Carrie Gillon: Hi, and welcome to the Vocal Fries Podcast, the podcast about linguistic discrimination. I’m Carrie Gillon.
Megan Figueroa: And I’m Megan Figueroa.
Carrie: I want to thank all the people who’ve been becoming patrons this month.
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: It’s great. I think this is our biggest month so far, and if you want to help us out as well, that’d be great, because again, we really want to pay for someone to transcribe our episodes.
Megan: Yes.
Carrie: The first thing on earth to do, we want lists, we want this, and we will to do it.
Megan: Yes, indeed.
Carrie: Yeah, I wonder if an episode got shared or something. Well, anyway, the reason you’re here, I don’t care. I love it.
Megan: Yes, I love it.
Carrie: Yes, for those who don’t know, Patreon. patreon.com is where you can support us. It’s a way of supporting any kind of artist. There are many people on there and ours is patreon.com/vocalfriespod. Okay, now let’s get to the email. Adam emails us about Welp, and he also has a question, which I’ll get to, in relation to your comment in this latest episode about Welp being more an online thing. I always heard it and used it for as long as I can remember growing up here in the Cincinnati area, I always saw that final “P” sound as a way of adding finality, so like yep versus yes, nope versus no. Both have feelings of being definite and final, or an implication that there’s no room for debate. Welp also carries that feeling, in my opinion, of something being already finished or having already happened. It’s an interesting theory. I never even thought about it.
Megan: I agree with Adam. I don’t want to say resigning yourself because that makes it sound like a negative connotation, but it does feel like you’re resigning yourself to whatever has happened because it’s done.
Carrie: But do you have that feeling for Yep and Nope?
Megan: No, for some reason, when I do Yep and Nope, I feel I’m not hedging, but like softening it.
Carrie: Yeah, that’s how I feel too.
Megan: But with Welp, I don’t feel I’m softening.
Carrie: Yeah, I agree.
Megan: Yeah, but I say it, IRL and you don’t.
Carrie: If I do, it’s like saying BRB or LOL or something, you know, it feels very interesting to me.
Megan: Or how I just said IRL. I don’t actually say IRL, yeah.
Carrie: Yeah.
Megan: Huh?
Carrie: Anyway, that’s an interesting theory and hey, let us know if you have the same thoughts about it or if there’s another interpretation because this could be one of those things where people vary depending on when they acquired it. Because welp, for me is late.
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: A late acquisition.
Megan: Oh, I wonder if it’s Midwest has a sort of theme going on with Welp.
Carrie: Right, that’s what he says later. So, well, the bus already left feels like there’s wiggle room for options to change things. Well, the bus already left, but I might have time to catch it at the next stop or something like that. Welp, the bus already left to me carries a sense that there’s nothing to be done about it. I agree with that.
Megah: Definitely.
Carrie: Almost what is done is done since, because of that feeling of finality the “P” ads. Not sure if that also ties into the “Ope” usage around here and the Midwest in general, although I always felt like that was a shortening modification of “Oops.” Maybe, I don’t know.
Megan: Huh, yeah.
Carrie: Okay, that’s an interesting theory, and I think I kind of agree. He also has a question about McWhorter, basically, like how problematic is McWhorter and if he’s problematic, what should he do about it?
Megan: For those who don’t know, John McWhorter is. What is he a professor at Columbia?
Carrie: Sure. I don’t remember.
Megan: Oh.
Carrie: But he’s the host of Lexicon Valley.
Megan: Yes.
Carrie: What is it like the Atlantic, contributor?
Megah: Yeah.
Carrie: He wrote an interesting article in The Atlantic about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Now, she’s being accused of engaging in verbal blackface. She wasn’t in front of Congress or front of, let’s say, a mostly white group of people. I think it was more mixed. She used a slightly different dialect than most people are used to from her. So people thought, well, mostly conservatives thought, “Aha, gotcha.” She’s trying to sound like a black person. She’s putting on verbal blackface.
Megan: Yeah, right. When you said that she sounded slightly different, that is her sounding slightly different than what we might see on C-SPAN.
Carrie: Right, that’s what I’m saying.
Megan: [crosstalk] she does, yeah.
Carrie: Yeah, she sounded different to what most people are used to from her, because they’re usually is in front of a mainly white audience.
Megan: Right, yeah.
Carrie: He mentions also that Obama also came in for similar kinds of criticism that he would sound different when he was talking to mainly black audiences versus mainly white audiences.
