Indigenous languages and medicinal knowledge
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New article in Mongabay (the critter in the banner at the top of the page who serves as their logo reminds me of our little friend, the gecko):
"Extinction of Indigenous languages leads to loss of exclusive knowledge about medicinal plants", by Sibélia Zanon on 20 September 2021 | Translated by Maya Johnson
Key points:
- A study at the University of Zurich in Switzerland shows that a large proportion of existing medicinal plant knowledge is linked to threatened Indigenous languages. In a regional study on the Amazon, New Guinea and North America, researchers concluded that 75% of medicinal plant uses are known in only one language.
- The study evaluated 645 plant species in the northwestern Amazon and their medicinal uses, according to the oral tradition of 37 languages. It found that 91% of this knowledge exists in a single language, and that the extinction of that language implies the loss of the medicinal knowledge as well.
- In Brazil, Indigenous schools hold an important role in preserving languages alongside cataloguing and revitalization projects like those held by the Karitiana people in Rondônia and the Pataxó in Bahia and Minas Gerais.
Beginning and selections from the article:
“Every time a language disappears, a speaking voice also disappears, a way to make sense of reality disappears, a way to interact with nature disappears, a way to describe and name animals and plants disappears,” says Jordi Bascompte, researcher in the Department of Evolutional Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of Zurich.
The project Ethnologue concluded that 42% of the world’s more than 7,000 existing languages are endangered. Of the 1,000 Indigenous languages spoken in Brazil prior to the arrival of the Portuguese in 1500, only about 160 are still alive, according to language research non-profit SIL International.
…
Many of today’s mass-market medications are derived from medicinal plants. They range from acetylsalicylic acid—commonly known as aspirin, whose active ingredient is extracted from white willow (Salix alba L.)—to morphine, which is extracted from poppies (Papaver somniferum).
As Indigenous groups traditionally rely on the spoken word for intergenerational knowledge transfer, the disappearance of these languages will take with it a universe of information.
…
The study’s scientists analyzed 3,597 vegetal species with 12,495 medicinal uses and linked this data with 236 Indigenous languages from three biologically and culturally diverse regions—the northwestern Amazon, New Guinea and North America. From this, they concluded that in these regions, 75% of the medicinal uses for medicinal plants are known in only one language.
“We found that those languages with unique knowledge are the ones at a higher risk of extinction,” says Bascompte. “There is a sort of a double-problem in terms of how knowledge will disappear.”
…
[T]he study highlights that the loss of languages will likely have a greater impact on the extinction of medicinal knowledge than the loss of biodiversity. With regard to the maintenance of ecosystem services, cultural heritage is as important as the survival of the plants, as has been previously proven in scientific studies.
…
“There is life outside English,” says Bascompte. “These are languages that we tend to forget—the languages of poor or unknown people who do not play national roles because they are not sitting on panels, or sitting at the United Nations or places like that. I think we have to make an effort to use that declaration by the United Nations to raise awareness about cultural diversity and about how lucky we are as a species to be part of this amazing diversity.”
Can modern anthropological and botanical science and linguistics compensate for what seems to be the inevitable loss of endangered languages?
Selected readings
- "Another early polysyllabic Sinitic word" (9/21/21) — gecko
- "Magical Penis Wine" (9/23/21) — gecko
- "The vocabulary of traditional Chinese thought and culture" (6/13/21)
- "The complexities of a basic word for 'barbarian' in Sinitic and neighboring languages" (6/28/20)
- "Bezoar" (8/2/21)
Chips Mackinolty said,
September 24, 2021 @ 9:30 pm
Interestingly, the use of indigenous languages extends beyond "physical" health, but into areas such as mental health as well (though herbal etc medicines may also play a part). See the work with Ngangkari as the traditional healers of the Ngaanyatjarra, Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara (NPY) lands in the remote western desert of Central Australia. The work of the NPY Women's Council has extended, through traditional language and its interplay with Western psychology, to issues such as domestic violence.
See https://www.npywc.org.au/what-we-do/ngangkari-traditional-healers/
Doreen said,
September 25, 2021 @ 4:56 pm
@Chips Mackinolty: I followed the link in your comment and watched the video based on the book about Tjanima. It's a very moving story, and the illustrations are delightful.
Andrew Usher said,
September 25, 2021 @ 6:36 pm
This knowledge would seem to be a matter of culture, not language; though they often go hand in hand, it could be transmitted just as well (for whatever it's worth) in some other language adopted by those people.
It is inevitable, whatever you think of it, that most languages will go extinct (perhaps, eventually, all but one) no matter how much money is wasted on the 'problem'. If this folk medicine is worth saving, it needs to be written down in a language that isn't going extinct, or it will (if unique) be lost.
k_over_hbarc at yahoo.com
R. Fenwick said,
September 25, 2021 @ 10:26 pm
@Andrew Usher: This knowledge would seem to be a matter of culture, not language; though they often go hand in hand, it could be transmitted just as well (for whatever it's worth) in some other language adopted by those people.
But the either-or approach of culture XOR language is inappropriate in this context. The whole point is that languages use lexical items – a linguistic tool – to carry specific semantics relevant to their cultural context. Think of the lexeme as a linguistic peg on which to hang the cultural information. Once the linguistic peg is lost, then a new linguistic peg needs to be explicitly built in the adopted language to carry that cultural information – and not only does that new linguistic peg need to be built in the adopted language, but its semantics then must be actively agreed upon by the speaker population. And since linguistic destruction does usually go hand-in-hand with cultural destruction and social marginalisation, the effort required to do that in the face of the overwhelming pressures from the superstrate language and culture becomes essentially insurmountable.
It is inevitable, whatever you think of it, that most languages will go extinct (perhaps, eventually, all but one) no matter how much money is wasted on the 'problem'.
The same argument from futility could be levelled against doing any work at all for any reason whatsoever.
If this folk medicine is worth saving, it needs to be written down in a language that isn't going extinct, or it will (if unique) be lost.
Which is exactly the point: by stopping languages from going extinct, it allows the continuation of that information within the indigenous linguistic and cultural context.
Andrew Usher said,
September 26, 2021 @ 7:06 pm
Now that's silly – some things are futile, but not everything is, and that should be obvious. The fact in this case is that we can't stop languages from going extinct and in no case I know of has intervention of the sort being implied here ever saved a language from that. If you really want to solve any problem you have to first start from the honest facts.
The only languages that get 'saved' are those whose own native speakers believe strongly enough in saving, and that's strongly correlated with how numerous they are. Even the OP called the loss 'inevitable'.
chris said,
October 1, 2021 @ 6:59 am
Every time a language disappears, a speaking voice also disappears, a way to make sense of reality disappears, a way to interact with nature disappears, a way to describe and name animals and plants disappears
ISTM that the last point is trivial and the rest are taking Sapir-Whorf to utterly absurd levels.
The language disappears because at some point the next generation doesn't bother learning it. Since there is almost no one with no interest in communicating with their own parents, that means their parents also speak the new language (probably including around the house, or the kids would have picked it up that way whether they intended to or not). So there's nothing stopping them from expressing the wisdom of their ancestors in that language.
You don't need any particular name for the willow tree to remember that grandma used it to treat headaches. Even if it was literally called the headache curing tree… you can remember that fact while being a speaker of a different language.
Unless the entire population is being subjected to outright genocide and there *is* no next generation to learn those folkways, in which case the language is clearly the wrong thing to focus on.