Why I Avoid “Word of the Day” Projects
I am a second language speaker at a Low-Advanced level of the Squamish Language. In 2010, I did a Master-Apprentice Program with a fluent speaker from my community. Her name is Vanessa Campbell of the Squamish Nation. For the 300+ hours we spent 100% immersed of our time in the language. In this project, I really discovered what really doesn’t work for acquiring language speaking skills.
I come across “Word of the Day” or “Word of the Week” projects a lot. Perhaps there’s a staff at the local band office who sends out daily emails. Perhaps some young person makes meme’s for instagram that shows a picture of an animal, a phrase in the language, and the English translation. Perhaps you’ve tried to learn the language through this method too.
I offer this blog post to problematize this approach and offer a critical engagement in the hopes we can do better.
Here are my 5 reasons for avoiding using “Word of the Day” projects in helping revitalize my language:
3.) Language Learning and Language Acquisition are two different activities. “Word of the Day” is not language acquisition.
Language acquisition is a process of internalizing the skills of speaking a language. This happens in three performance areas.
Interpersonal communication
Interpersonal communication the skill of communicating between other speakers. This performance area would include aspects like knowing how to talk to someone older than you versus talking to a stranger. It also includes being able to communicate simple to complex ideas in casual conversations like at a dinner or coffee shop with friends.
Presentational speaking is the skill of presenting one's ideas, stories, experiences, and vision to an audience. This differs from interpersonal communication because this performance area requires a specialized knowledge and supporting vocabulary for that knowledge. I can only present on topics I both feel informed about and have the vocabulary to communicate. I might make a presentation about an idea to go on a family vacation (where, when, how, with who) or I might make a presentation about building a community radio station.
Interpretive speaking is the skill of making interpretations of what other information is being presented to me. Perhaps for myself or perhaps to another person. Imagine someone standing on a podium giving a speech on the need for ending fossil subsidies and I have a friend not familiar with the subject sitting next to me. Interpretive speaking skills are about asking the question “Can I take what is being communicated and have a command of my language to re-communicate it to my friend who needs it interpreted for them?”. It’s a language speaking skill of interpreting another speaker.
I believe our goal is to become speakers of our languages and speaking is a skill, not an expertise. Educating people on what words mean is fine, but let’s not pretend that that is “language revitalization”. Skills are acquired, not just learned. Acquiring skills involves learning. For example, learning where things go, how a thing is put together, or how to use it. But there is a process to having a strong skill that involves practice, experimenting, and mentorship that leads a person to performing abilities they didn’t have before. I can’t just learn how to cook without actually cooking -- I must acquire cooking skills by immersing myself in it.
Skill building is needed. Translated word of the day doesn’t build skills; it teaches them about languages.
The question I ask people is, would you rather be able to talk about your language or would you rather be able to talk about your language in your language? One can acquired through learning (about) a language, the other is acquired through language acquisition.
2.) Translation creates translator's, not speakers.
Language acquisition should have this feeling of giving birth to a new brain. Our brain houses a lot of power that shapes who we are and how we behave. Every multilingual person I speak to concurs with this sensation of having a second brain where this other language exists.
Being a multilingual speaker feels like you have more than one “brain”. And acquiring language should both feel like giving birth to a new brain and developing it. This new Mohawk, Cree, Haida, or Squamish language brain will be young. It starts off like a baby-brain, only able to issue simple commands and say a few words. But over time you should be able to think in this brain, create ideas in this brain, dream in this brain, and experience a different behavior in this brain. All multi-lingual speakers feel this.
This is why studies are often showing people’s attitude and behavior change when they speak a different language.
Word of the Day projects don’t create speakers of a language, they create translators. All they accomplish is helping your English-brain figure out what a handful of words mean. By having the new knowledge pass through your English brain, it will often have to be called upon by passing through that same English brain.
Language acquisition should not involve translation if you want to build strong speakers with strong Indigenous language brains. Translation just creates an unnecessary barrier. Every time you want to conjure a word in your speech, your mind first tries to recall the word, then tries to think of what that word is in English, then connects the English word with the Indigenous language word your English brain memorized.
Fluent speakers of a language on the other hand can conjure words by directly calling them from their Indigenous language brain. There is no extra step, so to speak, that it must pass through before it leaves the lips of your mouth. Becoming a language speaker, able to think in a language, only comes about when you’ve acquired language speaking skills. And skill building comes from immersion.
1.) Translating is how we’ve done it for decades and it hasn’t produced many speakers.
Linguists, the charlatans they sometimes are, convinced our old time fluent elders in our communities that in order to save our language we needed to document it, preserve it, and analyze it.
You’re telling us to taxidermy our language before they are even dead!
A lot of Indigenous language programs, when they were first created, were required to show some sort of formal curriculum. At the time, the only comparable second-language curricula was ones used to teach Spanish or French in the classroom. They focused on teaching grammar. We didn’t realize there was a way to create immersion-based curriculum. Language curriculum where the focus is to only speak the language and teach the language by staying in the language.
Despite decades of the obvious staring us in the face (as elderly fluent speakers died amongst us), we never woke up to smell the coffee and realize this:
We may have been doing it wrong.
Language revitalization needs to be about reversing the decline of fluent and highly proficient speakers. We should be asking ourselves questions like:
How many highly proficient speakers did we have this year? Did we increase that number?
At what level of proficiency is our current second language learners? Are they improving in interpersonal communication, presentational speaking, interpretive speaking?
What spaces or institutions are needed, supported, or sustained in our communities where the language is protected, used habitually, or used exclusively? What is needed to support them more?
All of these questions are more important than “What kind of iPhone app that translates every word for people and creates no speakers of our language can we get funding for next?”. Projects like “Word of the Day” and other translation-based strategies are focusing time, energy, and resources in the wrong direction. And at this critical stage in near extinction, wasted time & energy can be fatal to the ending of our language speaking communities.
I share these three points to add to the discussion about how we regenerate our languages and lead to better results. If the status quo is leading us to destruction, what is the risk in pointing out the problems with the status quo thinking and status quo directions we are taking? Maybe it’s time to question and search out better ways of doing it.
For further reading on these ideas, and ideas on how to plan language acquisition in immersion-based approaches, I highly recommend reading these documents. They are extremely useful roadmaps for achieving strong speaking performance in various areas and rising in one's proficiency of a language:
ACTFL PERFORMANCE DESCRIPTORS FOR LANGUAGE LEARNERS 2012 Edition
NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements: Progress Indicators for Language Learners
ACTFL PROFICIENCY GUIDELINES 2012