Megan: Right, we talked to Dr. Nicole Holliday about this, yes.
Carrie: Yeah, the idea is that he wasn’t authentic because he’s so educated that couldn’t possibly be his actual.
Megan: Oh, my God.
Carrie: Yeah.
Megan: Of course, we have to think about how white politicians don’t face the same, are they being authentic?
Carrie: Well, yeah. We rarely hear them use more than one dialect, and when they do, it does sound inauthentic.
Megan: They might actually be an inauthentic, yeah.
Carrie: They haven’t tried to put on this folksy-sounding thing.
Megan: That’s true.
Carrie: That just doesn’t work.
Megan: Or they try to speak.
Carrie: I’ll put quotes around it, “Spanish,” because it’s not a sincere effort or whatever.
Megan: Right, it often isn’t.
Carrie: Anyway, he’s absolutely right that it’s not fair. She is quote-switching, like, she is quote-switching. It’s not that she’s being unauthentic. She has multiple dialects and multiple rhetorical styles. We all have different rhetorical styles. We all sound different and different before different audiences. It’s just that no one had heard or talked like that before outside of her community. It just felt inauthentic to people who didn’t realize who she actually was and what she would actually sound like.
Megan: Right.
Carrie: That was a helpful message that McWhorter was getting out into the world.
Megan: Yes.
Carrie: There are times when he is really great like this.
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: Oh, and by the way I think it was Tucker Carlson and some Brit. I don’t remember who were talking about this. Tucker Carlson mocked the idea that code-switching even existed.
Megan: Oh.
Carrie: If you don’t sound the same in all instances, then you are inauthentic was his, basically his argument.
Megan: Well, he’s an absolute asshole.
Carrie: Well, he is an asshole, but he’s also…
Megan: He’s a dinging Dingdong. Really? You really think that.
Carrie: I don’t know if he knows, if he thinks that it’s really hard to tell with him, like, how much is disingenuousness and how much he just doesn’t understand life.
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: He obviously code switches, we just don’t see it, right? Because we only see him on TV on his show.
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: There’s no way he talks like that to his family, to his friends. You know what I mean? He clearly has different styles, but he doesn’t think it matters, or he doesn’t know.
Megan: Of course, it doesn’t matter in his life. Again, had to navigate the same waters that minoritized people will have to navigate with their voices.
Carrie: Even setting that aside, he still has to navigate different in environments.
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: He just is not aware, or he is and he just recognizes it and is an asshole about it.
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: When he is talking to other rich people, guaranteed he talks differently and he probably has to be very careful of what he says to certain people.
Megan: That’s true.
Carrie: It’s just ridiculous.
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: I really can’t tell if he’s just evil or not smart.
Megan: Yeah, or both.
Carrie: Well, he is definitely both, but in this instance.
Megan: Right.
Carrie: Okay, so that’s good. But then same goddamned week, the same goddamned week. There’s a video of him of…
Megan: McWhorter.
Carrie: McWhorter, sorry. Yes, McWhorter on Reason, talking about how America has never been less racist.
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: Now, granted the United States has been pretty fucking racist the whole time.
Megan: Right.
Carrie: But to say that it’s somehow less bad now than it was 5 years ago, seems clearly wrong.
Megan: Right.
Carrie: It is absolutely the case that things have been worse than they are now. Slavery, worse, right?
Megan: Right, yeah.
Carrie: But to say that it is never been better than now, just seems false.
Megan: It just manifests in different ways.
Carrie: Yeah, basically, I guess we have to be responsible consumers of McWhorter media.
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: To recognize that he is somewhat more complicated than some of the other people.
Megan: Oh, yeah. Like Stephen Pinker is a fuckings don’t listen to him.
Carrie: Yeah, he also pedals this whole that it would never have been less racist kind of stuff. It benefits people like Steven Pinker to say stuff like that.
Megan: Yes.
Carrie: But yeah, I guess there are some really problematic linguists out there, and we definitely don’t want to promote their shit.
Megan: Right, we’re very careful about things.
Carrie: That’s why it’s like hard to talk about McWhorter because he’s like sometimes really great and sometimes really problematic.
Megan: Right.
Carrie: It’s like, “How do we talk about this guy?”
Megan: Right.
Carrie: In comparison to other ones where it’s like, “This guy’s clearly problematic.”
Megan: Yes, it’s true.
