How to maintain Circassian

International Centre for Circassian Studies (ICCS)

International Centre for Circassian Studies (ICCS)

How to maintain and develop the

use of the Circassian language

in Jordan?

The following steps can be taken (or are recommended by the International Centre for Circassian Studies in co-ordination and co-operation with the Circassian Charity Association in Jordan) to upgrade the status of Circassian in Jordan in the short- and medium-term and enhance its prestige, in addition to boosting and extending the gamut of Circassian language usage. Some of these measures are immediately implementable with minimal effort and cost. Others are more involved and medium-term, but still they can be done if the will to action is obtained and the requisite resources are made available. Systematic and sober implementation of these measures should give a considerable boost to the status and prestige of Circassian and promote its use amongst both the old and young.

The Circassian Charity Association (CCA) can play a leading role in effecting a linguistic and cultural revival since it runs the Prince Hamza School, which has a core centre of children who enjoy some knowledge of the Circassian language and where already there are mechanisms on the ground for teaching the Circassian language. Concerted efforts by concerned parties would upgrade the status of Circassian in the School and improve the levels of competence that could be attained by the students. Dr. Ülle Rannut’s work on the Circassian language situation in the School and how to boost the status of the language, Minority Language Policy in the Middle East: Circassian Language Maintenance in Jordan, should be designated and assigned as the blueprint for effecting these transformations.[1]

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Multi-lingualism and Lost Opportunities

Teach your genius what he deserves!

Amjad Jaimoukha

Since Circassian language and culture in the Caucasus and diaspora are under great pressure due to assimilation, every effort must be made to check the decline of the heritage. This short essay attempts to underscore the effectiveness of teaching Circassian children their mother tongue as a method of language revival.

Children before the age of three have an uncanny ability to learn many languages and adopt them as native ones. In theory, there is no limit to the number of languages that a toddler can master, but in practice two or even three languages are quite manageable. The effort on the parents’ part is minimal. All the father and mother have to do is to speak the languages with one another and with the child. The baby has only to listen. A child has no predisposed preference for any language. He/she will absorb anything and everything you expose him/her to. Small children are such marvellous creatures!

However, apathy and ignorance are stubborn foes. Some people think that teaching children more than one language is detrimental to its future mastery of a single one. This is utterly incorrect, and research even suggests that poly-glot children tend to be more culturally advanced than their mono-lingual counterparts. Language hues the way we perceive the world, so the more mother languages that we have, the wider are the horizons of our perceptions. This is food for thought.

If parents are properly informed about the advantages of multi-lingualism, then many of them will undoubtedly choose to teach their children more than one language. The dissemination of this information must be done through the mass media and by issuing booklets targeted at the nuclear family, which is the back-bone of any meaningful revival of the Circassian language and culture.

Apathy results when parents are presented with the facts and they choose to ignore them. This is fine because nobody can be coerced in this respect. However, some parents lack the option of teaching their children their mother tongue because they are ignorant of it. This is the case with the majority of them. Nevertheless, if the will is there, it is possible to devise other ways of exposing the children to Circassian, like involving the grandparents if they are alive or other relatives who are conversant with the language.

 Kreindler, I., Bensoussan, M., Avinor, E. and Bram, C., ‘Circassian Israelis: Multilingualism as a Way of Life’, in Language, Culture and Curriculum, vol. 8, no. 2, 1995, pp 149-62.