Young Chilean keeps nearly extinct languages alive

[Jordan Lachler]

Sunday, August 12, 2007 (SF Chronicle)

Young Chilean keeps nearly extinct languages alive

Jen Ross, Chronicle Foreign Service

  (08-12) 04:00 PDT Santiago, Chile --
  While most 16-year-old boys are busy playing video games or worrying
about girls, Joubert Yanten spends most of his spare time reading
dictionaries
and singing tribal songs.

  In the heart of Chile's bustling capital, this teen finds a place to
meditate amid the plants on the patio of his family's modest home. He hums
to himself, in the high-pitched tone of a pubescent boy. Minutes later,
his voice deepens, and he seems to enter a sort of trance. Guttural sounds
escape his mouth, as he pronounces the inflections of this native tongue
with obvious ease.

  Yanten is speaking Selk'nam, the language of an extinct aboriginal group
that lived in the Tierra del Fuego islands off southern Chile and
Argentina. They were among the last native communities in South America to
be settled, in the late 19th century.

  When the Spaniards arrived in Chile, 11 languages were in widespread use:
Quechua, Aymara, Rapanui, Chango, Kunza, Diaguita, Mapudungun, Chono,
Kawesqar, Yagan and Selk'nam. Today, only the first three remain.

  Experts now consider Yanten to be the only living speaker of a language
that died with the last ethnic Selk'nam in the 1970s.

  His obsession began at age 8, when he wrote an elementary school project
on Chile's native groups. "It frustrated me that no one really saw the
magnitude of the extinction of an entire race in the south," he said. "Now
you'll only find a couple of indigenous faces; it's really sad."

  But learning a language when there is no one to speak it with is no small
task. Yanten used dictionaries and audiocassettes of interviews and
shamanic chants, recorded by Jesuit missionaries.

  The teen leafs through the photocopied pages of a Selk'nam dictionary he
borrowed from the library, which includes special sections on grammar and
sentence structure. He explains that Selk'nam differs from Spanish in that
the object comes at the beginning of a sentence, followed by the subject
and the verb.

  He then pulls out a worn CD and plops it into his player. The low-pitched
chant of a medicine woman fills the room, while Yanten sings along in
perfect harmony.

  Experts say there are precedents for reviving extinct languages, and the
use of songs is key to the process of learning pitch and intonation.

  "Through recordings, people can understand the mechanics and grammar of a
language," said Arturo Hernandez, a language professor with the Catholic
University of Temuco, in southern Chile. "Listeners can imitate sounds and
learn to speak in a less technical way, just like someone who learns a
language using a CD or DVD. ... What's surprising in this case is that
this is not a professional, but a boy who began learning at the age of 8."

  In an age when more than half of the world's 6,000 languages are nearing
extinction, Hernandez says Yanten's quest to revive Selk'nam won't be
easy, but could make waves with the right media coverage.

  A straight-A student, Yanten is something of a child prodigy.
  Besides Selk'nam and Spanish, he also speaks fluent Mapudungun - the
language of Chile's largest indigenous group - the Mapuche. He considers
himself only semi-versed in the native languages of Onikenk, Haush,
Kawesqar, and Quechua - not to mention English.

  He's also learning Yagan - a nearly extinct language from Chile's far
south. He's been learning from its last living speaker, Christina
Calderon, for three years, on the phone and by Internet messages. She has
sent him recordings of songs and tribal stories. Yanten has also traveled
to visit her in remote Tierra del Fuego, most recently on a trip financed
by a Chilean television station.

  But Yanten's love affair with language doesn't end with words; he is also
composing songs in Selk'nam. In an effort to popularize traditional native
music, he is fusing it with modern electronic beats, and working on a demo
CD with friends.

  "Music uses language to connect people in a communication community,"
said Rodrigo Torres, an ethno-musicologist from the Universidad de Chile.
"Music has the power to penetrate where logic and reason don't, creating a
type of emotional connection, which is very positive."

  Yanten's mother, Ivonne Gomez, a housewife, believes there may be a
mystical element to his exceptional linguistic abilities.

  "I've always believed that the spirits of his ancestors are with him,"
she said. "He goes through many changes of voice and of mental state."

  Her great-grandfather was Selk'nam, something she hid from her son when
he was younger.
  "I never wanted to say anything because when I was in school, kids used
to tease me and call me 'Indian,' " she explained. "That made me sad, so I
said to myself, 'Why should I tell that to my son?' "

  But by the time Yanten was 12, his linguistic abilities were confirmed by
a university professor. So his mother told him about his ancestry, and
started recording his singing and encouraging him to perform. He now gives
performances every two or three months at universities and museums in
Santiago.

  Yanten has recorded two CDs of Selk'nam music, using his own savings from
part-time work at a grocery store. His father is an artisan, and his
lower-middle-class family had to take out loans to finance his unusual
passion. Yanten applied for cultural grants from the government, but was
rejected because he's younger than the minimum age of 18.

  So Yanten has teamed up with a cultural group called Fuego Ancestral
(Ancestral Fire), which promotes the culture of Tierra del Fuego
indigenous, through documentaries, musical presentations, talks, and
workshops on traditional medicine.
  "People can identify with the spirituality of indigenous cultures, and
their knowledge, culture and language are all an important part of
connecting ourselves with nature and with our past," said Oscar
Galleguillos, director of Fuego Ancestral. "And I don't think you have to
be of native ancestry. We're all members of a tribe. There's the French
tribe. The North American tribe. The Chilean."
  Yet lack of financial support has frustrated Yanten and those who work to
preserve Chile's indigenous heritage.
  "It's unfortunate that in our country, culture gets no support," said
Juan
Carlos Avilez, an anthropologist from the rural town of Curacavi, who
recently came to see Yanten perform at a Santiago museum. "Not only should
the state be helping this special boy, but a university should study and
work with him."
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Copyright 2007 SF Chronicle
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