Trip of the Tongue (36 page)

It took two years of travel for me to begin to understand this on an intellectual level. But there was one more trip I had to take before I could understand it on an emotional one.

In 2010, my husband and I did the unthinkable: we moved to Los Angeles.

Los Angeles and New York are the Beatrice and Benedick of American cities. They need the tension between them to conjure charm out of what would otherwise be a smug sort of bitchiness. Each claims to want to have nothing to do with the other, but secretly that's not true. They give each other their best material, after all. But woe betide the New Yorker who defects to L.A. or the Angeleno who leaves for New York. According to our friends in New York, we were abandoning all that is good for all that is bad, leaving culture for commerce, substance for superficiality, the vagaries of the MTA for the frustrations of the 405. We might as well have been moving to Mars.

Here's the thing, though. L.A. is not so different from Queens. It's wildly multicultural. It has great food. It's not what I would call pretty. The subway lines are few and far between, and although there are parking lots, the spaces are always smaller than you'd like. L.A. is not particularly skilled at snow removal or professional baseball.

And, much to my delight, the languages of Los Angeles, like the languages of Queens, are incredibly compelling. A majority of Angelenos speak languages other than English, and even though L.A. doesn't have anything like the pedestrian culture of New York, you can never go long here without seeing evidence of another language. I'm getting used to seeing Korean signage wherever I go. I'm learning to distinguish between sounds I never heard in New York, languages such as Armenian and Persian and Amharic. I'm picking up Spanish translations of English marketing copy.

I am also, for the first time, watching someone else learn English. Because just three months before I moved across the country, I gave birth to a baby boy.

Part of me always assumed that if I ever had children I would raise them bilingually. This assumption was not based on any ideas about academic achievement or how a second language would look on a college application. It was much more selfish than that. Part of the great promise of being a parent is the prospect of introducing your children to all the things in the world you love and having the chance, through them, to fall in love all over again. So, yes, I hope that my son finds joy in the things I do. I hope that he likes books and baseball and Mel Brooks. It's OK if he doesn't, but I won't pretend I'm not trying to nudge him along. And this is why, during my pregnancy, I began to plan out a Spanish-language curriculum. My Spanish is good enough for the basics, and I was happy to have a reason to study up and get my
patos
in a
fila
.

But then the strangest thing happened. When my son was born, I discovered I didn't want to speak to him in Spanish. I didn't want to speak to him in Chinese, French, Italian, or any language I'd ever studied. I just wanted to speak to him in my language.

I'd never thought of English as mine before. The fact that I spoke English was just a quirk of genetics and geography, no more or less interesting to me than the fact that I have brown hair. Like I've said, for most of my life I thought English was total dullsville. It's one of the reasons I was so drawn to every language but English. But, as with all new parents, those first few weeks were a blur not just of diapers and blankets and impossibly tiny nail trimmers but also of profound reappraisal.

I had underestimated the fierce intimacy of the murmurings between a mother and her child. I'm giving him my language, a language that isn't just Standard English or even Midland American English. Every word I use is a by-product of the sum total of my experience. It's St. Louis and Boston and New York and a little bit of Canada. It's the weird way I say
Tuesday
and the trouble I have pronouncing
bagel
. It's the words I learned from reading cold war suspense novels and watching
Young Frankenstein
. The idea of not being able to share these words with him absolutely breaks my heart.

I now understand in a visceral way what it means to have a family—and the incalculable, helpless fear that comes with it. I want nothing more than to make sure my son has as many opportunities as possible, and as a result, I'm achingly, incessantly aware that there are things about the world that I cannot fix or control. I know, too, that I would sacrifice anything for him. If I needed to make sure he grew up with a language other than my own, I would do it in a second, no matter how painful a personal loss that might be.

Fortunately—oh so fortunately, I know now—I don't have to. I may have spent most of my life trying to deny the realities of my own privilege, linguistic and otherwise. My son makes me realize how incredibly lucky I am to have it.