Carrie: It’s just a platform he has, so he’s going to be out there. I was even thinking about retweeting his thing about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but I was like, “Oh, there are other people that are saying this. I don’t need to retweet him.”
Megan: Yeah, today our episode is about Chatino languages, which are spoken in Mexico. I did not know anything about them.
Carrie: Me neither.
Megan: Wow, so fascinating. Dr. Hilaria Cruz also talks about concepts of the dead, what you do after you die? I mean, it’s really cool.
Carrie: It’s really, really cool. It’s very fun to talk to people where I’m just like, for an hour or 45 minutes or whatever, like, I’m learning something every second that you speak. This is amazing.
Megan: Yeah, I think that’s definitely the case this time. I really, I knew nothing.
Carrie: Right, yeah.
Megan: Yep, it’s so close to us, Mexico, and it’s just like, you know, it’s true. Thinking about it, this is a little further in Mexico.
Carrie: [crosstalk] It’s not like a border, but still.
Megan: Right, yeah. Just thinking about all the things that we don’t know about land that we’re on, or that we’re so close to, it’s so good to be able to talk to people.
Carrie: Yes.
Megan: To bring their voices to the podcast airwaves.
Carrie: Yes.
Megan: Yes.
Carrie: Hope you enjoy. Hilaria Cruz is an assistant professor at the University of Louisville, and a native speaker of San Juan Quiahije, Eastern Chatino, an endangered Zapotecan language spoken in a mountain of Oaxaca, Mexico. Through her documentation and revitalization work on the Chatino languages since 2003, she’s collected and archived more than a hundred hours of audio recordings of naturalistic speech in formal and informal settings. She’s currently researching the Chatino concepts of the dead and four Eastern Chatino communities. Welcome, Hilaria, thanks so much for coming to talk with us.
Hilaria Cruz: Yeah, thank you. Thank you for the invitation.
Carrie: Of course, we were so interested in your work. It sounds fascinating.
Hilaria: Thank you.
Carrie: Yeah, your reputation precedes you. I’ve heard so many good things about you.
Hilaria: Yes.
Carrie: I’m so happy to meet you virtually.
Hilaria: Oh, thank you.
Carrie: How did you decide to work on documenting and revitalizing Chatino languages?
Hilaria: Okay, so that has a long history.
Carrie: Usually, it does.
Megan: Yes.
Hilaria: I was born in this small town and in a village called Synagogue, belonging to this other town named San Juan Quiahije. Everyone in that community spoke Chatino. Then my father wanted us to acquire formal education. So then he moved the whole family to this other frontier town where everybody spoke Spanish, called Coquilla. Coquilla, I was put in the classroom where I was taught the Spanish language. It was just thrown in this environment where the teacher and everyone were required to speak Spanish. I continued my education. My family then moved to the bigger city, Oaxaca City for us to continue going to middle school and then high school. In 1991, I moved to Washington State, and then I began to learn English. I went to the Evergreen State College. Then, around this time, late 1990s I began to ask myself “Well, you know, now I know how to read and write in the Spanish language. I also do the same for the English language. But why is it that I can read and write in the Chatino language?” This is something that I really would like to be able to do. So I began to make attempts to write in the Chatino language like I would jot things down. But then I was never successful at this endeavor. I will have the same conversations with other Chatino speakers, but also speakers of other indigenous languages of Oaxaca as well. We all had a command of our language orally, but we did not know how to read and write in the Chatino language Mixteco or Trique, or any other languages that we spoke growing up.
One day I was taking a training to become an interpreter for an organization called Frente Indigena Binacionales. The training was being held for indigenous people and there were speakers of all of these indigenous languages of Oaxaca. We were all presented by the trainer with this huge notebook of legal terms. The trader said, “Okay, now translate this into your language.” But how are you going to do that if you do not know how to read and write in your language? That really bothered me. I was just thinking, “Well, what is going on here? Why is it that we cannot read and write in our languages? I really want to be able to do this.” Then at the same time, I began to hear and to read in the newspapers of linguists who were working with native speakers of North American languages to revive their languages. I was just, “That would be so interesting.” So I thought, “Well, maybe linguists will be able to help me develop a writing system in the alphabet for the Chatino language and other indigenous languages as well.” I began to write to linguists, any linguists that I could hear of. I began to write them and ask them, “Hey, would you be so kind as to help me write my language? You know, I speak this language called Chatino.” My sister was also very interested in the same thing. So my sister went back to Oaxaca around this time. At a coffee shop, she met this professor of anthropology. His name is Joel Sherzer, and he’s now an emeritus professor from the University of Texas.
