Mark Abley Views
Mark Abley thinks not. His Spoken Here makes a persuasive case for our instinctive response to language loss: that it somehow diminishes the cultural range of the planet, that a homogenised world is necessarily a lesser world. Much of his argument rests on the notion that language is not simply a tool but a formative entity in itself, one that subtly shapes the world-view of its users. Different languages mean different perceptions; another language is another way of seeing. As one of his interviewees says, losing languages is like bombing the Louvre.
Abley has written a powerful and important book. He reminds us that the most remarkable and universal achievement of our species is not music or painting or the building of great cities, or even the ability to reach other planets, but the development of systems of sounds and scripts to communicate experience and to convey something of the wonderful complexity of the world around us. While I am not entirely convinced of his argument for the cerebral distinctions that languages make in their users, his celebration of linguistic diversity is compelling, his diagnosis of its demise devastating. The protection of languages is an urgent cause and one that should, as he suggests, be pursued with the same zeal as the protection of endangered fauna and flora.
Mark Abley was born in England in 1955. As a small child his family moved to Canada, and he grew up in northern Ontario, southern Alberta and central Saskatchewan. He studied literature at the University of Saskatchewan and, after winning a Rhodes Scholarship, at St. Johno’s College, Oxford. As a young man Mark travelled in more than twenty countries in Europe and Asia. Aspiring to be a poet, he began work as a freelance writer.
Mark Abley is an award-winning poet, journalist and author of Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages, a New York Times Notable Book, a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year, a Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year, and a Discover Magazine Top 20 Science Book of the Year. He writes for the Montreal Gazette and the Times Literary Supplement; speaks English, French and a little Welsh; and lives in Montreal.
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