So, I have a new plan now.

Instead of teaching my son another language, I will teach him about language. I will tell him about evidentials and ergatives, code-switching and switch-reference; I will discuss the difference between creoles and pidgins, between prestige and value. I will be honest and upfront about all the ways that I have misjudged the languages of others. I will see if I can't convince someone to mock up an illustrated board-book version of
Language Log
.

And I hope that someday in the future we will take a drive together, traveling once more through the sounds and stories of American language.

Acknowledgments

It is a great privilege simply to be given the chance to publish a book, but I have been particularly blessed with the opportunity to work with an incredible group of editors at Bloomsbury all the way from acquisition to production. Colin Dickerman saw in a far-reaching and mildly hyperactive proposal the potential for something special. Benjamin Adams, my long-suffering and infinitely patient editor, kept me going through dozens of drafts and twice as many nervous breakdowns. Without the benefit of his editorial acumen, this would be less a book than a chaotic jumble of meaningless paper. Thank you, Ben, for sticking with me.

I am also indebted to my copy editor, the talented and meticulous Sue Warga, and my managing editor, the magnificently helpful Mike O'Connor.

Any mistakes in the text are, of course, entirely my own.

Many thanks as well to everyone who took the time to talk to me during my travels, particularly Tim McCleary at Little Bighorn College; Crystal Thompson at the Makah Language Center; Alphonso Brown, Al Miller, and Seretha Tuttle in South Carolina; and David Brown, David Barry Daniels, Barbara Eisenhower, and Jan Mapou in Miami.

My apologies, however, to Robyn Hughes of the Jewish Museum of Baltimore. She was the best docent I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. And I'm sorry I didn't end up including Baltimore in the text. This is no reflection on my time there, merely on my ability to do the city justice. (Not that it needs me so long as David Simon is around.)

I could not have survived my travels without Vania and Nate Kent Harber, Damian Wisniewski, and Jon Beckman and Naomi Straus. After spending six consecutive weeks schlepping from hotel room to hotel room, there is no greater comfort than the company and hospitality of friends. All that wine didn't hurt, either.

I also had considerable support networks in New York, Los Angeles, and everywhere in between. My parents continue to encourage and inspire me in every way they can. Ellen Amato, Scott Korb, Annie Ronan, David Lapidus, George Hamilton, Lewis McVey, Deborah Shapiro, John Herndon, and many others listened patiently to my prattling and more often than not asked insightful questions that helped lead me to new and unexpected conclusions. And I cannot imagine the past three years without the sound advice, wicked humor, and very dear friendship of Sara Burningham.

Kate Garrick, meanwhile, is necessarily underrepresented in these pages, as it's impossible to account for all the ways in which my life and work are richer for having met her.

But it's Dylan Kidd—my partner, my conspirator—who makes this whole thing worth doing. In case it isn't clear by now, I'm sorry I made fun of you for living in Queens.

Notes

Introduction: New York City

2  At the time of the 2000 Census: U.S. Census Bureau, “QT-P16 Language Spoken at Home,” generated by American FactFinder for ZIP code 11104.

3  a population of almost 2.3 million: U.S. Census Bureau, “DP-1 Profile of General Population and Housing Characteristics: 2010,” generated by American FactFinder for Queens County.

3  In 1927:
Queens Immigrant Guide: Common Threads
, “Through Their Eyes: Greeks.”

3  by the mid-1990s: Jackson,
Encyclopedia of New York City
, s.v. “Astoria.”

3  at least ten mosques: Bilefsky, “Converging on Little Egypt.”

3  several thousand Arabic-speakers: U.S. Census Bureau, “QT-P16 Language Spoken at Home,” generated by American FactFinder for ZIP codes 11102, 11103, 11105, and 11106.

3  The Bohemian Citizens' Benevolent Society: Bohemian Beer Garden, “History.”

4  more Argentineans than anywhere else in the city: Jackson,
The Encyclopedia of New York City
, s.v. “Jackson Heights.”

