Documentary Review of "First Language - The Race to Save Cherokee"

Hello, everyone and welcome back to my blog! I hope that you have all been having a good week so far. For this post, I wanted to switch things up. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to read more and watch more films and documentaries to inform myself more about problems that the world is facing. A few weeks ago, I had the desire to watch a language documentary, which lead me to the documentary called First Language - The Race to Save Cherokee.

This documentary intrigued me, given that it is about the urgency of preserving the Cherokee language. I have also recently been reading more about the active efforts that indigenous people have put forth to pass on their traditions and languages. I find the Cherokee language to be especially relevant in 2019, because many Cherokee speakers seem to be passing away every year. To our dismay, the Cherokee language is classified as an endangered language, having between 11,000-13,000 native speakers according to 2008 estimates. In North Carolina, where the documentary takes place, there are no more than 200 native Cherokee speakers left. This number made my heart sink, but even so, this short documentary gave me hope for a better tomorrow.

It’s truly inspiring to see native Cherokee speakers taking on the role of educators, especially in an immersion school designed to teach young Cherokee about their language and culture in Cherokee. Despite many obstacles that have come their way, including funding, support, and hiring qualified educators, there is now a new generation of Cherokee who is speaking Cherokee at a native level even though many of their parents do not know how to speak it fluently. What I found to be the most remarkable was how dedicated and passionate Cherokee teachers are. They realize that there are little to no textbooks, or resources that are published, or available in Cherokee, so they often spend sleepless nights creating original and translated material for their students in their native language.

Once you learn more about the devastation that the Cherokee have gone through for centuries due to boarding schools that many Cherokee were forced to attend to “learn the white man’s ways”, it makes you very upset. These children were given no choice but to stop speaking Cherokee in order to “perfect” their English, which was deemed to be the superior language. This led to the punishment and prohibition of speaking their “inferior” Cherokee language. Regardless of how you feel about this issue, I encourage you to have deep and meaningful conversations about this situation with your family and friends. I continue to believe that the best way to bring more peace to this world is through conversation. Words are much stronger and powerful than you would think.

Though this is a sad reality, many Cherokee children living in North Carolina are starting to speak Cherokee with the older generations after 60 years of not hearing many Cherokee children speak their so-called heritage language. Since this a documentary review, I don’t want to spoil anything else, so if this is of interest to you, make sure to watch it by clicking the video that I have attached to this post. Qué tengan un buen día!

Love,

Laura

Book Review of "Through the Language Glass", by Guy Deutscher

Hello, everyone and welcome back to my blog! For those of who you are new, my name is Laura and I’m a polyglot. Throughout my life, I have studied and spoken a total of 7 languages. In fact, I love languages so much that I’m a college senior majoring in Italian Studies and minoring in French and Russian Language. But even so, as much as I enjoy what I study, I acknowledge just how urgent and important it is to preserve all languages and their respective cultures- not just those that are commonly studied and are considered “dominant cultures”, or “world languages.”

Given my passions, my mom gifted me a book titled Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages, by Guy Deutscher for Christmas. As I first started reading it, I was a bit hesitant as to whether or not I would like it, but decided to push through. I’m so glad that I did.

Despite traveling for 20 days total over break, I finished this book in about a week, which is fast for a slow reader like me. I simply enjoyed what the author had to say and could not take my eyes off the page. 

This book is about more than just linguistics and language. It’s about the beauty and power of celebrating cultures different from your own. If you read all 239 pages of the book, I can guarantee that you will have a better understanding of how culture influences our thought processes and way of life and vice-versa. You will ultimately have a better grasp on how we think and why we think the way we do.

Guy Deutscher explains these phenomenons primarily through the following concepts: the perception of color, the perception of space, and how gender influences how we view the world around us. He is by far one of the most well-read and clever linguistic authors I have come across so far, as he combines bits of history and culture to formulate his thoughts about and draw conclusions on how diverse and rich languages are on all corners of the planet.

This book’s chapters are quite long, but I didn't mind them, given that each chapter has a very detailed analysis of the study of linguistics and how it has evolved over time. I especially enjoyed the examples that he gives of languages that I have studied, as I was able to understand the cultural and historical context behind certain words, or sentences without having to look up their English translations.

However, I must admit that my favorite passages were those that mentioned tribal languages and “non-world-languages” about which you rarely learn in school. After finishing this book, I realized that though we are more similar to each other than we would think, we should not discount the millions of ways in which we can perceive the world. It’s not always black and white, or as standard as you would think. For example, many languages don’t have cases, two genders, and nouns. Some languages don’t even have a past, or future tense.

When thinking about these examples through a western lens, it may seem odd, but once we break down cultural and linguistic nuances of certain languages, we often find ourselves questioning how our own mother tongue functions and why it functions the way it does. These are the kinds of puzzles and mind-games that you will be able to solve if you get your hands on this book. I promise that you won’t be disappointed.

Until next time! // Hasta la próxima! // Jusqu'à la prochaine fois! // Bis zum nächsten Mal! // Alla prossima volta! // до следующего раза! // Até à próxima!

