Tsunami (the English Version)

Under Multiply, Anne Thiessen has trained and mentored Latin American missionaries in language learning and church planting for over 30 years. She currently serves as consultant for Sin Fronteras, a Mexican agency reaching out to the unreached indigenous populations of Mexico. She recently completed her MA studies with WCIU.

WCIU Journal: Cross-Cultural Communications Topic

October 14, 2019

by Anne Thiessen

Read the Spanish version of this article here.

A Stick

Celsa, my language companion, was struck by her third grade teacher with a stick for speaking Mixtec at school. Her parents would have been in agreement with this punishment, because for them, as well as for the teacher, this punishment would have been the best way to ensure that Celsa learned Spanish. Mastery of Spanish meant for them as Mexican indigenous people, the way to a better life. It meant better schooling, better jobs, better business, and higher social status.

Celsa learned Spanish as well as mestizo culture. But as she tells her story now, her sadness seeps through, sadness over the loss of something precious, something worthy. There was a cost to switching cultures.Celsa's experience shows us that languages ​​are not static but organic: they wax and wane; They add new leaves and flowers or wither and die. They can be conquered by a more dominant language: the Spanish conquest that began 500 years ago is not yet over. Like an invasive species that chokes out native flora, it is still overwhelming native languages. Of course, Spanish is not the only language that displaces others. English dominates the landscape as well. An SIL consultant calls it a "gorilla." language.

According to a Mexican publication by the National Institute of Indigenous Languages, in 2012, of the 364 linguistic variants that exist in Mexico, more than half are at risk of disappearing, victims of Spanish conquest. According to this document, 97% of the world speaks 250 dominant languages, and 3% speaks more than 5700 minority languages. But every year more and more of these disappear. It is likely that, by the end of this century, the dominant languages ​​will displace 5000 minority languages, including most of the Mexican languages.

Celsa's experience repeats itself over and over. It is like a linguistic tsunami that sweeps away everything in its path. We might imagine Celsa’s Mixtec as a rowboat threatened by a tsunami. What could it do to survive?

How might cross-cultural workers who value the rowboat help it to survive the tsunami? How might they help minority language speakers maintain their languages while their homelands adapt to the surrounding dominant culture? Is there hope for minority languages embedded in dominant cultures?

I think there are three things cross-cultural workers can do to support cultures threatened by Spanish conquest : (1) Understand God's purpose for the world's languages; (2) Help communities plan the future of their languages; and (3) Learn the language and use it in church and home domains.

A Tower

We might think that having so many different languages ​​in the world is a disadvantage for the human race, an ancient curse. Celsa's teacher demonstrates this attitude. But the history of the tower of Babel assures us that this is not so. Although God commanded Adam and Eve to multiply and fill the earth, Genesis 11 recounts how the human race resisted the Creator’s mandate. Gathered on the plains of Babylon, the people began to say: “Come, let's build a great city for ourselves with a tower that reaches into the sky. This will make us famous and keep us from being scattered all over the world. They refused to disperse and fill the earth.

And God observed: «Look! The people are united, and they all speak the same language. After this, nothing they set out to do will be impossible for them! Come, let’s go down and confuse the people with different languages. Then they wont’ be able to understand each other » 

The people of Babylon ignored God's command to go and fill the earth. They preferred security, staying in one place, and becoming strong and famous. They did not understand that the lack of diversity was a danger to them. Just as it was not good for Adam to exist without a woman, it was not good for humanity to exist without cultural and linguistic diversity. According to John Piper, God forced humanity to submit to his original plan through the gift of multiple languages. We might be tempted to take this as a curse and assume that, by confusing people’s languages, God was punishing them with an unnecessary burden. But the diversity of languages ​​was not a curse; it was God’s protection from the evil that led humanity to the calamity of the Great Flood.

God's original plan was for the human race to fill the earth and manage it. For this humans would have to disperse and experience the resulting natural and cultural diversity. It was not healthy for them to be locked into a single city with a tower that reached up to the sky. Human destiny always included linguistic and cultural diversity.

We see how God told Abram: "Leave your native country, your relatives and your father's family, and go to the land that I will show you ... All the families on earth will be blessed through you.." God promised to bless the nations that emerged from the scattering at Babel.

