Many years later in our new home, while unpacking to organize my new office, I pull out a box and read notes from a class I took one summer. They speak of the structure of English versus the structure of Native languages ~ how “the hoops bleed” in the process of translation. I remember the grief of a friend of mine, a member of the certification committee struggling to form what is now the university’s Rural Human Services program. His frustration and grieving came about because, as the committee worked on curriculum trying to put into English those important things of his culture, he realized what was being left out. English only provided snapshots, nothing of what was around it.
How often Peter said the same thing to me. “I can’t say it right in English. It doesn’t mean anything that way! English is no good for what I want to say.”
In one of my times in that village an Athabaskan tells me about the layers of meaning in their language. He tells that while many of the older people speak their language fluently, Peter, he said, is the last one who can speak the high language, the language that speaks to the deepest symbol, the most profound meaning of things. The man telling me speaks his language and can understand much but not all of the meaning when the “high” language is spoken. His sadness came from knowing there was no way for him to learn to speak from the depth of that which he calls the “high”.
No comments:
Post a Comment