What, if anything, is lost when a dwindling dialect finally passes into permanent obscurity?
For linguist Sydney Ludlow, the question transcends the simple extinction of a single codified system of communication, moves beyond the mere substitution of one set words and structures for another. So-called language death signifies the effective extinction of a way of understanding the world, a way of making sense of experience, a way of being.
A master’s student at the University of Hawaii, the 25-year-old Ludlow has devoted her energies not to combat the seemingly inevitable, but to preserve cultural knowledge that might otherwise be lost.
“It’s not my job to tell people what language to speak,” said Ludlow, who has focused her work on endangered Ecuadoran Quechua dialects. “But when you lose a language, you create gaps in history. You lose knowledge and a way of understanding the world around us. It can be my job to capture what is lost and try to keep that history intact.”
Ludlow grew up outside of Provo, Utah, the youngest of four siblings. As a child she was immersed in the dual languages of music (she’s a classically trained pianist) and American Sign Language, which she learned through her mother.
Learning ASL instilled in Ludlow an appreciation for the ways in which language shapes understanding and fosters connection. Such insights would later play a role in her decision to abandon her intended major in chemistry to pursue a degree in linguistics at Brigham Young University. It was during her time at BYU that Ludlow first started working with Quechua dialects in Ecuador.
A member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Ludlow also served a Spanish-speaking mission in New York and Connecticut. The experience of interacting with Spanish-speaking elders and their English-educated children and grandchildren further sensitized her to how language is transferred within families.
After graduation, Ludlow and her husband, Jared, relocated to Hawaii, where Ludlow joined the University of Hawaii’s language documentation and conservation program.
As part of her research, Ludlow has twice visited Ecuador’s Napo province, where she has interviewed native speakers of two Quechua dialects among those living along the Amazon. The dialects have been in decline as younger generations have been educated in Spanish and a unified form of Quechua intended to unify indigenous populations.
Working primarily with female speakers of the dialects, Ludlow has focused on collecting local plant knowledge and myths.
By Ludlow’s estimation the endangered dialects are perhaps two generations away from falling out of use as the current younger generation of native speakers are able to speak and understand the language of their forebears but are unlikely to pass it on to their own children.
Ludlow has both short- and long-term goals for her work, goals that will span her current M.A. degree work, prospective doctoral research and ongoing professional projects. Already her immersion in the dialects has allowed her to distinguish differences in her own language-informed ways of understanding the world and the resonances they have for her work with this special population.
“In Quechua there is no strong future tense,” she said. “They want to attach conditions. So if I tell them I’ll see them again next year, they might add ‘If I live’ or ‘If God blesses me to return.’”
Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@staradvertiser.com.
