Sofia Perez

I vividly remember the first garden that was truly mine. It was a rectangular wooden planter that was situated in the back of my grandmother’s backyard, right in front of this peach-pink wall and to the right of the thick trunk of a palm tree. It contained lavender, blueberry, basil, rosemary, and a few other miscellaneous herbs. The lavender didn’t do too well, while in the passionate Florida heat the basil grew tall and skinny with a woody stem. The rosemary thrived and eventually mint became another one of my go-to crops. There was also lettuce at some point, and my connection to this plant was so deep that once, upon someone suggesting we uproot the whole plant to make a salad, I nearly cried. 

Gaurav, A. (n.d.). [Online Image] Pexels. Available at: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-of-green-plants-1537265/ [Accessed 19 Jul. 2022].

I would frequently wheel around the wooden box of plants, far from the pool, close to the sunlight, and every day after school I would run out to the backyard with the pride of an eight-year-old who can keep a living thing alive. In part this early connection to a microcosm of agriculture taught me about responsibility, love, and care, about the wordlessness of all three things at their most intimate level. However it is only through words that I am able to share this story with you, and ultimately, remember the story myself. Connection to everything is about storytelling, and storytelling is about language. 

If the world were an economy of ideas, words would be the currency. So to answer the question of whether or not linguistic diversity can help solve broken agriculture, my answer is a firm yes. Of course, it is not a complete panacea to all social issues regardless of time, space, and money. That doesn’t mean it can’t offer a good place to start with improving our relationship to food. With more diverse thought, society benefits from a unique and novel framework by which to address the task of problem-solving. 

Without this, we lose a way of thinking and understanding that threatens the very mindsets we apply to big issues. Take food insecurity as an example and break it down into nutrition, agriculture, transportation, genetics, community, and culture. It’s a thick web of connection, starting from the soil and ending on a plate. Combine this with the demise of linguistic diversity and you get not only the monoculture of crops, but also of ideas. In such a way, combining language and food can support each other.

Kroon, J. (n.d.). [Online Image] Pexels. Available at: https://www.pexels.com/photo/eye-level-photo-of-cultivated-land-1000057/ [Accessed 19 Jul. 2022].

For a second let’s just stop to consider this. Food and language supporting each other- what does this really mean? On the one hand there is the basic nutritional value of food, and our basic understanding of nutrition. Language intersects with nutrition at this crossroads. This is where biochemical awareness meets the Westernized human mind and is stuffed under the mental file cabinets we have been taught to imagine. Fruit is sugar. Meat is protein. Butter is fat. It couldn’t be any more straightforward. 

Yet these semantic representations hardly scratch the surface of what’s really going on. Nor do they challenge the moral value that has been placed on certain food groups. It’s for this reason that I’ve hopped onboard Dr. Cate Shanahan’s Deep Nutrition train which emphasizes the importance of a holistic approach to nutrition. This involves sourcing food carefully so as to maximize its nutritional value and returning to our ancient culinary traditions. 

So what does sourcing food and cooking like a Michelin-star chef have to do with language? On the surface it seems unclear, but anytime we discuss the importance of language, we are really discussing a mode of communication, each word a carefully crafted acoustic parcel for an idea. Just think how your own ideas would change if there were no semantic box in which to fit them. 

In my article When Words Die, I discuss the implications of this hotly debated topic in psychology. It boils down to an intellectual tug-of-war between languages causing ideas versus ideas causing language.  “While language perception is driven by expectations,” David Ludden Ph.D. explains in How Languages Shape Our World. “…language also creates expectations that influence our perception of the world more generally. This is because we don’t just use language to communicate with others, we use it to think to ourselves.” 

If this is so, one of the facets of life that language surely influences is the quotidian encounters we have with food and the way we go on to relate to it. This is why language surrounding food, cooking, and nutrition must be closely guarded. Taking this initial step sets us up for a better relationship to nutrition and agriculture going forward.

