I am very excited to read this stuff on dying languages because I thought I was the last unicorn on the planet who feels inadequate and really quite helpless as I feel the basics of that, that should provide me with the necessary skillfull means in relating to the world, my mother tongue has been seriously damaged. My mother tongue is Ewe, this language is spoken in the South East of Ghana, while traces of Ewe can also be seen int the Ga, Ga-Adangbe languages of Ghana. Ewe is spoken by the majority population of Togo and is dominant in the Fon language of Benin. Actually, the language should be written otherwise, for the 'W' in the middle sounds like when one blows into a flute. As a neo-colonial kid of Ghana, the English language had become my second language, I knew as a kid that this language was not mine, for I didn't speak it with my parents nor siblings, but I recall I saw it as the language that will determine my future although I couldn't relate to it, I was good in it, but I didn't understand it in my heart and I remember very well how inferior the ethnic group I belonged to was when the school prefect of the school I attended went around during the breaks writting down the names of the vernacular speakers who will be punished later. Infact, there were times when I didn't want my parents to visit me (I was in a boarding school), particularly my mother who wasn't at the time very good in English as I feld embarrassed at their presence. It was years later in Germany where I had to learn the German language that I actually started to reflect on languages, I guese it was due to the fact that I for the first time in my life, I felt different. I was indeed among the few Africans at the time studying in Germany, I was 19, and I was alone. I remember asking one of my German co-students what Water, 'Wasser' meant in his language. He couldn't make any sense out of the question because as he said, 'Wasser' ist Wasser period. I told him that in my language, water means growth, when we say 'Etsi', we automatically think of growth, that the language tells us that everything there is, has its origin from water. Well, he replied that he could understand us because we were still a primitive folk and had not yet discovered fertilisers. He made me understand that by and by, we will also realise that fertilisers are responsible for growth. I remember pondering over this for many weeks and wishing my people will some day come to this realisation. At this point, dear friends, I feel very vunerable writting this. We were so young, yet wherever we were if not with our close families, we had to defend ourselves, our parents, our language, our ethnic grougps, our country, our race. I have no idea how we could do all that, for we were so young, thanks to every single being wherever they were, in which ever way they tried for helping all of us, let's keep on reaching out. The Sages of Tibet were kind, they pulled me into their world as I became a student of tibetan Budhism. These teachings unfolded my mother tongue to me in front of my eyes and I could feel they way my people löng ago saw and related to the world. My teachers were amazed at the rapid progress I was making and I realised it was so, because the teachings were speaking a language that corresponded in its essence to the language of my inner, the language of my heart, my mother tongue Ewe, I realised for the first time, that this language was non-dualistic, top means bottom and bottom means top depending on ones perspective. Of late, the word for 'I' the first person singular was called 'Yi' which was the same word for 'Gone', this was the manner in which my parents and grandparents spoke when I was a kid. It implies that that the 'I' was not anything constant, that it had no substance of its own, that it was ever dying, ever becoming, ever evolving, that is is absolute Freedom. Today, it has been substituted to 'Enye' this is quite difficult to explain, for, I can't find its origin within me, but I feels solid, concrete, monumental and protectve.
On Jan 11, 2012 Ama Peters wrote:
I am very excited to read this stuff on dying languages because I thought I was the last unicorn on the planet who feels inadequate and really quite helpless as I feel the basics of that, that should provide me with the necessary skillfull means in relating to the world, my mother tongue has been seriously damaged. My mother tongue is Ewe, this language is spoken in the South East of Ghana, while traces of Ewe can also be seen int the Ga, Ga-Adangbe languages of Ghana. Ewe is spoken by the majority population of Togo and is dominant in the Fon language of Benin. Actually, the language should be written otherwise, for the 'W' in the middle sounds like when one blows into a flute.
As a neo-colonial kid of Ghana, the English language had become my second language, I knew as a kid that this language was not mine, for I didn't speak it with my parents nor siblings, but I recall I saw it as the language that will determine my future although I couldn't relate to it, I was good in it, but I didn't understand it in my heart and I remember very well how inferior the ethnic group I belonged to was when the school prefect of the school I attended went around during the breaks writting down the names of the vernacular speakers who will be punished later. Infact, there were times when I didn't want my parents to visit me (I was in a boarding school), particularly my mother who wasn't at the time very good in English as I feld embarrassed at their presence.
It was years later in Germany where I had to learn the German language that I actually started to reflect on languages, I guese it was due to the fact that I for the first time in my life, I felt different. I was indeed among the few Africans at the time studying in Germany, I was 19, and I was alone. I remember asking one of my German co-students what Water, 'Wasser' meant in his language. He couldn't make any sense out of the question because as he said, 'Wasser' ist Wasser period. I told him that in my language, water means growth, when we say 'Etsi', we automatically think of growth, that the language tells us that everything there is, has its origin from water. Well, he replied that he could understand us because we were still a primitive folk and had not yet discovered fertilisers. He made me understand that by and by, we will also realise that fertilisers are responsible for growth. I remember pondering over this for many weeks and wishing my people will some day come to this realisation. At this point, dear friends, I feel very vunerable writting this. We were so young, yet wherever we were if not with our close families, we had to defend ourselves, our parents, our language, our ethnic grougps, our country, our race. I have no idea how we could do all that, for we were so young, thanks to every single being wherever they were, in which ever way they tried for helping all of us, let's keep on reaching out.
The Sages of Tibet were kind, they pulled me into their world as I became a student of tibetan Budhism. These teachings unfolded my mother tongue to me in front of my eyes and I could feel they way my people löng ago saw and related to the world. My teachers were amazed at the rapid progress I was making and I realised it was so, because the teachings were speaking a language that corresponded in its essence to the language of my inner, the language of my heart, my mother tongue Ewe, I realised for the first time, that this language was non-dualistic, top means bottom and bottom means top depending on ones perspective.
Of late, the word for 'I' the first person singular was called 'Yi' which was the same word for 'Gone', this was the manner in which my parents and grandparents spoke when I was a kid. It implies that that the 'I' was not anything constant, that it had no substance of its own, that it was ever dying, ever becoming, ever evolving, that is is absolute Freedom. Today, it has been substituted to 'Enye' this is quite difficult to explain, for, I can't find its origin within me, but I feels solid, concrete, monumental and protectve.