







































GATESOL in Action 
georgiatesoljournal.org 
 

 Spring 2020 
Volume 29, Issue 1 

ISSN: 2331-6845 
 
From the Editor – The Quietening of Languages: How Can We 
Celebrate and Welcome Them? 
 
Gertrude M. Tinker Sachs 
Senior Editor 
Georgia State University, gtinkersachs@gsu.edu 
 

The Atlanta Journal Constitution (AJC) published recently an article 

extracted from the New York Times called “Battle to Save Seke” (de Freytas-

Tamura, 2020). This article was published under the theme of Understanding 

Native Tongues. I was disheartened to read about the forecasted loss of the Seke 

language, one of the 100 endangered languages of Nepal. Most of the Seke people 

are speaking Nepali and other Tibetan languages. According to the Endangered 

Language Alliance website, the total number of Seke speakers is estimated to be 

around 700 in the world, with some 100 of them living in New York City. For 

numerous political, economic, and social reasons, Seke is being lost, and in New 

York, one reason is that younger speakers’ language loss is being accelerated by 

moving away from the small existing community to seek jobs. The year 2019 was 

declared the International Year of Indigenous Languages by the United Nations 

(UN), and in December of last year, the President of the General Assembly, 

Tijjani Muhammad-Bande, noted that “Despite UN efforts throughout this year 

to highlight the daily disappearance of mother tongue languages across the world, 

challenges persist nonetheless” (UN News, 2019b, para. 1). 

Linguistic Neo-Imperialism and Indigenous Languages 

The UN rights experts report that “of the 7000 indigenous languages 

spoken today, four in 10 are in danger of disappearing” and they have called for 

“a decade of action to reverse the “historic destruction” of age-old dialects” (UN 

mailto:gtinkersachs@gsu.edu
https://elalliance.org/
https://elalliance.org/


2  Quietening of Languages 

News, 2019a, para 1). In looking at the disappearance of languages, Skutnabb-

Kangas and Phillipson (2010) contended that the conditions for languages are 

influenced by factors such as: 

The relative isolation of the speakers from speakers of other languages; the 
self-sufficiency of the group (the extent to which they need to trade with 
others for basic needs; whether they can grow and collect what they need 
all year round and so on; the availability of jobs without the need to 
migrate; the existence of material resources of interest to outsiders in the 
area, and their exploitation (logging, oil, mining and the like). (p. 8) 

However, the authors also note that some languages run the serious risk of 

being lost because of linguistic neo-imperialism. Skutnabb-Kangas and 

Phillipson (2010) define linguistic imperialism as “operating through structures 

and ideologies and entailing unequal treatment for groups identified by 

language.” Linguistic neo-imperialism is, on the other hand, “how linguistic 

capital is managed, how information flows toward or away from territorial 

entities through trade, commerce, capital thereby serving the interests of the 

corporate world and the government it influences” (p. 82). One of the results of 

linguistic neo imperialism is that people believe that the they must sacrifice their 

own language for the dominant one – the “neo-imperial language” because it will 

help them get ahead in life. For some linguistic groups, this may result in a 

subtractive language shift or what Skutnabb-Kangas and Phillipson (2010) called 

“linguistic capital dispossession” (p. 83). 

This linguistic capital dispossession can be seen not only in the loss of 

endangered languages but also in the loss that many bi/multilingual children 

experience because their language is subjected to invisibility by school and 

country. The U.S. census clock shows that with a birth every nine seconds, at the 

time of writing, the U.S. has a population of more than 329,439,524 (as of March 

26, 2020). It is the third most populous country in the world after China and India 



Tinker Sachs                                                                                                         3 

 

respectively (U.S. Census Bureau, 2020). After English, the second most spoken 

language at home in the U.S. is Spanish followed by Chinese, Tagalog, 

Vietnamese, and Arabic (Zeigler, & Camarota, 2019). In 2018, 67,268,668 

people spoke a language other than English at home in the U.S. In Georgia, from 

1980 to 2018, there was a growth of 952% (131,720 in 1980 to 1,385,411 in 2018) 

in the number of people speaking a language other than English at home, which 

constituted 14% of the population in 2018 compared to 3% in 1980 (Zeigler & 

Camarota, 2019). Imagine if all these people and their children felt that their 

languages were welcomed and celebrated in schools and community spaces? 

