Dying Out

     All around you, day in and day out, you talk to people in your native tongue. Your family, your friends, your coworkers, even the bus driver or taxi driver or stranger in the coffee shop - chances are they all speak the same language as you or one that you've heard and can understand a few words in. What if this wasn't the case and you were one of a handful of people who could speak your language? Would this affect your everyday life? Would this affect your culture and background?

     Well, in Doldol, Northern Kenya, there are ten people who are going through exactly this. Of the 4,000 people left in their tribe, the Yaaku tribe, these ten elders are the only ones who can fluently speak the Yaaku language and they like to incorporate English and Kiswahili with it. As their tribe slowly begins to be eclipsed by the Maasai, the Yaaku get closer and closer to losing their language, and also their culture. As Mannaseh Matunge, a Yaaku activist said, "If these elders die, then the language will die. Because they are the custodians of our cultures and our languages." He sees the loss of this language and these elders as a loss of part of their culture. Language holds so much more importance than what many consider it to hold; it is easy to see language as just a way to communicate day in and day out, but it is used for so much more than that. For example, it is used to pass down stories, myths, and tales from generation to generation. In addition, so many words are untranslatable to other languages, such as one of my favorite words, "fernweh", which is German and means to be homesick for a place you have never been to (for more fun words, check here -- https://www.buzzfeed.com/alanwhite/23-charming-illustrations-of-untranslatable-words-from-other?utm_term=.xh5E1bVy2#.cmQ7K13bD). The livelihood of a group of people can be so easily lost when a language dies out and it is unfortunate that languages, such as the Yaaku language, die out so much more often than many people care to notice. Matunge said in the video a very depressing yet very true thing about this loss: "There are no mechanisms put to save the language." It can take years to learn a language fluently and so much will be lost when these elders, their language, and their culture die out.

References
Hassan Lali. 2016. "Efforts to save Kenya's dying Yaaku language". BBC News.
     http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-37406131 (accessed September 21, 2016).