She met the professor at a coffee shop in Oaxaca. They just began to have a conversation and then Joel asked my sister, Emiliana Cruz just what what do you do? What are your interests in life? Then, my sister told Joel Sherzer, “You know, I really would like to learn how to read and write in my native language. Then, Joel says, “Well, you know me and my colleagues, Tony Woodbury and Nora England at the University of Texas are creating a program to train speakers of indigenous languages, Latin America, to study their languages. So Joel extended an invitation to Emiliana to come and visit the University of Texas. Then Emiliana joined the anthropology program, and she began to study the Chatino Language and Grammar with Tony Woodbury, along with a group of people at the University of Texas. Then, a year later, I joined the Linguistics program and, of course, my goal was to be able to develop an alphabet for the Chatino language. But I learned that there was a whole world to be discovered, and the study of linguistics. So that is how I began to document the language.
Carrie: Do you think that your father who wanted you to have this formal education in Spanish ever thought that this would be the outcome of all of this?
Hilaria: I don’t know that my father imagined this outcome, but when I was young my father was not trained as in anthropologist, but he was very much in love with the Chatino culture and the Chatino language. He will also do some recordings with elders.
Carrie: Wow.
Hilaria: He did not know how to do transcriptions or anything like that. But I remember having a conversation with my father once, and well, he told me that one of his wishes was for the Chatino language and culture not to be forgotten, that if the culture of our language ever died, we could at least inscribe in Iraq or anywhere that we existed at some point in this world. So I think that maybe he did not envision a Chatino writing, but I think that he hoped for the culture to continue.
Megan: Wow, this is very much in the family. I love this story. Thank you for sharing that with us.
Hilaria: Oh, thank you.
Carrie: How many Chatino languages are there? I know that’s always a difficult concept because there’s a very fuzzy boundary between dialect and language. But just generally.
Hilaria: There are three Chatino languages. One of them is Zenzontepec Chatino, Tataltepec Chatino, in a group of about 17 varieties that we call Eastern Chatino. As you guys said at the beginning of this podcast, I am a speaker at the San Juan Quiahije, Eastern Chatino.
Carrie: Do you have an estimate on how many speakers there are?
Hilaria: How would you say? A very good count of how many speakers are in, it changes all the time. The language is getting lost really quickly. For example, the 2010 census said that there were about 40,000 Chatino. The last census that I saw said that there were about 52,000. I don’t know really, I will say between 40,000 and 50,000.
Carrie: Okay, yeah. This is a very common problem of counting speakers and language for sure.
Hilaria: Yeah.
Carrie: Especially, if it’s a smaller language. My background is more Canadian indigenous languages. I know very little about most of the Mexican indigenous languages. So is there anything that you can tell us that kind of makes Chatino different or unique? What is it that’s special about this language or family?
Hilaria: Oh, yes. There are so many special things about the Chatino languages or indigenous languages that are spoken in Mexico. For example, the Chatino language has a very complex system of tones, even more complex than Chinese.
Megan: Oh, wow.
Carrie: Oh, fascinating.
Hilaria: Yeah, it is fascinating. This is one of the problems that we had in creating an alphabet for the Chatino language. If I were to give you an example of a group of words in Chatino, just to illustrate the beauty and complexity of the language, I would give you a set of words that you could segmentally write with kla. I mean when I say segmentally mean, I mean consonants and vowels. Like, for example, if I were to say something, those same words that I say kla with a high pitch, like kla, I will be saying weaving, boom. If I go a notch down, I say kla, that will be water paddle. If I go a notch down, I say kla, that’s a dream. If I go a notch down, I say kla, that’s fish. Then, if I do a tone, like a descending tone something that starts at a high register and goes down, it’ll be kla, he will arrive. Then if I go a notch down, if I say kla, he will sing, and then if I want to say that you will arrive, I will use an ascending tone, something that begins at a lower register and goes up, so that will be kla, you will arrive kla, and then if I wanted to say that you will sing, I will say kla. I’m going to say all of those ones right now together, like in one fell scoop. So it’ll be kla, kla, kla, kla, kla. When we were trying to develop a writing system for the Chatino language, this is something that we had to work on, we have to find a pattern for this.