A big question for this editorial is just that: what would the United 

States be like if languages other than English were welcomed and celebrated 

in schools and in public places other than the home? The introduction 

presented previously gives us an inkling of the statistical numbers and the 

researched and theorized aspects of languages spoken. What follows are the 

actual experiences and insights of three bi/multilingual speakers who live here in 

Georgia. The first is Georgia author Nury Castillo Crawford who consented to be 

interviewed for this editorial and the other two are in our featured article 

“Testimonio y Teoria: Creating Bridges with Bilingual Communities in Dekalb 

County” authored by A. Jyoti Kaneria and Christian Valdez. 

Interview with Nury Castillo Crawford 

First, I discuss some of the insights gleaned from my interview with Nury 

Castillo Crawford. Castillo Crawford came to the U.S. as a young child with her 

parents. She is author of the popular bilingual text 3,585 Miles to be an American 

Girl and co-author with Demitrius Motion Bullock of Sofia and Vivi: A Bilingual 

Children’s Book: Big Sister. I give excerpts from our conversation followed by 

brief commentaries. 



4  Quietening of Languages 

The interview with Nury Castillo Crawford (indicated in the excerpts as 

“NCC”) took place at my home on November 6, 2018, around lunchtime. 

Emboldened words in the transcription indicate that they were spoken or stated 

emphatically. When Castillo Crawford arrived, we had a bit of lunch sitting at 

my kitchen table, and after lunch, we moved over to my sitting room where we 

talked for almost 90 minutes. Castillo Crawford talked candidly with me 

(indicated as “GTS” in the transcription) about how to get to know “the Other” 

who might be from cultural and linguistic groups different from your own. In this 

first excerpt, Excerpt 1, she expands on Othering. 

Excerpt 1: Othering 

NCC: I feel like “the Other” in my life doesn’t necessarily revolve under a 
specific demographic but more of people that are closed minded in terms of 
global thinking or even being open minded to other cultures. I feel like there are 
other people that, due to their own personal background knowledge, don’t know 
anything about Latino people and categorize “Latinos” under one umbrella. I’m 
an optimist, so I think it’s due to the fact that they lack experiences, and they 
don’t know other people, um, that don’t look like them and because there’s been 
a narrative widely shared with the lack of knowledge, you buy that narrative. Um, 
and many times when I speak to my friends that are Latino, like me, I feel bad. 
And I tell them, like, I kind of feel bad for those other people because I feel like 
if they knew me, they might, I think they’d like me. I think, like, you know of 
they all think like, “that’s way optimistic for me,” but that’s what they think.  

GTS: So, you were saying “the Other” in your life would be people who don’t 
think like you? Not open minded like you? 

NCC: Well, I think that they just, they have limited experiences to other cultures, 
so therefore, it’s hard for them to empathize with other people’s challenges or 
struggles. And I feel like if they were a little bit more open minded, they might 
be more empathetic. 

GTS: Ah, do these people belong to any particular ethnic group? 

NCC: I don’t—I don’t think it’s more about ethnic. I think it’s more about lack 
of experiences and lack of background knowledge.  



Tinker Sachs                                                                                                         5 

 

GTS: So, they can be any group of people coming from any class or any race or 
any gender? 

NCC: Well yeah, I do. But I think that since we’re living in the United States of 
America and my experiences with people that lack that have been “American,” 
so yeah, I just feel like it’s people in the U.S. because even other people in other 
countries—one of the things that I always talk about is how language is more 
than just grammar and vocabulary and knowing some words. Language is part of 
culture and culture is part of language. And so, many times “Americans,” because 
we live in America, they praise other Americans for learning another language. 
You know, it’s like, “Oh my gosh, like, you know another language” or “You 
know three languages.” It’s like the biggest thing in the world, you know? But 
they don’t, the same praise doesn’t go to people who come to this country with a 
language and are learning English. That’s still another language, but it doesn’t 
feel like someone who comes to this country as an immigrant gets the same praise 
and the same accolades for having another language in there . . . so I think part of 
that, I think it’s like limited knowledge on their part. 