Throughout the Scriptures, we find that this promise of God to all nations is repeated over and over again. In the Law of Moses. In the Psalms. In the Prophets. In the Great Commission. And finally, in Revelation 5: 9: "Your blood has ransomed people for God of from every tribe and language and people and nation.” We recognize in this vision that God's original plan has been fulfilled. God has succeeded in rescuing for his Kingdom the human race in all its diversity. The Kingdom is not a new Babel. No, the languages ​​and cultures of the world are still present--in all their complexity and beauty.

Acts 2 reports that the first church included people from fifteen different nations. On the day the Holy Spirit was poured out on the people of God, there were migrants from all over the Roman Empire, and they all spoke different languages. Hebrew was not their mother tongue. As NT Wright emphasizes in his commentary on Acts 2,  people from foreign lands heard, for the first time,  the wonders of God in their mother tongue 

God is the God of language. His first act in creation was to speak; communicate; produce words. The diversity of languages ​​is a gift from God. Christ is the Word, the Living Communication of God. Andrew Walls insists that Jesus "translates" divinity into humanity, and at the outpouring of his Spirit, which was manifested with tongues of fire, he gave his servants the ability to communicate the gospel in other languages. God is the God of language.

The gospel insists that people from different cultures and languages may ​​come together without abandoning their cultural identities. Paul, in Ephesians 3:6 (NLT), claims: "This is God's plan: Both Gentiles and Jews who believe the Good News share equally in the riches inherited by God’s children." This plan of God, a great mystery in ancient times--a great secret--is now revealed in the Gospel. Andrew Walls describes this revelation as the " Ephesus moment. And it gives us hope. 

A Rowboat

Celsa's story also shows us how the indigenous of Mexico consider it impossible to master a second language without abandoning the first. They are not aware of one solution some multilingual nations and groups have discovered: a stable bilingualism , that is, the maintenance of both languages . As a consequence, they don’t look for ways to keep their rowboat afloat in the onslaught of the linguistic tsunami of dominant languages.

The manual A Guide to Plan the Future of our Language, published by SIL International in 2015, explains how to ensure the rowboat’s survival by introducing stable bilingualism. Throughout our days, we enter a variety of social domains: school, work, home, church, commerce, friendships, fun, health, government, nature, etc. In each of these domains we speak a particular languages (sometimes more than one, though one usually predominates). In Mexican communities, Spanish predominates at school, in the health clinic, and at town hall. Minority languages ​​predominate on the farm and at home. Sometimes two languages are spoken in commerce and religion, but the more influence the dominant language has, the more it will displace the vulnerable language in these domains. There are many indigenous communities in Mexico where parents no longer teach their children their own mother tongue. They say the children "listen" but do not speak. These children are a "lost generation" because they no longer share their parents' culture and the language dies with them.

To help indigenous communities consider the future of their languages, SIL hosts the online Ethnologue and offers workshops that engage indigenous communities. They realize that these communities are the only ones that can change the direction their languages are going. They may decide to abandon a language. They may decide to revitalize it with literacy projects, classes for children, or the publication of native tales. The role of the cross-cultural worker is to listen and support their decision. If they decide to maintain or revitalize a language, the cross-cultural worker can help them research the domains in which the dominant and minority languages prevail. They can count the number of people who still speak the language, and check whether this number includes children and youth—those who often feel the most pressure to adopt mestizo culture. Based on this research, community groups can make plans on how to stabilize the use of their language in particular domains.

As mentioned before, languages ​​are dynamic--not static. They ebb and flow. In the face of a conquering language, an indigenous language will give way in all domains unless the community protects those domains where only the indigenous language is spoken. Where there are protected domains where the indigenous language is no longer at risk of being displaced, the community is described as having reached a stable bilingualism . In Mexico, the easiest domains to protect are home, public events, and religion. In such protected environments, the mother tongue can revive and flourish.

Many cross-cultural workers practice stable bilingualism. I grew up in a Honduran village. At home, I spoke English with my family, but everywhere else, I spoke Spanish. My family kept hte the two languages ​​separate, each in its own domain. I taught my children a stable bilingualism as well. They are bilingual. It is possible to adopt a new language abandon while keeping the old, but it takes great effort. We were created with the capacity to master more than one language. Bilingualism is a gift from the God of tongues, both for the cross-cultural worker and for the indigenous people he or she serves. But it doesn’t happen automatically.