But what about Hawaiian? 

There are several layers to the communication behind our words. On one level there is the sound, the way our lips carve sentences into the air and control their pitch and frequency. Then there is the information, the “who, what, where, when, why, how” of language. There is the emotional accent to each objective fact, hidden beneath tone and heavily imbued in body language. There is also identity, tethering a relational sense of self to the world in which we exist. 

There is artistry in the uniqueness of every different combination of these qualities, artistry which presupposes a special framework of thinking. Let’s narrow this down to agriculture, a concept which incorporates both the everyday experience of food and the remote task of cultivating it. Now let’s consider how much of these experiences are shaped for us before we even sit down to share a meal. 

One might argue that ideas shape language. The other would reverse this relationship to say that language shapes ideas. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between. Assuming this to be the case, how would our actual experience of food and its harvest change if mainstream languages like English existed alongside endangered languages like Hawaiian? 

First I’ll answer this question from the vantage of Hawaiian grammar, in which there are no adjectives. Instead, there are verbs called painu `a`ano, or stative verbs, that describe being in the state of something. As a result, there is also no stand alone verb “to be”, as it is baked into basically every painu `a`ano instead. So for example, instead of having an adjective for “beautiful”, there is instead the verb “to be beautiful”. See below for an example and click this link for a more detailed explanation. 

English

The woman	is	beautiful.
Noun	Verb	Adjective

Hawaiian

Nani(nah-nee)Is beautiful	Ka wahine(kah wah-hee-neh)the woman.
Painu `a`ano (stative verb)	Nouns

Considering this difference in grammatical structure, how might the concept of action be translated across English and Hawaiian cultures and languages? This is of particular interest to me when considering the impacts of emphasizing actions, which are time-dependent, over adjectives, which are passive and untethered to time. Take for example the notion of being “healthy”. If “healthy” is a verb, you can’t identify as “healthy” without constantly “being healthy”, as this state is defined by the extent to which you act in a “healthy” way. This way of thinking requires you to constantly actualize your qualities. If not, they cease to be part of your identity. The cultural effects of this are vast, especially on a larger scale in which “to be eco-friendly” or “to be sustainable” must be proven as constant demonstrations. 

Secondly, let’s analyze this more holistically by reflecting on a philosophy that straddles both the realm of Hawaiian culture and semantics: o’hana. This integral aspect of Hawaiian culture, which I discussed in my article Aloha in Agriculture, places family and community ties at its center. With this in mind, o’hana champions the act of sharing resources and taking care of the people around you. This mindset is particularly important in Hawaiian culture, as a history of the limited resources inherent to island life have made it clear that cooperation with nature and each other is crucial to survival. 

Yet even for those not living on islands, the importance of o’hana rings true. The only way to grapple with the world’s biggest challenges is to cooperate with nature and each other. In this sense, adopting the spirit of o’hana is vital when addressing the vast issues of global food systems. It is through o’hana that local farming efforts and food initiatives thrive.  

To quote the heartwarming lines of a Hawaiian proverb, e hele me ka pu’olo. With that said, mahalo nui loa and a hui hou, dear reader! May you approach your own life with a little extra o’hana and maybe even take an unexpected life lesson from the intricacies of Hawaiian linguistics. 

Translation and pronunciation:

E hele me ka pu’olo.	Eh heh-leh meh kah poo-oh-loh	Always make every person, place or condition better than you left it.
A hui hou!	ah who-ee ho	Until we meet again!
Mahalo nui loa!	ma-ha-lo new-ee lo-ah	Thank you very much!

Thought to Action

• Start learning an endangered language on Duolingo.
• Attend a local farmer’s market.
• Reconnect with what you’re eating by sharing your meals with other people, including those who can’t cook for themselves.
• Contribute to a food-sharing initiative near you.
• Bring some culinary traditions recognised by UNESCO into your home.

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