Saving the last word
The United Nations has declared 2019 the International Year of Indigenous Languages. We embark on a trip across Italy, France and Spain to meet people who still proudly speak their own hyper-local lingo
The haze-cloaked slopes of the Aosta Valley seem suspended in eternal peace, unmoved even by the loud tolling that echoes up from the belly of the alpine rift. It resonates out of the ancient bell tower in the Italian village of Issime and scatters a few sleepy pigeons from their roost, expelling them in a burst of feathers and dust into the crisp morning air.
Imelda Ronco looks on with an amused expression from the bench in front of the shop she runs with her two daughters. She had been contentedly sunning herself after a cup of coffee, but now sits up straight-backed to welcome a customer, who comes crunching across the fine gravel that carpets the village’s modest square.
Similar scenes are no doubt happening all over Italy and there’s nothing remarkable about this one – that is, until Imelda opens her mouth.Rather than addressing the newcomer in the Italian of millions of her countrymen and women, she uses Toïtschu – an ancient dialect now spoken by fewer than 200 people.
Toïtschu is recognised as being severely endangered and recorded as such in the UNESCO Atlas Of The World’s Languages In Danger, published in print between 2009 and 2017, and online thereafter. Its aim is to raise awareness among policy-makers, speaker communities and the general public of the urgent need to safeguard global linguistic diversity.
Endangered languages are in the spotlight once again in 2019. To draw the world’s attention to the critical risks confronting certain native tongues, the United Nations General Assembly has declared this the International Year of Indigenous Languages. Although the UN’s focus is mainly on developing countries, it shouldn’t be forgotten that there are a number of fragile languages and dialects much closer to home.
‘Toïtschu was the first language I ever learnt,’ explains 85-year-old Imelda. ‘It was all my parents spoke at home and I only started learning Italian when I was sent to school. My husband and I continued to speak it in our home and taught it to our family as they were growing up. Toïtschu is still what comes most naturally to me.’
Imelda’s language is a branch of Walser German, which is the name for the group of dialects that were once spoken across the Alps. It was brought over the mountains from the north by an ancient people who arrived in this valley in the 11th and 12th centuries, in a time before Italy, Germany and France were even nations.
Today, Walser German is heard in just three small neighbouring villages in Italy, and Toïtschu in only one, Issime. For centuries, that hamlet was so isolated that even in one of the other two Walser villages, Gressoney-Saint-Jean, locals can’t fully understand it.
‘It sounds funny, but we can’t communicate with each other, even though we’re only 10 miles down the road,’ explains Imelda. ‘We share a few similar words, but there are many differences, too. This became clear when we tried to create a dictionary of our languages back in the late 1990s.’
One of the biggest challenges in conserving Toïtschu is that it’s an oral language. In order to combat its decline, its speakers decided to ‘invent’ a written form to record it, and to save for posterity poems, songs and sayings such as this:
Wen di tromisch misch, so entrich mich. Wen di barbenish mish, so boisch mich. Wen di antwortsich mich, so herch mich.
If you cut me, you graft me. If you burn me, you fatten me. But if you uproot me, I am defeated.
‘I think this little poem really sums up our entire language,’ adds Imelda. ‘Toïtschu has only survived this long because of the relative isolation of the village and its inhabitants. All the youngsters now want to leave to live in the city. I’m afraid that when the older folk die, so will our language.’
Around 400km away, in the cheesemaking region of Cantal, in France, 86-year-old Adrien Lours echoes this opinion, while also roundly condemning the destruction of the traditional way of life. This retired farmer explains what he means as he walks the grassy pastures and rutted tracks in leather clogs near his village of Lavigerie.
‘Patois used to be spoken in every home round here when I was young,’ he says. ‘But, nowadays, this once-prosperous countryside has become a desert. It’s a catastrophe. There used to be 600 people working on 45 different farms in this village alone – now there are only five working farms and fewer than 100 people. How can a language survive if there’s no-one left to speak it?’
What Adrien calls patois is, in fact, Auvergnat, and it, too, is listed by UNESCO as a severely endangered language. It had been at the heart of this rural community and had permeated the culture of the people living here, including many songs that celebrated the lives of those who worked the land. In his deep and rolling accent, Adrien sings one:
Su davalar les garçoux de la montanha, su davalr en la plana d’Argentao. Ragretaou pas la pais de la yanson, ragretraou une amie en se la you.
They came down, the guys from the mountain, they came down to the plain of Argentat. They don’t regret the landscape of the mountain but they would miss their girlfriend if they had any.
Farm workers used to sing such ditties while performing their tasks, but not any more. Adrien blames the mechanisation of farming. He says machines make the work noisy and solitary. You no longer need a team – one man and a tractor can do it all.
