The company
analysed online discussions and came up with 223 words from 75 languages.
Babbel then asked an international panel of linguists, authors, and cultural
experts to rank these words. The panel used four criteria for ranking the
words: sound, meaning, rarity, and cultural significance.
The word kaitiakitanga
topped the list.
Kaitiakitanga is a Māori word in the language of
the indigenous people of Aotearoa/New Zealand. Its meaning can be summarised as
guardianship and protection. It is particularly associated with
guardianship and protection of the environment and natural places, although it
also has a wider compass. The word is closely associated with the Māori worldview
of people and nature being one and the same. People are not simply part of
nature, people are nature. Māori recognise various natural features (e.g.
rivers, lakes, mountains) as being the embodiment of ancestors. Such features
are living entities, they are not resources, assets, or possessions. Kaitiakitanga
then, indicates a responsibility to protect, nourish, and heal natural places.
The Babbel
language expert, Estaban Touma Portilla, noted that the word resonated with
those experiencing the effects of climate change and that the repeated sounds
within the word brought to mind ‘our planet, its natural cycles, and our
place within them.’
Although
the idea of a competition between words is a bizarre one, the word kaitiakitanga,
and many of the other top-ranking words offer a space for reflection on what is
important in the world.
The top 15
words all evoke feelings and meanings that resonate with deep human yearnings.
None of them speak in mechanistic, economic, or managerial terms indicating
control, manipulation, exploitation, or extraction.
As
examples, here are four of the other words that made the top 15.
- Iriy (Ukrainian) meaning a mythical, warm place where souls and birds migrate for winter.
- Ubuntu (Zulu) meaning ‘I am because you
are.’ It indicates the relationship we all have with each other, and that I am
only who I am because of everyone and everything else.
- Hiraeth
(Welsh) meaning a
deep, bittersweet, longing for a lost, or never-truly-known home or time.
- Yakamoz
(Turkish)
referring to the silvery shimmer of moonlight on water.
All of
these are words arouse, and remind us of, our true nature and yearnings. They
all echo the underlying concept of kaitiakitanga – viz., that humans are
part and parcel of nature, we are not separate from nature.
We all
have a responsibility and the honour to be guardians of this planet. These
words, and many others, remind us of this.
No comments:
Post a Comment
This blogsite is dedicated to positive dialoque and a respectful learning environment. Therefore, I retain the right to remove comments that are: profane, personal attacks, hateful, spam, offensive, irrelevant (off-topic) or detract in other ways from these principles.