A forest chopped down by itself

I sometimes find myself reading some Azeri poems and enjoying Azeri songs. Since I’ve been living in Turkey for the past few years I have maybe found a way to connect with my mother tongue, and realize how I had been separated from it. I can now understand why some people make such a big fuss over their language and start to take such radical actions just because their language isn’t being appreciated in their community or country.

You see when your language and culture is being appriciated you feel more respect for your people but don’t get me wrong I’m not trying to seperate people from each other I’m just talking about appriciation and respect.

I too feel the pity that a culture is getting destroyed, no different than a forest being destroyed, every word forgotten or replaced with another equivalent in another language in the community, every action taken to ignore the communities native language or customs and traditions as a part of that culture, is like chopping down a tree in the forest and if you don’t take the right actions the forest will soon ceases to exist.

A forgotten Language

As each generation passes, Iran’s Azerbaijan community gets more and more separated from a it’s root language and culture, and not many people are realizing it. Each person in the community is responsible and they are the ones helping this and it won’t take too long until major parts of the language are forgotten. It is much more valuable, stylish and sheek to use and use the Farsi and English words in everyday usage in a so called classy situations and to take it a step further is to neglect the language and just use another one instead. I’m not against other cultures nor languages and on the contrary I think learning and usage of a new language opens up a whole new world to the learner but replacing and killing a language is also shutting the doors to a language forever.

There are plenty of phrases, expressions and grammar logic in everyday Azeri which either has been or is being forgotten for good. As an example young girls tend to speak in Farsi to their boyfriends as they see it much more classier and it has just become a habit for the community and young people are the ones changing the language and inserting new terms to the language.

Cherish every word and phrase

As a person who has passed this period in his life and not to mention that I was never an activist nor a pan-anything but I have come to appreciate the words and structures in my language more, even though I do not know much about it, now I have come to a point where I understand no matter how many languages you have learnt you shouldn’t take for granted the language which is not officially recognized in your country but is your mother tongue, since it carries your background and has had a great effect in the way you think and understand.

The savior

I’m still thinking about what can be done or what actions can be taken to stop this disappearance of words and terms but I’m sure with a little effort and usage of web technologies there can be tens of solutions to save every word and every language in the world and even if people don’t use them at least have a record of what use to be used in the past and now isn’t and maybe someday we will go back and start using them. If you’ve read this and have any thoughts on how we can be play a role in appreciation of all languages, I’d love to hear about.