I believe that many of the ailments of our world today have to do with our 

“unknowing” of those who are different from ourselves in some way. We also 

buy into a grand narrative of the Other without ever knowing the person who is 

“othered.” I wanted to start the conversation this way to get Castillo Crawford 

reflecting on this and how she views othering based on one’s limited experiences 

and limited knowledge. I believe too, it has to do with issues of race, class, and 

history as well as country of origin. Castillo Crawford expands on this idea of 

intersectionality in Excerpt 2. 

Excerpt 2: Intersectionality 

GTS: Is it regarding people who come from certain countries, or is it immigrants 
in general [that] this perception about not privileging their speaking of another 
language? 

NCC: I think just based on what I’ve been seeing and hearing and experiencing, 
I think it’s just immigrants that come from third-world countries. From countries 
that some Americans feel like, because they don’t know either, they don’t know, 
they buy into this idea of, they think third-world country, even a third-world 
country has its rich areas or has an area of people who are making good money. 



6  Quietening of Languages 

I mean, we can go into that, too, which I don’t approve of. Like, you know, they, 
for example, people think, like, there’s literally people that think Africa is a 
country and not a continent, and they want to group everybody in Africa into one 
vision of starving children when that’s not the case. It’s like, you know, there’s 
so many countries in Africa, and there’s so many rich countries in Africa, and I 
always, like, baffled by that kind of thing. Same mindset about South America. 
They think all of South Americans, I guess, are wearing big sombreros or 
something when there’s so many, there’s countries in South America, and there’s 
a couple of countries in South America that are predominantly white Latin 
American people, and even in Mexico, there’s white Mexicans and people don’t 
understand that. And I think it’s because a narrative has been written and people 
that have limited experiences and therefore have limited, uh, they don’t have an 
open mind and they have limited ideas and whatever, uh, about culture, etc., they 
buy it because it’s easier to just buy that than do your own research and find out 
about what the people in those countries or continents are all about. 

GTS: So when we talk about that the so-called third-world countries and the way 
they are perceived by Americans in general, um, under the privileging of certain 
groups speaking certain languages, who may not necessarily come from the third 
world, are you also talking about a darker skin color? Or are those white, for 
example white Mexicans, how are they perceived by Americans? Or is it only we 
are talking about darker-skinned people? 

NCC: Right. Well, I think in general most people would think that it is the brown 
skin or the darker skin immigrants from wherever they come from, but I know 
Latinos that are white, and the minute they open their mouths and they have that 
thick accent, Americans look down on them, too. Like, and especially, they say 
they speak Spanish it’s just, and I don’t know if it’s because of the climate that 
we’re currently living or not. But so yeah, generally you would think it’s just the 
brown people, but I personally know people that are Latino, that are white Latino, 
that get that, too. So, I feel like it’s more, I think it stems from the color thing 
first, but I think eventually it’s just like, okay, everybody’s just grouped. 

Castillo Crawford speaks about the differential treatment Americans and 

immigrants receive when they speak additional languages. Why is the 

immigrant’s language not affirmed while those who are learning (an)other 

language(s) are regarded as something wonderful? Castillo Crawford recognizes 

the intersectionality of language with race, culture, country of origin, and class. 



Tinker Sachs                                                                                                         7 

 

Castillo Crawford names ignorance as a cause of Othering. She also believes that 

Othering is built upon the foundation of dominant narratives perpetuated in 

society. Castillo Crawford expounds further in Excerpt 3. 

Excerpt 3: Dominant Narratives 

NCC: Because sometimes when people, when those other people, they don’t 
think about the human side. They just think about what they think is right and 
wrong and what they’ve been hearing. The narrative that they’re selling that the 
people in my community are illegal . . . 

GTS: Yes, the dominant narrative . . . 

