How Our Language Separates Us
In the book, Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, she brings out two very important differences between the languages of the Indigenous peoples and our English language. It turns out that our language makes us believe that we are separate from and superior to Nature and all other living beings. And with this aloof separation, it reduces our companionship and our wanting to be with and help all the world round us. We talk, write, and even think in this restricted language of separation.
The first language difference is between the usage of nouns vs. verbs. Indigenous talking and thinking are in a world of verbs, action, and aliveness, while English talking and thinking is in a world of nouns and objects for analysis. Kimmerer says that Indigenous language is 70% verbs and 30% nouns, while English language is 30% verbs and 70% nouns.
For example, in the Indigenous, “mushrooms” is instead ”puh powee”, which refers to their aliveness as they push up dramatically from the earth overnight. This emphasizes their living vitality as opposed to English’s emphasizing that it is a separate object that we can eat. Similarly, the Indigenous word for an ocean bay is “wiikwegama,” which is a verb of sheltering near the cedar tree roots and the flock of ducks near the shore. Another example is the English name “Mount Marcy,” a mountain named after a former New York governor. In the Indigenous world, their verb for it refers to its splitting the clouds.
The Indigenous language also makes major distinctions between objects based on whether they are alive, such as fungi, vs. inanimate, such as an airplane. To do this, they use different verb forms, different plurals, different everything depending on whether they are alive or not. English does not emphasize this major difference in our verbs and nouns.
The other way that the English language supports human separateness from all other beings is in its use of pronouns. For humans, they can be referred to as he, she, they, them. Meanwhile, a beaver, a tree or a forest is usually referred to as an “it” just like a rock.
To bring all our world’s other beings back to life, they can be given personified adjectives such as Mother Earth, Father Sun, Mother Tree. And there is also our Creator and Creatress. In addition, we can use verbs to bring them back to life such as “the flowers danced in the wind, the little dog laughed, the tree reached for the sky.”
But it is harder to call out a non-human’s beingness when we refer to it as “it.” Perhaps we can refer to them in a more inclusive way. How can we do that? Can we say (maybe only in our minds?) a “beaver being,” a “plant being,” or “grass beings.” Can we make more of an effort to see the world around us as a living thing? After all, we’re all in this together.