Also, this is the reason why I could not develop a good writing system by myself. Because I tried, before I said, “Well, you know that I tried to sit down and I tried to write the language.” But I could not do it because the only thing that I knew how to read and write were these Indo-European languages, Spanish and English, but Chatino is different. This is one of the reasons why it’s very important to support research in minority languages because this linguistic research can inform the development of an alphabet that is adequate for reading and writing in a native language is what the speakers want. In our case, we wanted to have a writing system. I understand that there are other indigenous languages in North America where people do not wish to write their language.
Carrie: Right.
Hilaria: That’s their choice. But in our community, people love writing systems. I mean, not writing systems per se, people love writing. People get excited at the thought of being able to read and write in our language. Okay, you were asking about what is unique for Chatino. So that is one unique thing about Chatino. Now, we go to the grammar of Chatino. Chatino has this really very lovely system of motion and existential and positional verbs that are very closely related to the culture. Like, for example, where are you guys right now?
Carrie: Tucson.
Megan: I’m in Phoenix.
Hilaria: Where is part of Arizona?
Megan: Southern Arizona
Carrie: Central.
Hilaria: Okay. Well, let’s say that I want to use the example of Tucson, Arizona. Okay?
Carrie: Okay.
Hilaria: Let’s say that we’re in the state of Arizona and that we’re in Tucson, and the Tucson is a ceremonial center for us. So we’re in this community, and Tucson, Arizona is the center, and all of the other towns are just like little hamlets. So we ascribe this sacredness to this place called Tucson, Arizona. Then in the Chatino language, if I want to say that I’m going to go to Tucson, I will use one verb, which is different from a verb that I will use. If I were going to say that I’m going to go to Phoenix, so like, for example, if I were to say in Chatino, I’m going to go Tucson, I will say “[foreign word] Tucson.” If I wanted to say that I’m going to go to Phoenix, then I would say “[foreign word] Phoenix.” You change the first consonant there, [foreign word] is when you go to a sacred place, and [foreign word] is when you go to a place that doesn’t hold any sacredness.
Megan: Wow.
Carrie: I love that, yeah.
Megan: Yeah.
Hilaria: Then the same thing goes, like, for example, if I’m going to say if I’m going to move to Tucson because Tucson is our sacred place. So I will say, [foreign word] so you will say, I’m going to going to stay in Tucson. [foreign word]. Then if I wanted to say I’m going to go and move to Phoenix, I will say [foreign word] so [foreign word] versus [foreign word], so you have these verbs that you use when you describe going to a sacred place and versus a non-sacred place. This is something that you really have to know in the culture, right? The same thing goes with positional verbs. For positional verbs like, to hang, to sit, and to stand. There is a great richness in positional for Chatino, but other Zapotecan and other Oto-Manguean languages as well. For example, we use those verbs for poetry. For example, in English, this will sound a little bit weird, but there is this special oratory that greets people when they come for a special celebration. So this is just to honor all of the guests. The way that you’ll greet your guest at a party, let’s say that you are very grateful because these guests have made the point to come to your celebration. Let’s say that you’re getting married, right? You are given a toast, and you are saying, “Oh, the ones that took the invitation hanging, the ones that took the invitation standing, the ones that took it sitting, those are the ones here.” Those are the ones that took our invitation. So basically what happens is that you play with positional verbs to make a beautiful expression in Chatino. This sounds really beautiful in English, of course, you guys use other resources. But in Chatino, we use positional verbs for composing poetry.
Carrie: I’m listening to you and I’m thinking of how hard it would be for someone who did not grow up speaking this language to learn this language.
Hilaria: It is very hard because the tones that the complex system of tones is also used for inflicting verbs.
Megan: Oh, yeah.
Hilaria: My friend Gregory Stamps who is a great morphologist and I, right now working on a paper on tone inflection of verbs. Gregory Stamps says that the Chatino verb inflection is much more complex than Sanskrit.
Carrie: Wow, that’s saying something.
Hilaria: Yes.
Carrie: That’s really cool. I’d love to see the paper when it’s ready to be read by people.
Hilaria: Definitely, yes.
Carrie: On the Wikipedia entry for Chatino, there’s a sentence basically, saying that Chatinos call their language something I’m not going to try to pronounce.
Hilaria: Yes, Chat nga.
Carrie: Means difficult word. Is that accurate?
Hilaria: Okay, there are some Chatino languages. There are more disyllabic and there are some Chatino languages that are monosyllabic. So when you were asking me about how many Chatino languages were there, I said that there were about 17 different varieties of Eastern Chatino languages. So one of the things that distinguish each one of those varieties is that each one of those languages has its own set of tones.
