The Languages Lost To Climate Change
February 26, 2025 at 01:50AMSadly, nowhere in the English language is there a word that describes “a female reindeer that has lost its calf of the same year but is accompanied by the previous year’s calf. For the “Sámi, Europe’s only recognized Indigenous group,” it’s čearpmat-eadni. Imagine a world where English could be so beautiful, evocative, and precise. Julia Webster Ayuso’s piece for Noēma is a fascinating blend of science and story that examines the deep links between language, the environment, and the richness with which we experience the world.
Languages are repositories of wisdom passed down through generations, and often that wisdom is ecological. In western Canada and the United States, phrases in Indigenous languages indicate when wild plants should be harvested. Indigenous Australians define seasons based on signals like the flowering native trees, which in turn inform their fire management techniques to control wildfires. Traditional Sámi calendars have 13 months based on plants and animal activity of a particular time of year, such as miessemánnu (reindeer calf month) and borgemánnu (reindeer-coat-shifting month). But it’s perhaps the Lakota phrase “Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ,” meaning both “all my relatives” (human and non-human) and “all is related,” that best encapsulates the interconnectedness of humans and nature.
Many endangered languages express reverence and respect for nature and an awareness of the balance that must be maintained. “For communities that have an intimate connection with the local environment, the land is the teacher. You have to learn the lessons of the land to survive and thrive, and all of that, of course, gets encoded in your value system, which is expressed through language,” Maffi told me. “Nowhere are you going to find a philosophy that says, ‘take as much as you want and damn the future.’”
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/02/25/the-languages-lost-to-climate-change/
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