Episode #125: Keeping the Burmese Language Alive
The situation in Myanmar continues to deteriorate following the military coup, and the danger that the conflict may spread beyond its borders increases by the day. So one might naturally assume that experts in the fields of Burma Studies, along with Burmese language teachers, would be more important now than ever. Yet nonetheless, in a move that came as a surprise to many, the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) has elected to terminate the post of Professor of Burmese.
Justin Watkins, who has been affiliated with SOAS since 1994, currently holds this position, and is our guest today. He teaches linguistics and has conducted a variety of research projects on the languages of Myanmar and greater Southeast Asia. He also annually visits Chiang Mai, where he leads intensive Burmese language courses, which typically brings together a diverse range of attendees: “People from commerce, from academia, from diplomacy, from NGOs, from the development world, and lots of other things besides people with whatever sort of connection or interest in the Burmese language.”
Burmese language instruction at SOAS has a long history. It dates back to 1917, when civil servants associated with Britain’s colonial administration studied Burmese, along with a host of other ethnic languages from the country. Yet as the institution has approached the 21st century, Director Adam Habib has led it in a new direction, “of promoting equitable partnerships with academic institutions in the Global South, which is, I guess at its heart, a decolonializing project, a way of engaging meaningfully and equitably with knowledge systems in the Global South.”
The institution also has on-going financial problems, which can be traced back to Brexit. That decreased the flow of EU students attending school in England, while also cutting off British access to the European Research Council and its grants. In addition, whereas there had previously been central government funding to underwrite the teaching of less common languages, those monies are no longer available. And when the COVID pandemic hit, it only made the already challenging situation worse, as the administration sought further cost-cutting measures. As a result, Watkins was informed in the summer in 2020, that his position “was at risk of redundancy.”
SOAS encouraged Watkins to seek out funding on his own that could build up an endowment to keep the post sustainable into the future, and gave him two years to do so. However, as the military coup was launched only months later, it became exceedingly difficult to ask for funding for his program when the entire country of Myanmar was facing such dire circumstances, and Burma-related monies were being directed to humanitarian and other ventures to support a suffering population. For this reason, Watkins requested a two year extension, but the post is set to expire this month without having yet been granted the extra time. Given the august history of the institution, this is all the more depressing. “It should be said that interacting and studying countries in difficult situations with military dictatorships and the like is SOAS’s bread and butter,” Watkins says. “It's certainly not something that SOAS would shy away from!”
Watkins points beyond his own position as professor to the extent to which his work has impacted a variety of people on the ground. “It is not a great time to be reducing the UK’s academic capacity to deal with Myanmar… I'm part of a broad network of people through the students that I've taught over the years, a network of people who do amazing things.” Watkins also notes that at a time when it has been so difficult for the crisis in Myanmar to break into the international community’s consciousness and be adequately covered and understood abroad, a cost-saving move like this only serves to further relegate the country and its people to the background. This is exacerbated by the fact that SOAS is one of the few institutions in the world that still offers Burmese language study, and continued access to less studied languages like Burmese is sorely needed to balance out the “Eurocentrism” that Watkins sees at schools in the West. He characterizes Southeast Asia as “a hotbed of linguistic diversity” that is critical to continue studying—and which, historically, SOAS has been committed to doing.
“One of the things that makes SOAS a great place to do linguistics is that our frames of reference are by default non-European. So if you want to learn about basic phonology, or syntax, or phonetics or whatever it might be, at SOAS you're going to do it with reference to non-European languages from the outset. It’s such a good setting to understand linguistic diversity around the world without being confined to a small set of European languages.”
Watkins also points to the valuable, if less understood, relationship between linguistics and knowledge transfer/communication, indicating that a loss in Burmese language training would be felt in far more acute ways. “There is a unrealistic belief in some cases that knowledge created in one language can be seamlessly [and without losing meaning] transmitted in through another language to the people who wish to engage with that knowledge,” Watkins says, “and that's absolutely not the case.” The implications of decreased Burmese language study, then, will affect countless aid workers, diplomats, human rights activists, and others who can do far better work when they are able to speak in the local language, rather than either requiring complex and sensitive topics to be addressed in what for the Burmese is a foreign language, or needing an intermediary to translate.
In hopes of saving the position, a petition was launched earlier this month from colleagues at Australian National University, which quickly amassed 1,000 signatures. “It's been very encouraging to see the strength of opinion, and the levels of support for Burmese,” Watkins says. Unless he is able to find a very wealthy donor willing to pledge millions of dollars of support, he hopes that this sign of support can convince the administration at SOAS.