Carrie: Oh my God.
Hilaria: Yes, for example, if I was at the market and I heard a group of people speaking, since they speak their own register of tones, I right away know that they’re not from my community.
Carrie: Ah, right.
Megan: Yeah.
Hilaria: I’m saying this because in that case, for example, Chat nga. So since each word has their tone, the meaning that, that the second part of “chat” is the word. We know that, but “nga” for me is with the tone, it isn’t a descending tone. If I were just describing this word, “nga” in isolation sounds as low, but in speaking with Chatinos of other varieties of Eastern Chatino, they tell me that it sounds to them like spicy, for others it sounds like Chile. The gist of the story is that we do not know what is the origin of that word.
Carrie: Ah.
Hilaria: Yes.
Megan: Okay, cool.
Hilaria: Yeah.
Megan: Huh, this is kind of, again, a very broad question but why is Chatino and especially your variety of it important to you?
Hilaria: Yeah, I love the Chatino language just because I grew up speaking in the language, it is part of my culture. The reason why I began my journey in the study of the Chatino languages beginning with the San Juan Quiahije Chatino was because this is the language that I know, and this is the language that I have the most direct access to. It is because my family lives there. It is because the most accessible language to me in particular. But I am interested in learning all of the different Chatino languages because each one of them informs the other. For example, one of the characteristics of San Juan Quiahije Chatino is that we are a very monosyllabic language, but they are some Eastern Chatino languages such as Zacatepec Chatino that are still disyllabic. They’re much more conservative in terms of linguistics. So for us, Zacatepec Chatino really informs our study of San Juan Quiahije Chatino. So just by chance that we are from San Juan Quiahije Chatino, we began to study this language. But I think that all of the Chatino languages are important. I don’t see that any one of them has more importance than the other.
Carrie: You said there are about 40,000 to 50,000 approximately, speakers, it’s hard to measure. Do speakers tend to be bilingual at this point, with Spanish?
Hilaria: Yeah, most speakers are bilingual at this point. Only I will say elders like 60 and up, are still monolingual. But since the inception of schools have used Spanish as a language of instruction so that makes every young person bilingual.
Carrie: Right.
Megan: Oh, so speaking of young people, does that mean that the transmission from parent to child is still something that’s going strong?
Hilaria: For some families, it really depends on the family. Because lately, I see that many families are choosing not to teach Chatino to their children. They are speaking Spanish or English to their children. Spanish, I will say there are some Chatinos who lived in the Southeast United States because they migrated here seeking jobs. So they speak Spanish to their children.
Carrie: I can guess, but do you think that’s mostly kind of survival mechanism or this is the language that’s going to, of the government or the education system, so we’ll speak Spanish?
Hilaria: Yes, definitely. It’s just very sad, for example, I remember when I was younger and I would go back to my community, the elders would say, “Oh, you’re so lucky you know, Spanish, we’re really stupid.” We only speak one language.
Carrie: Oh.
Megan: Oh, no.
Carrie: No, I only speak one language. Doesn’t make me stupid.
Megan: Oh, that’s so sad.
Hilaria: Yes, this is how we are made to believe.
Carrie: The last sort of big question we wanted to talk to you about. It has to do with your research on the concepts of the dead. What concepts have you uncovered in your research and what makes it interesting or important?
Hilaria: One of the beautiful things about the concept of death and that right now, I teach in Native American religions class, and I have seen that it has a lot of similarities to some of the concepts in North American conception of death as well. Okay. So the Chatino people believe that each person has at least two souls. When a person dies, their souls exits their body and they take a 71-mile journey to the world of the dead. This journey that they take is through the Chatino region. The Chatino people can tell you, “This is the mountain where the dead people live.” So it is a very close connection that people have with land, space, and with culture. In this town, Zacatepec they have specialists that guide the dead soul through each one of the steps in that journey. So when the person dies, the family hires this specialist who knows this trail, the specialist resides to the dead person, okay? So you now are going to begin your embarkment journey to the world of the dead. There is one place and so they have to climb up a mountain called “Yak che” in Chatino, which in Spanish translates as [inaudible] or like a thorny mountain. It’s really one of the highest mountains in the region. They say, okay, so when you are traveling, when you reach this place and this mountain in the thorny mountain, on the side of the hill, you will find you’ll come to a place where the earth resembles some steps.
