Categories: Language

In early December 2014, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, President of Turkey, declared that he was re-infusing Ottoman language – the father of modern Turkish language – back into national consciousness. Effective immediately. Public objection? The Turkish leader couldn’t care less. According to a New York Times article, he planned to accomplish the re-introduction of Ottoman through obligatory courses in the nation’s islamic schools and as an elective in secular schools. But, why would he do this? According to Erdoğan, Ottoman helps modern Turks to “reconnect with their past.” Hmm …

Some critics argue that the move to re-introduce Ottoman – discontinued in 1928 by the founder of modern Turkey, a language written in Arabic script with considerable Persian and Arabic lexical borrowings – is Erdogan’s attempt to islamize the secularized nation Mustafa Kemal Atatürk founded in 1928. To be fair, there were pros and cons of Ottoman Turkey, depending on what one’s values are. All nations have histories of war, and all have histories of glory, too. Other critics whine that the Ottoman language was “notoriously difficult;” probably because they are daunted by Arabic orthography and tonality.

Nevertheless, 1928 was not that long ago. And anyone familiar with Turkey and Turkish history, are well-aware that everything from laws, poetry, tombstones, and music were written in the Ottoman language. Eyes and ears suffice to observe the permanent Ottoman imprint on the land and people. It’s a bit similar to historic French language presence in Louisiana. Atatürk sought to de-arabize his new republic, and to empower non-Arab-influenced Ottoman vocabulary and culture through the linguistic reforms he introduced. It created or nationalized a new language whose speakers today, basically, no longer understand Ottoman at any functional level. That too is similar to how French was marginalized in Louisiana by its Anglophone legislature, and how most Louisiana Creoles (of Francophone background) today no longer know French and therefore cannot understand the language on graves, in Louisiana Francophone literature, music or folktales.

There are parallels of this kind of linguistic reclamation all over the globe. At the institutional level, I think of German and Italian in Switzerland, Belgian Dutch (Flemish), Canadian French (Quebec and New Brunswick), Spain (Catalán), and many others. People in those locales figured out a way to elect linguistic nationalists who, ultimately, succeeded in the institutionalization of marginalized and forgotten languages. Where governments have officialized marginalized languages, global citizens tend to value them as legitimate languages with unique names and won’t think twice about their close relationship with other languages, as is the case with Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, and Flemish and Dutch.

Not all marginalized languages are fortunate enough to have an electoral voice, though. Not so long ago, a person I respect a great deal, leaned over to me in a small office that resembles a library, and said: “Christophe, it’s too late. You can’t bring it back and you can’t go back.” That person was remarking on my language reclamation projects in Louisiana, specifically Louisiana Creole. I condescendingly smirked and thought to myself: “give me several months to work on you and your opinion will change.”

Part of the rejection people harbor with language reclamation – almost always people from outside of the marginalized communities – is that reclaiming a language means that those wishing to reintroduce the language, hope to go back in time and live like people did long ago. That has been a driving force behind public rejection of Erdoğan’s Ottoman program. It is hard for them to conceive of a “dead language” being revived and lived robustly in contemporary times. People evolve because their language and environments evolve. Israelis have visibly shown that a once scriptural language, long unspoken in homes as a native tongue, can be revived and used in all the modern contexts as all of the large global languages.

Yet, the power of identity, soul, and culture speak far greater than ballots in capitols and opinions of observers. Louisiana Creole, like many other languages, was slated to be dead two generations ago, after the Anglo-American legislature in Louisiana made English the only lawful language of instruction in Louisiana schools in 1921. Despite that measure, the language is still here. And although a generation or two stopped speaking the language to their children in their homes, now mothers and grandmothers are speaking to their children and grandchildren in the language again. And middle and high school students are learning Louisiana Creole because it is important to them. Some of us have managed to hold on with or without government support. If we should support saving rats and mice, or even notoriously aggravating and disease-carrying mosquitoes, then surely we should (and could) support the safeguard of marginalized languages and their communities. There’s a such thing as a food chain in the animal kingdom, but animals/humans cannot exist without language (spoken or gestural), and each language plays an integral role in the human cultural chain. Can you imagine a world without “making grocery?” I can’t. 🙂