Love,

Laura

Celebrating 3 Years of Switching Languages

On January 16th, 2016, I made the bold move to create a language blog called Switching Languages. Though I had been contemplating about whether or not I would go through with this idea, I convinced myself that it was something that I wanted to do. It has now been 3 years since then and I have no regrets. In fact, I am beyond blessed by all of the love and support that I have received over the years to keep up with this blog. I truly believe that blogging is an art-form that can unite us despite any differences we have. 

The main purpose of this post is to say THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart. Those of you who have been reading this post have stuck with me, even when I doubted myself, or lost inspiration to write more for you. Though I was not very active on this blog from 2017-2018, I have taken time to reflect about my purpose and what makes me happiest in life over our long Winter Break. I knew that something was missing in my heart, so after some reflecting, I realized that it was this very blog that could fill the void in my heart.

As you can see, I am back healthier, stronger, and happier than ever before. Of course, this does not mean that my health is at its very best, but I do know that this year will be my year, as it can and will be yours, too. I have so much exciting content ready for you in the upcoming months, but I am also always willing to take suggestions from you: anything from a language question that has been on your mind for a while to a blog post idea that you would like to see from me this year.

As a preview, this year, I will be writing language book reviews, documentary and film reviews, app and podcast reviews, and will be sharing some of my personal experiences about the benefits of majoring and minoring in languages in college, of the beauty of having a bicultural identity, and about why I love to travel around the world. These are just some of the many ideas that I have ready in store, so make sure to stay tune for them!

I will also be traveling extensively this year. In March, I will be going on my graduation trip to Copenhagen, Denmark and Malmö, Sweden. I will also be studying abroad in Moscow, Russia for 5 weeks during the summer, which means that I will be sharing some of the highlights of my experience with Russian and Russian culture after taking Russian for 4 years in college. Aside from that, I will also be auditing a Portuguese 200-level course during the Spring 2019 semester, because, as you already know, I could not resist working on my 7th language.

Again, thank you for all of your kind messages and for all of the conversations that we have had about the impact that this blog has had on you. I hope that you have gained some knowledge about languages along the way and that you have gotten some inspiration to make languages an integral part of your life. If that has not been the case up until now, then, no worries, 2019 will be filled with many surprises!

I am hoping to post every Saturday, so that I post more regularly this year. This semester seems to be looking up for me compared to last semester, so I should have plenty of time to share my passion for languages with all of you. Stay tuned for a language book review this coming Saturday! I am looking forward to growing our Switching Languages community and to seeing what 2019 has in store.

Thank you very much for everything! // Muchas gracias por todo! // Merci beaucoup pour tout! // Vielen Dank für alles! // Grazie mille di tutto! // Большое спасибо за всё! // Muito obrigado por tudo!!

Nos vemos pronto,

Laura

Switching Languages- What Does it Mean to Switch Languages?

Hello, everyone and welcome to my blog! I have to admit that it has been too many months since I last posted on here, but I promise that I will be posting more regularly in the upcoming year. I wanted to get back on track by posting about what started this blog in the first place: the concept of switching languages.

Why did I decide to name this blog Switching Languages and what does switching languages even mean? Three years ago, I sat on our living room couch and had a conversation with both of my parents. I remember telling them that I had the idea of creating a blog about the relevance and importance of spreading my love for language learning, but had no idea what I wanted to call my blog. After some reflecting, my dad suggested to call it Switching Languages, because he knew that I had to switch from one language to another on a daily-basis without even thinking twice.

For me personally, switching languages is the ability to speak multiple languages without confusing them, or hesitating when speaking more than one language. You know that you can successfully do so when you hear your parents ask: “Niñas, están listas?” and then immediately talk to your friend and say: “My parents are asking me if we’re ready to leave.” I think of it like a puzzle, or a game. For bilingual or multilingual individuals, this ability is innate. We don’t have to stop and think about every single word we’re going to say before saying it. We simply formulate our thoughts in our head and then say them. It’s really that simple.

A lot of people ask me: “How do you not get confused when speaking 7 different languages?” and “Don’t they get mixed up in your head?” Just like any other human being, I’m not perfect, so there are times in which I forget how to say a word that is rather simple in x language that I have known for years, but, aside from those instances, the answer to both of those questions is no. All of the years of training and changing personas has led me to where I am today.

In other words, languages are not just subjects that I choose to take at university and they are also not just a hobby that I choose to do whenever I have a little bit of free time. They are much more than that. In fact, they have been incorporated into my daily routine for years. The friendships I have made and the people I have met live anywhere from Pennsylvania to Japan, so it is not unusual for me to send messages to my friends in their native languages to ask them how they are doing.

Similarly, all of the notifications that pop up on my feed on my social media are about dozens of countries in more languages than I can recognize, or speak. My family is bilingual, so calling them automatically ensures that I will have spoken, or written in at least 2 languages on that given day. Furthermore, I listen to music and watch videos and movies from around the world. Now that is what I call the power and beauty of switching languages.

If you liked this post and want to keep up with my travel and languages adventures domestically and abroad, feel free to subscribe to my blog by hitting the “subscribe” button on the upper right-hand corner of this blog. I’m looking forward to the third year since the launch of Switching Languages. Espero que tengan un buen fin de semana!