When you get to this place, you are going to count 9 steps, count steps. If you count 9 steps, that means that you are dead, because in Chatino culture number 9 is assigned to death, they tell the corps. Once you have counted the 9 steps, if you count nine steps, that means that you’re dead. Okay? Then go continue your climb up to the Thony Mountain. When you get to the top, then you will see, check your clothes. If you see 9 cuts in your clothes, that is another sign that you are dead. If you are, then if you got those two signs that you are dead, then what you do is take a look at the West because Zacatepec is on the west, turn to the west, take one last look at your community, because now you do not belong to the world of the living anymore. You must continue your journey and do not come back to the world of the living, not even in dreams, so there is this ambiguous relationship with the debt. On the one hand, they are believed to be ancestors and protectors of the community, but at the same time, they’re also detrimental to the living. So then as they continue on their journey, they tell them, okay, so when you get to this other place there is this huge rock. You will encounter some dogs that are going to be there hanging on the trail. You need to evade these doves. You have to throw some amaranth seeds to them. So while they’re eating, you just kind of scurry away and just continue your journey. So when the person dies in Chatino the families prepare them for their journey. In the coffin, they put amaranth seeds. They put anything that a person will need for their journey. They put water, they put food, but everything is in miniature. They put a new set of clothes, they put on sandals.
In some of these Chatino communities, they also put some live bees and live tadpoles. All of these little things are going to help the dead person to reach their journey to the world of the dead. So that’s why they put the Amaranth seeds, because the Amaranth seeds, the dead soul is going to use the Amaranth seeds to avate, to distract the dogs that are going to show up on the trail. Then they tell them, “Okay, so once you have evaded those dogs on the trail, you’ll come to a place, this is my community. You’ll come to a place in Synagogue, and there you are going to find a little you are going to find a medal. In that medal, you are going to have to put on a show. You’re going to have to dance. So you dance and if you are a guy, you’re going to have to whistle and maybe play an instrument. Many elders in Chatino communities when they don’t know how to dance, and they know that they’re going to die soon. They ask for dancing lessons because they want to pass this challenge.
Carrie: Oh, wow. That’s amazing.
Hilaria: Well, once you have passed this challenge, then you get to this other town named Ixtapan. There, you have to cross the river. If you don’t know how to swim, then take the tadpoles and the tadpoles are going you to cross the river. Then as you continue your road, you’ll encounter other wild beasts, when you encounter this wild beast, take out the bees because the bees are going to go and sting the wild beast, so that you can reach the world of the dead. So it’s a wonderful connection that people have with the land and with souls. It is interesting because in my Native American class, I’m also finding out that Native American people also believe that souls take a journey, but the journey is on the Milky Way.
Megan: Oh, I didn’t know that.
Hilaria: there is actually, some ceramics and iconography in the Alabama mounts where they also have images of a raptor, a dog, bones, and skulls. They’re especially one hand with the eye. Apparently, all of these instruments are also buried with the dead and are also used to eat the soul on their journey to the Milky Way. For North American indigenous people, it is the journeys in the Milky Way, and for the Chatino people, it is by land.
Megan: Wow.
Carrie: Right, that’s cool.
Hilaria: Yeah.
Megan: Yeah, is there some importance for tricking the dogs in this journey?
Carrie: We don’t have a dog and the journey for Chatino Souls, but there is a dog for the journey to North America.
Megan: Oh, okay.
Hilaria: Conception of the death. Yes, and I believe that the story is that apparently, the souls are going to have to cross a bridge and apparently the dog is the guardian of that bridge or something like that.
Mega: That mountain that the souls travel to, I assume that’s considered to be a sacred space by Chatino people.
Hilaria: It is.
Carrie: Yes.
Hilaria: It is, yeah. Also, the place of the dead as well. The mountain where the people believe that they live also is a sacred place that people journey every year or during high holidays.
Megan: Oh, okay.
Carrie: You mentioned that this kind of guide tells the corpse not to speak to the living anymore because that causes trouble. Is that emotional trouble for the living? Is that what they mean?
Hilaria: Yeah.
Carrie: Okay.
Hilaria: Yeah, that’s emotional, physical, and the spirit, the dead spirits can even kill you.
Megan: Oh.
Carrie: I didn’t know that. Wow, this all reminds me of cocoa, it’s very different.
Hilaria: That’s great.
Carrie: Yeah.
Hilaria: Yeah. No, actually, I think that the people who did cocoa did a good job.
