Portland State Magazine Winter 2008

Fading Voices Tucker Childs documents the disappearing languages of West Africa, so a culture, a linguistic heritage will not be lost. WRITTEN BY JEFF KUECHLE WHEN HE WA S a Peace Corps worker in the remote back– country of Liberia back in the 1970s, Tucker Childs felt like an outsider. "I drew a lot of attention ," he says. "They had a saying there-'Eeeh, white men!"' Then one day, Childs noticed a villager who reminded him vividly of Buddy Bertha, an old man Childs had known when he was growing up in the Midwest. "Ir was like an epiphany, only longer lasting," Childs explains "-a realization chat, at the level of everyday interaction, just in being human , there are so many connections between us. And suddenly my sense of otherness was gone." Nelson Mandela once said, "If you speak a language a man can understand, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart." Over a career that spans three decades, Childs, a professor in PSU's Department ofApplied Linguistics, has been speak– ing co the hearts ofAfricans. He has dedicated his career to a highly unusual specialty: documenting and preserving the 14 PORTLAND STATE MAGAZINE WINTER 2008 disappearing tribal languages ofWest Africa, in nations like Guinea and Sierra Leone. RIG HT NOW , Childs is working on his most ambitious proj– ect yet-the three-year Documenting Krim and Born Project in ierra Leone. Funded by grants from University of London's Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project and the National Science Foundation, Childs and students from the U.S., Europe, and Africa will track down and record the few remain– ing speakers of the Krim and Born languages ofWest Africa. Once common, Krim and Born have been supplanted by the Mende language in Sierra Leone, one of the most widely spoken of the country's 20-plus languages and dialects. The reasons for their disappearance are complex, and include the changing political landscape of the country, the rise of militarism in this formerly peaceful part of the continent, and simple socioeconomics: co find work, people need to speak a common language.