Taking Down Tongues: The Culture of Language Documentation (Watson Report 1)
As I embarked on this journey, I began to reflect on the way that language constructed my own story. Many of the main points, I mentioned in my proposal to the Watson, but a series of events would happen within the first few weeks and certainly within these first few months that I have spent abroad.
As I sat in the airport in Colombo, I could feel the excitement building as I heard the retroflexes and other twists of the tongue that let me know, after years of dreaming, I’d finally arrived in South Asia. The land of hundreds of languages, the land of Sanskrit, the land of Panini’s monumental grammar and phonology which would provide the forerunner to modern linguistic analysis. I’d finally arrived on the sub-continent with the world’s longest linguistic tradition and now it was only a few hours before arriving in that beloved Bangladesh.
When I arrived, I reached out to contacts that I’d prepared beforehand. I was immediately overwhelmed by the situation as it all appeared a bit chaotic to me. I had arranged to be picked up by a driver (an old friend’s extended family had one); however because my flight from Sri Lanka was really late, there was no one there to receive me. Most of the people that I made arrangements with live in the US and it was 2AM there. I only had the information for one contact there in Bangladesh. We had exchanged just a few lines over Facebook before having arrived, so I had no idea really who he was. He was a friend of a friend who runs an NGO in Bangladesh and we’d only exchanged enough information to have an address with which to provide immigration. His name was Sohan Rahman and over the next few months he would go from being a total stranger to a good friend.
I reach the counter presenting my documents and was almost turned down entry. Although I had gotten my visa beforehand and all seemed in order, I had forgotten my prospective Bangladeshi address and I did not have my ticket to return, specifically, back to the US. The immigration officer was on the brink of sending me away, when she decided to approach her superior, and with a ticket exiting Bangladesh, the general area where I’d be living, and the visa (which apparently throughout this whole process meant nothing), they allowed me to pass. I entered, grabbed my things, and exited the airport.
There was an immense crowd of flight passengers, cab drivers, and also people just standing around looking at the incoming masses. I was immediately overwhelmed. I looked around in hopes that the driver stuck around and when I saw he didn’t, I booked a hotel room at one of the offices in the airport and their shuttle brought me over to the hotel.
I dropped my stuff off in the room and decided to go for a little walk, just to “break the ice”, sort of “getting my feet wet” in the culture sort of speak and to just explore. I absolutely love walking around cities (rather than motor transportation) at times because it gives you the opportunity to get to attach characteristics to certain areas and is really important for integrating into that society. I left the hotel and immediately realized that Dhaka is NOT a walking city. I tried to wander around a bit, but the hotel opened on to the highway so there wasn’t much use. I stayed out a bit just to get over the anxiety or shock that can potentially occur while being abroad. When I felt ok, I returned to the hotel. I contacted Sohan, arranged to meet him the next day, and got some rest.
I was able to reach out to my old high school friend and he put me in touch (finally!) with his extended family who put me up in an extra apartment they had in city. I also began getting to know Sohan and he was key to travelling around the country and getting to see Bangladesh outside of Dhaka.
Despite living alone, I didn’t feel overwhelmingly lonely. I was often invited to my friend’s family’s homes especially for holiday’s, Sohan’s home, and then also people I’d randomly met while working around Dhaka. One family owned a restaurant that I went into one day to grab a quick bite and by the end of my meal, we were Facebook friends and I was invited to their home (sometimes they even wanted me to spend a night!). Bangladesh was super receptive to me.
As for my work, I found out within the first few weeks that there were no current documentation projects underway. I interviewed professors at the University of Dhaka and found that the infrastructure for such work was being created, but that there weren’t any present projects.
Bangladesh has begun by the construction of the International Mother Tongue Institute—a museum that celebrates and provides information to the public about the world’s languages—and the formation of the Bangla Academy which oversees the literary and linguistic development of Bengali or, as it is regionally called, Bangla. Through interviews, I found out more about Bangladesh’s preparations for language documentation, but seeing the dearth of direct work, I switched gears and decided to focus on language conservation and its impact on people’s lives in another way. I decided to investigate the history of Bangladesh’s Language Movement. The Language Movement that occurred between 1947-1956 was the source of Bangladesh’s sense of nationalism and would later lead to the ideologies that underpin language relations and work in the country.
Raja Rammohun Roy, considered one of the most important Bengalis in history, among other great things, he was also the first to write a grammar for the Bangla language, accessible to an English-speaking audience.
After the British left the Indian sub-continent, two states where formed along religious lines, India which would be the Hindu state and Pakistan which would be the Muslim one. Pakistan then had a west wing which is the Pakistan of today and an east wing with is present-day Bangladesh. At the formation of the state, top officials wanted to make Urdu the state language. Many in the Bengal wing protested as they were the country’s ethnic majority at 55% and most of their population did not know Urdu. All of the tension caused an explosion on the 21st of February 1952 where people died for the right to speak their mother tongue. From this event, there are monuments in every city that commemorate the martyrs or Shaheed as they are called. In 1999 the United Nations (UNESCO) made February 21, the International Mother Language Day.
I stayed in Bangladesh for a while visiting sites, Language Movement memorials, reading books on it, and interviewing people about it. I even had the opportunity to interview two men who were part of the Language Movement.
After three months (due to visa problems with my next country), I felt that I’d gotten enough of what I needed from Bangladesh. I booked a flight out for Bangladesh through Southeast Asia while I await entry into my next project area of Indonesia.
Because I’m planning to visit a restricted area of the country—West Papua, the western half of New Guinea—getting the permission to go has been tough. My contacts there are working it out. If they haven’t completed it in the next few days when I’m due to land in Jakarta, I’ll try to encourage the immigration process by visiting their offices in person (probably the best way to do it anyway). If I still must wait, I’m currently setting up language work in Kalimantan (the Borneo region of Indonesia) which will keep me busy until my West Papuan permits are provided.
These past few months have been filled with surprises and I’ve learned how to deal with the vicissitudes of field research while also exploring in further depth the life impact of the scholarly area of study that I love. I can’t wait to see what the next three months have in store.