Carrie: Yeah, I loved cocoa so much.
Megan: Yeah, me too.
Hilaria: I love cocoa too, yes. I could relate.
Megan: Yeah, I bet.
Hilaria: Yes.
Carrie: I am, I went with my dad, he’s Mexican American, but his parents were Mexican. He remembers the Day of the Dead, as always crossing the border into Mexico to go to the graves of his Tia’s and Tio’s. It was really important for me to see him watching that too, because it does connect for a lot of Mexican people. I think it was a really beautiful thing to expose more North Americans to.
Megan: Yeah.
Hilaria: Definitely, to me, growing up one of the most important holidays was Day of the Death. I guess, I imagine like Christmas for American children.
Megan: Yeah. Well, there’s all the family getting together and there’s lots of treats. There’s food and everything’s so decorative and decorated, and it’s beautiful.
Hilaria: Definitely, one of the beautiful things about Chatino culture is that people take care of themselves by offering food and providing food for anyone. This is the way people survive famines. So generosity is a very important thing. When you go to someone’s house people without asking you whether you are hungry, they’ll just put a plate on a Play-Doh pins or whatever they have to offer. When you go and visit someone’s house and they don’t have anything to offer, even if they have some warm water, they will put the warm water in a cup, and they place it next to you. They will say, “I’m so sorry that you have come at a time when we don’t have a lot of food, but come back during the day of the death, and then we will eat meat and we will have a feast.”
Megan: Oh, wow.
Carrie: I think we could learn a lot of lessons from that, because I grew up in that way too, where my friends would come over and my dad would just, I think, feel almost offended if they didn’t take something or anyone comes over like, I got to offer something, got to give them something. But we have this very individualistic kind of thing going on in the US anyway. The collective spirit, or helping our neighbors is such a more healthy way to be connected to everyone.
Hilaria: Definitely, yes.
Carrie: Have you found a nice community in Louisville?
Hilaria: Yes.
Carrie: I know you’re new here, and congratulations. Because last I heard you were a postdoc, so that’s very exciting.
Hilaria: Oh, yes.
Megan: Yeah.
Hilaria: Thank you, yes. No, I have found a wonderful community here in Louisville. Actually, I began this group together with other friends from Argentina, we get together and we do what they call tertulias, so we get together. Basically, we discuss current topics. I have a lot of fun with them.
Carrie: That’s awesome.
Megan: Yeah, that’s great.
Carrie: I’m not one of those, yeah. I feel non-linguists and we have a lot of non-linguists that listen. Even just me as a linguist who doesn’t work on this kind of stuff, I want to be able to be more respectful or do more when it comes to helping whether it’s revitalization or helping languages not die. Is there any advice you have for us, for how we can just be informed or what we can do as non-linguists or non-people who are working on this?
Hilaria: I think that one of the great injustices that have happened with indigenous languages, with the formation of nation-states is that they have not recognized the contribution of indigenous languages. Nation states have worked really hard to erase this diversity. This has been our experience in Mexico, and this has been the experience in the United States, and this is the experience of my speakers of minority languages in Turkey and Russia and many Western societies. I think that one of the things that people from Western states can do is to inform themselves and to help change policies. For example, right now in many Chatino communities or many indigenous communities in Mexico, for that matter people are still being taught Spanish as a language of instruction, even if some, even if those children or students speak a native language in their homes and in their communities. One of the things that I would love to be able to see is for schools to be able to use indigenous languages as a language of instruction. I think that one thing that people in Western societies can do is help change policies towards that.
Megan: Yes, I’m absolutely pro being taught in the language of your culture. I think it’s extremely important for the child’s development in many ways. Is there one last message you would like to leave our listeners?
Hilaria: I want to say that I just want to thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast and get in touch with me. If you want to learn more about the total languages of Mexico, or endangered languages for that matter. Thank you for your support of minority languages in the world.
Megan: Okay, great. Thank you.
Carrie: Yeah, thank you so much.
Megan: That was great.
Carrie: Yeah, we also leave our listeners with our final message, which is, don’t be an asshole.
Megan: Don’t be an asshole.
Carrie: Bye.
Audio: The Vocal Fries podcast is produced by me, Carrie Gillon, for Halftone Audio. Theme music by Nick Granum. You can find us on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at Vocal Fries pod. You can email us at vocalfriespod@gmail.com, and our website is vocalfriespod.com.
Chatting About Chatino Transcript
The Vocal Fries Pod 