4  Queensboro Realty: Ibid.

4  50 percent of the borough's Chinese population:
Queens Immigrant Guide: Common Threads
, “Through Their Eyes: Chinese.”

4  The Flushing community library: Queens Library, “Community and Library History.”

4  According to library statistics: Ibid.

6  This treatment was soon the therapy of choice: Munger, “Guaiacum,” 209.

6  a word borrowed from the Taíno language: Bailey, “American English,” 4.

7  the widely accepted translation is “hilly island”: See, for instance, Shorto,
The Island at the Center of the World
, 42, or Burrows and Wallace,
Gotham
, 15.

8  “The Lenape gave a Pennsylvania missionary”: Burrows and Wallace,
Gotham
, 15.

8  “Facts are all I aim at”: Review of
Collections of the New York Historical Society
, 311.

8  In 1886 a coffee broker named James Potter: Flusser,
Dressing the Man
, 92.

8  The word
tuxedo
itself, meanwhile: Bright,
Native American Placenames
, s.v. “Tuxedo.”

9  It wasn't until Henry Hudson: Burrows and Wallace,
Gotham
, 14.

9  Dutch remained the official school language: Dillard,
A History of American English
, 29.

9  “English is the most prevailing Language”: Smith,
History of New-York
, 323.

9  
Stoop
, for instance: Dillard,
A History of American English
, 26.

9  Dutch words used outside the five boroughs: Marckwardt,
American English
, 48.

10  “The most credible [etymology]”: Ibid., 49.

10  New Netherland was home to: Dillard,
A History of American English
, 22.

10  In 1748, Manhattan boasted: Kalm,
Travels in North America
, 1:132–33.

10  Between 1815 and 1915: Jackson,
The Encyclopedia of New York
, s.v. “Immigration.”

10  Today the city is home: New York Community Media Alliance, “Members.”

10  More than 150 languages: Roberts, “Listening to (and Saving) the World's Languages.”

Chapter One: Montana

21  The first treaty the Crow signed: This and general details about diplomatic relations between the Crow and the U.S. government from Medicine Crow,
From the Heart of the Crow Country
, 3–4.

22  there still exists some discord between the groups: Perrottet, “Little Bighorn Reborn.”

22n    Fewer than 4 percent: Rhodes and Pufahl,
Foreign Language Teaching in U.S. Schools
, 3.

22  Interestingly, Harvard might not still exist: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, “The Harvard Indian College.”

23  reputable sources have suggested: For a general overview of estimates on the numbers of pre-contact languages in North America, see Yamamoto and Zepeda, “Native American Languages,” 174. Estimates on the low end of the spectrum hover around 300–400 (see Mithun,
The Languages of Native North America
, 1, and Krauss, “The Condition of Native North American Languages,” 9). On the other end is Silver and Miller's estimate. They list more than 550 Native languages, about 250 of which are or were spoken in what is now Canada and the United States. They warn, however, that because of language extinction and dialect confusion even this relatively generous estimate probably falls short: “The number of distinct languages at the time of European contact clearly must have been much greater, with the total for North America probably closer to 750.” Silver and Miller,
American Indian Languages
, 7:359–65.

23  Michael Krauss of the Linguistic Society of America: Krauss, “The Condition of Native North American Languages,” 12.

24  “covers the widest territory”: Mithun,
The Languages of Native North America
, 328.

24  which encompasses more languages and more modern-day speakers: Ibid., 347.

25  while SIL International's Ethnologue: Lewis, ed.,
Ethnologue
, 16th ed., “Languages of Papua New Guinea.”

25  In a 1946 article: Sapir and Swadesh, “American Indian Grammatical Categories,” 136.

26  a “beast in bignes[s] of a pig”: Harrington, “The Original Strachey Vocabulary,” sheet 2.

