The century that is passing has not been kind to the minority languages of the world, particularly the aboriginal languages (and cultures) of North America. A few years ago it was reported that, given the statistics, one would expect only Cree and Inuktitut to have a chance of surviving another 100 years in Canada. That opinion, however, is no grounds for complacency.
Today, very few native children in western Nunavut speak, or even understand, their native language, and it is the children who count. Visit a community and listen to the children playing. It doesn’t matter how much Inuktitut is spoken in the store by adults shopping, or in the kitchens among Elders visiting. What language are the children using? The first sign of decay is when the children play in English. The second is when the parents speak in Inuktitut and the children reply in English. The third is when the language of the home is English, except for the Elders in the corner, a generation cut off from their grandchildren.
Linguists use a term to express the effort to revive a dying language: ‘salvage linguistics’. The situation along the central Arctic coast of Nunavut – the communities of Cambridge Bay, Kugluktuk, Umingmaktok and Bathurst Inlet – can today be realistically described as one of salvage. There is a race against time, as a small group of Inuit teachers there work to preserve and transmit their language before it is too late.
Will they solve the problem? Or to put it more broadly: can institutions such as government and education save a language on their own? No.
The essential element is commitment in the home: commitment by parents. Institutions can’t legislate that. What they can do is encourage and support it. But the essential element will come from the people. The essential element will be a pride in the language, and a determination to use it.
Two factors chip away at the stronghold of a minority language such as Inuktitut. One is that by the time parents realize its use is disappearing, it is already too late. The second factor is the overwhelming power of English, a power felt today across the world. It’s not just that English is the language of Shakespeare, and Ernest Hemingway, and Margaret Atwood. It is also the language of Coca-Cola, and the Apollo program, and Bill Gates, and Michael Jackson, and Disney World. English is the language of power, and of glitter. Parents use English to link their children to the source of power.