Conquest

The third thing Celsa's story shows us is the mestizo’s instinctive contempt for indigenous languages. Naturally, cross-cultural workers from Latin America don’t disparage minority languages. But they don’t learn them, either. And so, unwittingly, they: (1) communicate that language learning is not that necessary and (2) participate in the overthrow of indigenous languages. In 2006, COMIBAM reported in Strengths and Weaknesses of the Ibero-American Missionary Movement: 

While on the one hand, the Ibero - American worker is known for his ease in establishing personal relationships wherever he goes, on the other, spending time learning the language is seen as a waste of time - both by the senders and also by many workers who do not know realize its ministerial importance ...
In situations where the workers can communicate in the national language, (English or French, for example) the trend is not strive to learn a local / regional language ...
Do not wait to start language learning until you reach the field to.

As a mostly monolingual population, Ibero-Americans do not tend to give much importance to minority languages. They prefer to use the dominant languages ​​such as English, French, and of course, Spanish, the languages ​​of conquest. In other words, they continue to facilitate linguistic conquest, the linguistic tsunami.

In this illustration from The Romance of History, Mexico, a Spanish conquistador directs his prayer to God before entering Tenochtitlan. He is protected by sword and armor. Ironically, the conquistador believes his mission is ordained by God. He reminds us that the cross-cultural worker’s good intentions do not guarantee that his or her strategies are any good. Unintentionally, he may be participating in a type of conquest: that of language. There are ways to avoid this: (1) Check goals: Does training and time management reflect that learning the language is a high priority? Or is it optional? (2) Check strategies: do they lead toward sharing life and gospel message in the language?

I don't think the problem lies with Latin American cross-cultural workers themselves. The ones I know are dedicated and capable people. I think the problem lies with the lack of support they receive: (1) an understanding of the urgency of learning the language; (2) practice in using successful methods before beginning some other ministry among indigenous people ; (3) time to devote to learning (4) a structure that provides for learning, mentoring, and accountability.

A Proposal

One definition of madness is to keep doing the same thing, expecting different results. I don’t think the solution to the linguistic tsunami is to tell Latin American cross-cultural workers, “Just do it.” I think they are doing what they can with their current goals and strategies. I think we need to change the way workers are trained and the way they are supported in the field. Theoretical training and distant mentoring do not work well in my experience. Instead we could:

(1) Help workers master a minority language at a beginning level before starting other ministries.

(2) Facilitate learning in the field that leads toward sharing life and Bible stories.

(3) Help workers respect the domains where minority languages prevail, avoiding the introduction in these domains of dominant languages.

For this, I propose that workers and their sending churches and agencies work together to:

(1) Teach that language learning is ministry. It is impossible to separate people’s culture from their language. Language is what best communicates their worldview. The best way to bring honor to marginalized people is to learn their language.       

(2) Teach good methods for language learning. I recommend The Growing Participator Approach by Greg and Angela Thompson. This approach leads learners to participate more and more in the culture and to create stories in phase 2, after 100 hours of interactive learning.  

(3) Ensure that language learning is a priority in the field: the worker should be motivated to become conversant in the local language before starting another ministry. This could happen within a few months with the help of migrants in an urban center. This strategy allows workers to engage indigenous communities having already mastered a beginning level of their language.  

(4) Provide mentoring, face to face, in the field during the first phase of learning.  

(5) Teach respect for the domains in which minority languages prevail and expect workers to avoid introducing dominant languages there.  

A Companion

Thank God, Celsa's story does not end with shame. She is a language companion for those training to work under Agencia Sin Fronteras. Together they and I explore the complexity of the Magdalena Peñasco Mixtec. In a few weeks we will begin sharing short life stories. This process has given Celsa a new pride in her language. His daughter recently told us: “My mom is a new person! I see new joy and a fresh sense of purpose. And Celsa often exclaims: "Now I see that God can use even me."  That alone makes our time with her worth it. But beyond honoring Celsa, we are doing something else, too. We honor the God of culture and languages and incarnate his love for all who speak indigenous languages.