NCC: . . . killers, drug dealers, and we’re stealing the government’s money, when 
it’s not true. When I came to this country, my dad worked night and day. He had 
blisters, his hands were bleeding, but he worked night and day to get us out of 
that one-bedroom—five of us in one bedroom. And we did! And by the time he 
got us out, we had a house and a car. It was a beat-up car but he knew how to fix 
cars so that was amazing. So, I think that when people think of, you know, Latino-
Hispanics, they automatically think that, and so I just try to help them see, like, 
I’m just like you. I love my family, too.  

Castillo Crawford is adamant about the negative stereotypes being 

perpetuated by dominant groups in society about minoritorized groups. She 

believes that we need to see ourselves in others to become more empathetic 

people. She feels the pain of the negativity. She moves on to tell another story 

from her own life, her real narrative from personal experience, in Excerpt 4. 

Excerpt 4: The Real Narrative from Personal Experience 

GTS: Right, right. So, tell us about your community? What would you like for us 
to know about your community? 

NCC: Oh, my gosh. Hard working, big dreamers, persevere. 

GTS: They’re big dreamers in which way? 

NCC: I always considered my parents the original dreamers, and I am the dream. 
I feel like they sacrificed everything. 



8  Quietening of Languages 

GTS: Yes.  

NCC: Their life, their family, the little they had, just to try to give me something 
better. 

GTS: Right. 

NCC: To give me the opportunity to fly. 

GTS: And you’re the only child? 

NCC: I’m the oldest.  

GTS: The oldest, okay.  

NCC: So, I carried my other two around— 

GTS: Right. 

NCC: Because I’m the oldest. 

GTS: Yeah.  

NCC: And they would tell you the same thing. 

GTS: Right. 

NCC: They would tell you, like, “Yeah, she did.” Because I went to the parent 
teacher conferences. I helped my brother with homework. I refinanced my 
parent’s house before I was 14. Taught my mom how a drive before I was 13. 
Like, I feel like my parents believed in me. 

GTS: Right. 

NCC: And um— 

GTS: Were you the language broker for your parents? 

NCC: I was. 

GTS: Yes. 

NCC: I was. But my mom and dad, my mom had very limited education. 

GTS: Right.  

NCC: But even then, I reminisce about the support she gave me, and I try to 
reiterate that, with parents, whether they’re Latina, or non-Latino, um, and I tell 
them, you don’t have to know anything. Like, literally, not everything. I mean 
anything. 



Tinker Sachs                                                                                                         9 

 

GTS: Right, right. 

NCC: You don’t have to know anything that your kids are learning. My mom 
didn’t know a word in English.  

GTS: Right. 

NCC: But I would get home, and she would tell me to read because I was 
supposed to read.  

GTS: Right.  

NCC: I mean, I didn’t know any English either. But I had the book that teacher 
gave me. And she would stop cooking because she was always cooking it seemed 
like, and she’d tell me to read, and I would, and she literally would be teared up, 
and she’d be smiling. And she’d be like, you’re so smart. Your English is so good. 
And of course, I ate it up. But now as a grown up, I’m like, I didn’t know any 
English! I probably sounded horrible. (Laughter.) But, so that’s not the point, I 
tell people. You know, self-confidence is more than half the battle. 

GTS: Right. 

NCC: And my mom had an elementary education, didn’t have a job and didn’t 
know any English. But she instilled that in me. 

GTS: Right. 

NCC: And believed in me and told me I was the smartest, bravest girl in the 
world. 

GTS: Yes. 

NCC: You know? And so, I feel like that is so powerful. 

GTS: Right. 

NCC: And if you don’t—it’s like, you don’t have to know everything. My 
youngest son took calculus his junior [year] in high school. And I remember 
looking at it, and I saw him working on it in the dining room table, so I knew it 
was serious because usually he just goes to his room, and I was like, “Oh my 
gosh, he must be having trouble.” And I was like, “Are you having trouble?” He 
was like, “I’m gonna look it up.” And I was like, “Okay.” Now I’m looking at it 
like, “Oh my gosh, like, that totally looks like ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.” 
(Laughter.) I don’t know what that is.” But I was like, “Oh, Marquitos, I have, I 
have cookies in the fridge. Want me to make you some cookies?”  



