A secret language about plants...

Remember when you were a kid and you made up "languages" so that only you and your best friends knew what was being said? People often accuse passionate plantsmen/women of doing the same thing. Rather than an attempt to make sure that everyone is on the same page, they view it as a means of excluding people who "aren't in the club."

Hang around plant people long enough, and you’ll get sucked into wide-ranging and animated discussion about the ins and outs of naming plants. Discussion of plants, their attributes, parts, and their means of existence, may sound like an ancient unknown tongue. Everyone has an opinion, everyone has their own rant about the process and its various outcomes.

It may not be so surprising then, that there is an entire language about plants. What is cause for concern is that it's about to die. Wednesday’s New York Times reports (in an article on disappearing languages) that half of the world’s 7000 languages will disappear this century including many in central South America.

Included among these is a language unique to the Kallawaya people of Bolivia. It was apparently never in wide use as it was a secret language spoken almost solely to preserve what was known about the area’s plants with medicinal properties. This includes plants that are not known to science and would be of great interest to ethnobotanists and pharmaceutical researchers.

How amazing is it that such a language, outside the bounds of our “science” exists? Of course we have entire dictionaries of botanical terms; argot used by botanists to talk about plants. It could be argued that this constitutes a separate language—but our discourse is always grounded in English, or German, Italian, Spanish or one of the other 83 languages with global influence.

Even 500 years ago, the Kallawaya realized that information was power. Cloaking that information in a secret language, passed down from generation to generation by practicing males has enabled Kallawaya healers to maintain their privileged position and attract international attention, while protecting knowledge about their plants to slow their discovery and exploitation.

A secret language about plants. Somehow it seems very Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and “Lost World.” Instead it is very current and cutting edge. Legal and moral rights to knowledge, heritage and resources hang in the balance and a very small tongue holds the key.

Interested? Fascinated?

For more information visit Swarthmore College and Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages for much more information...

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