors into the mainstream of our discipline. What we need now, far more than good intentions, is excellent research that can serve as the foundation for excellent applications and excellent training. Further, given Topping’s observation that only the people who speak threatened languages can save them, I believe that linguistics departments everywhere must strive to recruit, support, and train speakers of such languages–in particular, those who evidence a wholehearted commitment to conserving their linguistic heritage.

UPDATE: Beaupeep asks in the comments:

But doesn’t that go back to the issue of unintended consequences? And isn’t it fair to ask why it should be necessary for outsiders to encourage populations “who evidence a wholehearted commitment to their linguistic heritage” to preserve a language they already hold dear?

Or is this suggestion more about telling people what they *ought* to think and do?

Fair point. To me, it seems more about telling linguists what they ought to do than telling native speakers of threatened languages what they ought to do. But remember all those linguistically trained educators from Micronesia that opted for careers in politics rather than education that Topping mentioned (in the preceding blogpost)? Some years back, I also had the experience of meeting one of my wantoks (that is, speakers of the same language, in this case a very exclusive club of c. 300) from the rather educationally progressive village where I did fieldwork in New Guinea as he passed through Honolulu with his family–and a set of golf clubs–after completing an MLS degree in Illinois. He was already aiming for a career in politics, not library science.

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by | 27 December 2005 · 8:27 pm

What Difference Did Linguists Make?

In 1994, University of Hawai‘i professor Donald M. Topping presented a paper at the Seventh International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics at a plenary session on endangered languages. It was the last session of the conference, held on a Saturday morning after some of the conference participants had already departed.

That presentation appeared posthumously in 2003 under the title Saviors of language: Who will be the real Messiah? in Oceanic Linguistics 42:522-527. Here’s a bit of what he had to say.

Linguists concerned about the fate of endangered languages appear also to be endangered, at least in terms of numbers. At the Sixth International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics [in Honolulu in 1990], fourteen papers were given at prime time, about mid-way through the meetings. Here at the Seventh [in Leiden in 1994], we three—the last of our species?—have been relegated to the tail end. This is perhaps befitting, for issues of language survival may not be any of our business. Nevertheless, let me recount the experiences of one aging linguist who, earlier in his career, was convinced that he could make a difference….

In the early 1970s a group of us at the University of Hawai‘i felt, perhaps arrogantly, that linguists had not only a role, but a responsibility to help preserve the languages of Micronesia. Emboldened with this messianic complex, and a substantial source of funding, we launched a major project to ensure their survival….

How well has it worked? Let’s review some of the results. With the published reference grammars and dictionaries the results have been mixed. Aside from the Chamorro and Palauan reference grammars, which are being used as text materials in Palau and Guam, the others have been largely ignored. Of the twelve published dictionaries, four have been reprinted (Chamorro, Palauan, Marshallese, and Ponapean). Again, with the possible exception of Palauan and Chamorro, where the dictionaries are used in the education programs, most of the sales have obviously been to expatriates and tourists, and not to the speakers of the languages.

What became of the Micronesian linguists, some of whom took M.A. degrees in linguistics? Sadly, the majority of them have gone into other fields, especially politics, and have all but abandoned language concerns. Of the few who remained in Education, only two (one Palauan and one Chamorro) have maintained an active role in developing vernacular language education.

Of the 1,300 or so Micronesian language texts developed during phase 2 of the materials development project, few are to be found outside of the University of Hawai‘i library. Even though thousands of volumes were shipped to Micronesia as they were produced, they have all but disappeared.

The vernacular education programs in Micronesian schools, according to a 1989 report published by the University of Guam, are either nonexistent or very weak. The gradual loss of text materials, career changes by the Micronesian linguists, and parental pressures to teach their children English have all contributed to this decline.

Surprisingly, a major obstacle to the success of the Micronesian linguistics project is one that was unanticipated, and may be fairly assigned to the linguists themselves. That is the problems presented by the “new” orthographies. Mr. Leo Pugram, Coordinator for Curriculum and Instruction in Yap, made the following statement, “When the new orthography was established, it was a time for problems, confusion, and hatred for the new orthography. This still exists today on Yap.”

Obviously, the linguists left their mark: the “new orthography.” The complaint articulated so bluntly by Mr. Pugram was echoed by nearly every other Micronesian educator who attended the Guam conference. Although the University of Hawai‘i linguists involved made every effort to involve the community of speakers in the choice of orthography for the dictionaries and reference grammars, they are the ones who were blamed for the controversies that surfaced after the books were published.

On the other hand, the linguists probably had an equally positive influence by raising the awareness of the language issue in the various Micronesian communities where indifference had prevailed for so long. People began to talk about their languages and their importance to cultural integrity, albeit in a controversial frame. The publications themselves—bilingual dictionaries and reference grammars in nicely bound volumes—served to elevate the status of the Micronesian languages in the eyes of their speakers.

Still, one must ask the question: did linguists or linguistics really make a difference for the future of the languages? Did our work have any impact in preventing, or slowing down the linguistic adulteration and erosion that is seen today in many parts of Micronesia?

Perhaps the best way to address that question is to look at three communities in the Pacific where language erosion had progressed almost to the point of no return, and where we are now witnessing a linguistic and cultural renaissance: Guam, New Zealand, and Hawai‘i. Was it the linguists with their bag of tools that triggered the positive action? Or were there other more critical factors?…

What are the forces driving this renaissance? In my view, it is the real threat of cultural extinction more than anything else that gives it life. In all three of the communities, the indigenous people, many of whom are on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale, are vastly outnumbered by “outsiders.” There is growing resentment of the majority culture. And there is strong leadership emerging among the indigenous people who are demanding legal redress. These are probably the strongest forces behind the observed language renaissance.

Where then, are the linguists? Have they played a role? Do they now? Each of the three languages in question was described and lexified by nonnative linguists during the 1950s and early sixties. At the time of their work these linguists issued the call of alarm about the precarious status of the languages. Their calls, however, appeared to fall on deaf ears, for there was little response. It took the coming of another generation of young people who were not afforded the opportunity to learn their heritage language at home before the threat of total language loss became real.

Ironically, when the cultural/ethnic renaissance began to emerge with force, the “pioneering” linguists were often vilified for profiting from their published works, misinterpreting the language, or concocting an unacceptable spelling system. Nevertheless, their works are still used extensively for the development of language programs and materials that are having such remarkable success today.

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