26  “An Opassom hath a head”: Smith,
The Generall Historie of Virginia
, 2:27.

26  
Squaw
,
papoose
, and
wigwam
:
Oxford English Dictionary
, 2nd ed., s.v.v. “squaw,” “wigwam,” and “tipi”; 3rd ed., s.v. “papoose.”

27  an Algonquin word meaning “marshy meadow”: Tooker,
The Indian Place-names
, 196–97, quoted in Read, “The Rationale of ‘Podunk,' ” 103. Tooker notes that
podunk
is likely derived from
pot-
, “to sink,” and the locative -
unk
—i.e., “sinking place” or “marsh.”

27  Maine place names such as
Ogunquit
: Bond,
Native Names of New England Towns and Villages
, 8.

27  
Swampscott
: Ibid., 54.

27  
Cohasset
: Ibid., 41.

27  The notorious
Chappaquiddick
: Ibid., 39.

27  
Alaska
, for instance: Bright,
Native American Placenames
, s.v. “Alaska.”

27  
Texas
: Ibid., s.v. “Texas.”

27  The name
Oklahoma
:
Oxford English Dictionary
, 3rd ed., s.v. “Oklahoma.”

28  In the Munsee language: Bright,
Native American Placenames
, s.v. “Wyoming.”

28  There is some debate: Metcalf, “How ‘OK' Took Over the World.”

28  In
Made in America
: Bryson,
Made in America
, 24.

29  Their ancestors migrated to the plains: This and other basic details of Crow history from Medicine Crow,
From the Heart of the Crow Country
, and Frey,
The World of the Crow Indians.

29  scholars such as the linguist G. Hubert Matthews: Matthews, “Glottochronology and the Separation of the Crow and Hidatsa,” 113–25. Quoted in Frey,
The World of the Crow Indians
, 11.

30  Consider
baawaashbaaléewiawaassaak
: Graczyk, “Crow,” 269.

30  Switch reference was first observed: Mithun,
The Languages of Native North America
, 269.

31  In Crow, however: Graczyk,
A Grammar of Crow
, 404.

31  In Crow this is accomplished: Ibid., 328.

31  a survey showed: Dracon,
The Extent of Spoken Crow and Cheyenne
, referenced in Watts, “Crow Language Teachers' Views,” 3–4.

31  Only 25 percent of children ages three to nineteen: Watts, “Crow Language Teachers' Views,” 3. These survey results are from Watts's personal communication with Sharon Stewart-Peregoy, November 21, 1997.

33  The exit off I-90 for Crow Agency: Bohrer, “Tribal Words Highlight Exit Signs.”

34  Most of the bodies: This and other details about the administration of the battlefield and its monuments are from Perrottet, “Little Bighorn Reborn.”

Chapter Two: Arizona

36  more than 150,000 speakers: U.S. Census Bureau, 2005 American Community Survey, generated by the MLA Language Map Data Center, www.mla.org/map_data.

38  To give you a better idea: My own understanding of Young and Morgan's system was largely facilitated by Joyce Mary McDonough's indispensable paper, “How to Use Young and Morgan's
The Navajo Language.
”

38  here's a standard Navajo verb template: Young and Morgan,
The Navajo Language
, 37–38. Note that this verb template varies slightly from the one outlined by Young in
The Navajo Verb System.
In this template Young also includes the disjunct prefix Ie for the semeliterative.

38  the stem for “cry”: Faltz,
The Navajo Verb
, 440.

38  Some verbs require not just the stem: Faltz,
The Navajo Verb
, 22.

39  There are groups of “solid roundish objects”: Young,
The Navajo Verb System
, 3–17.

40  Danny Hieber, a content editor: Hieber, “Rising to the Challenge.”

40  home to nearly 170,000: U.S. Census Bureau, “DP-1 Profile of General Population and Housing Characteristics: 2010,” generated by American FactFinder for Navajo Nation Reservation and Off-Reservation Trust Land.

