LASTOFTHESUAY.htm

 

Return to the essay table of contents  

Return to the Home Page

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.

 

 

Return to the essay table of contents

Return to the Home Page

Contact Ira Rosenstein