This episode is from my podcast when it was called And Still the Waters Rise. The conversation is with guests, and language perpetuators (aka professors) Kaliko Baker, PhD (from Hawai'i) and Rangi Matamua, PhD (from Aotearoa) about how one's native language is the foundation of culture as well as personal and communal identity. We discuss how a long-term investment in master-level language initiatives can have many spillover effects, including significant economic impacts and a strengthened national identity even for non-native speakers. This is a timely topic as lanaguage loss is at an all-time high globally. An excerpt from a recent Smithsonian SmartNews article by Kat Eschner underscored this succinctly--"The grimmest predictions have 90 percent of the world's languages dying out by the end of this century. Although this might not seem important in the day-to-day life of an English speaker with no personal ties to the culture in which they're spoken, language loss matters. Here's what we all lose: 1. We lose the expression of a unique vision of what it means to be human; 2. We lose our memory of the planet's many histories and cultures; 3. We lose some of the best local resources for combatting environmental threats; and 4. Some people lose their mother tongue.
Conversations hosted by Naiʻa Lewis