40  the tribe's 300,000-plus members: Donovan, “Census: Navajo Enrollment Tops 300,000.”

41  Inhabited for nearly 5,000 years: National Park Service, “Canyon de Chelly National Monument: History and Culture.”

42  It was named in 1882: National Park Service, “Canyon de Chelly National Monument.”

42  By the eighteenth century: Iverson,
Diné
, 22.

42  The first Spanish references: Ibid., 26.

42  The word
Navajo
itself: Ibid., 26; see also Franciscan Fathers,
An Ethnologic Dictionary of the Navajo Language
, 23–25.

43  According to Navajo oral tradition: Iverson,
Diné
, 29.

43  General Edward Canby: Ibid., 47.

43  “The old Indians will die off”: Thompson,
The Army and the Navajo
, 28.

43  Despite being advised: Iverson,
Diné
, 50.

44  “The Navajo Indians have got to be whipped”: James Carleton to J. Francisco Chavez, August 7, 1868, in
Reports of the Committees of the Senate of the United States for the Second Session Thirty-Ninth Congress, 1866–67
, 126.

44  Carson ordered the complete destruction: Brown,
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
, 27.

44  It was this attack: Houk and Andrews,
Navajo of Canyon de Chelly
, 15.

45  “Naturally the Indian has many noble qualities”: Taylor et al., “Report to the President,” 43.

46  “A great general has said”: Pratt, “The Advantages of Mingling Indians with Whites,” 260–71.

46  In 1883, for instance: Montana Office of Public Instruction, “Crow Reservation Timeline.”

46  nineteen Hopi men: Reyhner, “Cultural Survival vs. Forced Assimilation.”

47  Some students suffered more severe punishments: House,
Language Shift Among the Navajos
, 18.

47  “Children were taught”: Kneale,
Indian Agent
, 169.

47  “My grandchild”: It is widely accepted that Manuelito said this to Henry Chee Dodge in the early 1880s. The English translation used here can be found throughout the literature—not to mention throughout Navajo Nation. See, for instance, Moore,
Chiefs, Agents, and Soldiers
, 258–59.

47  Native-language instruction was banned: Lockard, “New Paper Words,” 25.

47  In 1882 Manuelito sent his two sons: Moore,
Chiefs, Agents, and Soldiers
, 259.

48  Although the land for St. Michael's: This and other details about the early days of St. Michael's and its early English-Navajo dictionary are from Lockard, “New Paper Words,” 21.

48  “he might have been more Navajo than Anglo”: Austin-Garrison et al.,
Diné Bizaad Yissohígíí
, 356, quoted in Spolsky, “Prospects for the Survival of the Navajo Language,” 148.

49  At this point there were three kinds of schools: Mizuno, “
Diné bi Olta
,” 143.

49  Rough Rock Demonstration School was the first BIA school: U.S. Department of the Interior, “$52.5 Million Recovery Project Gets Underway”; Mizuno, “
Diné bi Olta
,” 155.

49  where students in grades K–8: Window Rock Unified School District, “About Us.”

52  A 1990 study: Platero, “Navajo Head Start Language Study,” quoted in Spolsky, “Prospects for the Survival of the Navajo Language,” 141.

53  A survey by the Window Rock school district: Zehr, “A Culture Put to the Test.”

53  “the use of the Navajo language”: House,
Language Shift Among the Navajos
, 79.

53  they were anything but immediately effective: Spolsky, “Prospects for the Survival of the Navajo Language,” 143.

53  “Interestingly, absent from the students' counter-narratives”: Lee, “Language, Identity, and Power,” 313.

53  Meanwhile, the high visibility of Navajo-language instruction: This insight—that effective top-down PR can undermine bottom-up proactivity—comes from House,
Language Shift Among the Navajos
, 48. She notes pointedly that “well-crafted, effective discourse can cause us to deny the meaning of what we see or hear.”