10  Quietening of Languages 

And he was like, “Okay, yeah.” So, like, I baked cookies and gave him milk and 
sat next to him. Literally just sat there.  

GTS: Yeah.  

NCC: And he ate his cookies. He didn’t [unclear] still looking like hieroglyphics.  

GTS: Yeah 

NCC: Hieroglyphics! 

GTS: Yeah. (Laughter.) 

NCC: So, like, I didn’t know anything, but it didn’t matter. I just sat with him. 

GTS: That is the important thing that you want to convey to people, the fact that 
you were supporting him, and he felt your presence.  

NCC: Yeah. [Unclear]. 

GTS: And knowing that you were egging him on just as your mom was, was 
egging you on. Right? 

NCC: Right. And so, I think it’s so important for parents to understand that even 
when we talk about supporting your kids work with education, I’m not saying 
you have to know anything. I’m just saying you have to be patient and love on 
them and be present. 

Castillo Crawford makes an important point in Excerpt 4 for those 

immigrant parents who may feel “less than” because they do not speak the 

dominant language. She states clearly that parents do not need to speak English 

but can support their children in loving ways by being present as their children 

complete the school tasks. Our final Excerpt 5 looks at Castillo Crawford’s 

activism and community engagement. 

Excerpt 5: Activism and Community Engagement 

NCC: I am an extremely proud Latina. I, part of me, and part of who I am as a 
leader is supporting my community. 

GTS: Yes. 

 



Tinker Sachs                                                                                                         11 

 

NCC: I was talking to the Latin American association as I was driving here, and 
they’re, they’re having their youth leadership thing on Saturday. And, um, the 
young man said, basically, like, “Do you sleep?” And I said, “When it comes to 
my community, I guess I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” I said, “Because if I can 
support, I’m gonna support.” So yeah, I am a proud Latina. American. I believe 
in culture and language being integrated. And it’s, you can’t have one without the 
other. Um, I’m a proud mother of three young men. And, and I advocate for 
anything that has to do with education because I, I’m a believer that education is 
the game changer. And if we can help our communities understand that—it’s 
harder than people think—then we’ll be able to move forward. 

Castillo Crawford works hard in her community and believes in the power 

of education. Our charge as ESOL educators and advocates of culturally and 

linguistically diverse students is to help them feel as empowered as she is. Indeed, 

Castillo Crawford’s interview has highlighted challenges to some of the 

debilitating ways of thinking about those whose culture we may not know. In 

conclusion, she implores us to become educated about others and recognize that 

culture and language are inextricably intertwined. When we empower the child 

in our schools and communities, we empower the language and help that 

language to survive and thrive outside of the home. 

Featured Article: “Othered” Children and Adults 

The interview with Castillo Crawford highlights othering, 

intersectionality, dominant narratives, the real narratives from personal 

experiences and activism and community engagement.  From these lens, we know 

that othering and dominant narratives can be negative and debilitating.  But, if 

we as educators can learn from the personal experiences of our students we can 

then serve to empower them.  This is what the authors of our featured article do 

in telling us their stories. Kaneria and Valdez are educators of transnational 

parents from India and Mexico. We hear their testimonio of growing up in 

Georgia as “Othered” children and adults. They draw on critical socio-historical, 



12  Quietening of Languages 

linguistic, and cultural lenses to theorize their experiences. Their stories are rich 

with intersectionality of language, race, class, and country of origin. They, like 

Castello Crawford, hope to inspire and empower educators of transnational 

children to see the linguistic and cultural resources they bring to school and draw 

on them to teach.  

Kaneria and Valdez’s article was used at the first preconference writing 

institute for teachers (Tinker Sachs, 2019a) on October 25, 2019, and at the 

GATESOL in Action presentation (Tinker Sachs, 2019b) at the GATESOL 

Conference on October 26, 2019, in Suwanee, Georgia. The readers at these 

sessions were very receptive to the paper, and I hope that the readers of this 

edition of GATESOL in Action will give a favorable response as well. We 

welcome more teacher writers to submit their work, and we thank our reviewers 

for their work on this edition. 