‘Back in the old days, people didn’t leave, because there was work,’ he remembers. ‘You either got married in your village or the one next door. I feel sorry for the single farmers in the countryside now – there aren’t any girls left. It’s a shame that it’s all changed. It’s sad to be losing our language, but even sadder to be losing our way of life.’
Auvergnat is one of five big branches of Occitan, which used to be spoken in one form or another by half of France. Another is Languedocien. It split the country in half from west to east, with those in the southern part speaking Occitan and the other the Oïl language that would become modern French. ‘Occitan is a Romance language that comes from Latin and developed in the south of what is now France,’ explains Yan Lespoux, Director of the Occitan department at Paul-Valéry University in Montpellier.
‘The first written examples date back to the 10th century and, back then, it was the same language as Catalan. In the 11 to 13th centuries came its golden age, when troubadours, who were itinerant poets, shared their stories in Occitan across the whole of Europe.’ The most famous of these was Guillaume de Aquitaine, who boasted:
Qu’ieu ai nom ‘maiestre certa’: ja m’amigu’ anueg no m’aura que no•m vuelh’ aver l’endema.
The master craftsman is my name: a girl who’s spent the night my way is sure to want me the next day.
We meet Yan in a sun-drenched classroom during an open day at his university, where he extols the virtues of the old language. The room is packed with fresh-faced students who are considering furthering their Occitan studies – an encouraging sign for the future of the tongue.
‘Unfortunately, we can’t promise that learning Occitan will deliver the same results to students as it did for Guillaume d’Aquitaine,’ says Yan with a grin. ‘However, there’s a lot you can do with a degree in the subject. It isn’t as popular as it once was, but there’s still quite a demand from a number of bilingual schools and colleges for it to be taught at university.’
Indeed, from 1951 onwards, students in France have been able to study regional languages from primary through to doctorate level. This resulted in an explosion in their popularity in the 1970s, fuelled by nationalist movements. New Occitan art and literature blossomed, as did a big folk-music scene that is still just as vibrant today.
Another region that has maintained a strong sense of independence and a thriving culture through its language is the Basque country. As dusk creeps in, we join Eider Saez, Alex Irazusta and Jokin Guilisagasti Mendivil for a few beers on the bustling quay of the Spanish port of San Sebastián. The three friends are part of a successful folk-pop band called Nøgen. They sing mainly in Basque and play sold-out gigs at venues across northern Spain. ‘It’s as natural for us to sing in Basque as it is for you to write in English,’ says Jokin, their drummer. ‘It’s the language we use at work and to speak to our friends, and it's the one we dream in, so it’s pretty normal to us to sing in it, too.’
That said, the band don’t cut themselves off from other tongues, and use both English and Spanish in their lyrics. The name Nøgen is the Danish word for naked – it was chosen both to represent the main themes of their music and their very modern view of language. All the members feel a close link with Europe and the wider world, and take inspiration from international bands such as Mumford & Sons, The Lumineers and Of Monsters and Men.
‘We use our language as a creative resource,’ explains lead singer Eider. ‘Whatever we’re feeling ends up in our music. In general, we tend to write songs about our deepest emotions, but also travelling, the weather and a whole lot of other things that affect our daily lives. Then we sing about them in the most genuine way we can.’
Ahaztu nituen egunen antzera igaro den zerbait garela, egiazko zerbait. Betikaro den kanturen bat, kanturen bat edo beste.
Like the days we’ve forgotten, we are only something from the past. I need something real like a song that could last forever.
The Basque music scene has long been dominated by protest music. Popular bands traditionally used the medium to further their political causes and denounce the Spanish state. In singing about emotions, Nøgen are breaking the mould. The band isn’t officially politically affiliated, but each of them supports the idea of an independent Basque country.
‘We’re locked into a fight between two cultures,’ says Eider. ‘Simply speaking, our native language has become a political statement.’
Whether or not you choose to peg it to politics, it’s undeniable that we’re currently facing a global cultural crisis. According to the aforementioned UNESCO Atlas, 230 languages became extinct between 1950 and 2010. Today, a third of the world’s dialects have fewer than 1,000 speakers left and, every fortnight, another dies along with its last speaker. The world’s largest institutions are beginning to wake up to the impact this will have. While, for languages with the fewest speakers, it might be difficult to generate support at a global level, new technologies could offer novel solutions.
Wikitongues and the National Geographic Society’s Enduring Voices are two projects that offer the means to digitally record and archive minority languages, offering a new way for interested parties to access those that would otherwise become extinct. Meanwhile, the president of Ireland publicly thanked Duolingo for helping save the Irish language – though there are only 100,000 native speakers, more than three million people are now using the app to learn it.
On a personal level, online platforms such as these also offer each of us the chance to make a difference, now that learning a few words in any language has become increasingly easy. So, before heading off on your next trip, perhaps check if there’s an indigenous dialect spoken where you’re going and try memorising a few words. After all, it’s pretty boring to start every conversation with ‘Do you speak English?’
