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33. THE LAST OF THE SUAY (Dec. 2003)
Anthropologists and linguists tell us that of 211 American Indian languages
still spoken in the U.S. probably every single one is doomed. Only 20 of these
languages are now spoken by young Indians. The overwhelming assault of Western
Civilization and its semi-official world language English on the smaller
cultures of the world is going to be successful. The seductiveness of American
pop culture is irresistible. The mourners gather, rightly so, speak of a loss of
diversity and its richness, many of the same mourners who gather for the dying
of the rain forests and the extinction of the animals.
But here is another take.
I was married to one of these Final Speakers. My Thai wife Nudjarin, though
assimilated and modern in many ways, came from the Suay tribe, the elephant
tamers and riders of Northeast Thailand. I asked her if she thought there was
one other Suay speaker in the United States and she said no. Her people came
down from Laos in the 1600's or 1700's. Their history is small, but rich, as all
histories are. The Suay language is their record. She speaks it to her sisters
on the phone, moving back and forth between it and Thai. She has no desire to
see this language die, any more than my mother wants Yiddish to die. But they
will die in America. In Thailand-- who knows? She loves her culture. But she has
left it to seek a Western dream, or nightmare, or whatever our marriage turned
into. Sometimes a marriage ends because one partner says the other didn't grow.
The world is full of small, sad divorces of peoples from their languages that
didn't grow, never conquered, never discovered the Theory of Relativity, never
invented MTV.
Somewhere that Suay girl
is out there now, speaking English.
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