Concluding Thoughts 

In closing this editorial, I return to the question: what would the United 

States be like if languages other than English were welcomed and celebrated in 

schools and public spaces? Of course, it depends on what we mean by welcomed 

and celebrated. For me, welcomed means given the power to be recognized by 

empowering legislation, and celebrated means drawn upon by teachers to affirm 

identity and deepen teaching connections where possible and allowed in 

classrooms and in community places. It would be a “gentler and more humane” 

United States where linguistic resources are built upon to promote self-efficacy 

and civic engagement. This climate would result in the awakening of languages, 

not the quietening of languages with which we started this editorial. I hope this 

editorial and this edition of our journal serve to enliven the conversation on the 

dangers of language loss and subtractive bilingualism and the need to celebrate 



Tinker Sachs                                                                                                         13 

 

and welcome others who are culturally and linguistically different from 

ourselves.   

I close with the words from the United Nations Rights experts who implore 

all educators not to contribute to language loss or subtractive language shift or 

linguistic capital dispossession. The experts call for “UN member States to 

recognise, protect and promote indigenous languages through legislation, policies 

and other strategies in full cooperation with indigenous peoples,” and for the 

“sustained support for bilingual and mother tongue education . . . access to health, 

employment, judicial and other public services in the languages of indigenous 

peoples, including through cyberspace and the internet” (UN News, 2019a, para. 

8). 

Acknowledgements 

Very special thanks to Nury Castillo Crawford for her time in speaking 

with me to share her insights and experiences. Special thanks also to Zahava 

Feldstein, Georgia State University intern, for her meticulous transcription of the 

interview. 

 

References 

de Freytas-Tamura, K. (2020, January 7). Just 700 speak this language (50 in 
the same Brooklyn building). The New York Times. 
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/07/nyregion/rare-languages-seke-
vlashki-wakhi.html 

Endangered Language Alliance. (2012). Seke: A Tamangic language of Nepal.  
https://elalliance.org/languages/himalaya/seke/ 

Skutnabb-Kangas, T., & Phillipson, R. (2010). The global politics of language: 
Market, maintenance, marginalization or murder. In N. Coupland (Ed.), 
The handbook of language and globalization (pp. 77–100). Blackwell. 
https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444324068.ch3 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/07/nyregion/rare-languages-seke-vlashki-wakhi.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/07/nyregion/rare-languages-seke-vlashki-wakhi.html
https://elalliance.org/languages/himalaya/seke/
https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444324068.ch3


14  Quietening of Languages 

Tinker Sachs, G. M. (2019, October 25). The process and the act of writing as 
knowledgeable stakeholder in the education of multilinguals: 
GATESOL unites to write [Conference presentation]. GATESOL All 
Day Pre-Conference Institute (Session Initiator, Developer, and 
Facilitator), J. Alvin Instructional Support Center, Suwanee, GA. 

Tinker Sachs, G. M. (2019, October 26). Images that haunt us: Disrupting the 
normalization of what’s in our faces [Conference presentation]. 
GATESOL Conference, J. Alvin Instructional Support Center, 
Suwanee, GA.  

U.S. Census Bureau. (2020). U.S. and world population clock. 
https://www.census.gov/popclock/ 

UN News. (2019, August 7). Four in 10 indigenous languages at risk of 
disappearing, warn UN human rights experts. 
https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/08/1043871 

UN News. (2019, December 17). Two indigenous languages are dying every 
month: UN Assembly President. 
https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/12/1053711 

Zeigler, K., & Camarota, S. A. (2019, October 29). 67.3 million in the United 
States spoke a foreign language at home in 2018. Center for 
Immigration Studies. https://cis.org/Report/673-Million-United-States-
Spoke-Foreign-Language-Home-2018 

https://www.census.gov/popclock/
https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/08/1043871
https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/12/1053711
https://cis.org/Report/673-Million-United-States-Spoke-Foreign-Language-Home-2018
https://cis.org/Report/673-Million-United-States-Spoke-Foreign-Language-Home-2018

