Transcript: Episode #125: Keeping the Burmese Language Alive

Following is the full transcript for the interview with Justin Watkins, which was released on September 30, 2022. This transcript was made possible by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and has not been checked by any human reader. Because of this, many of the words may not be accurate in this text. This is particularly true of speakers who have a stronger accent, as AI will make more mistakes interpreting and transcribing their words. For that reason, this transcript should not be cited in any article or document without checking the timestamp to confirm the exact words that the guest has really said.

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Host  00:33

Welcome to the Insight Myanmar podcast. Before we get into today's show, I want to let you know that we have a lot more written and video content on our website. If you haven't visited yet, we invite you to take a look at WWW dot insight myanmar.org In addition to complete information about all of our past podcasts, there's also a variety of blogs books and videos to check out and you can sign up for a regular newsletter as well. But for now, enjoy what follows and remember sharing is caring.

01:24

Yah yah yah

Kenneth Wong  01:32

Gozi each with its own race by translated and bred by California. Por la sin shines in its own light. Its own glow. Meet I nearly threw as you were in a swing the little torch to with his own reach its own Fang. Severe Ooh led through going to net Gon punat The little justman with its own fame. Its own but but don't want their flu, a con that Yvonne in the yellow budock in its own season, with his own fragrance, nipped in vain when they're lying in the deep wide river has its own patterns, his own waves. Sons are hungry to chow loudly in the curly Creek flows with his own stream. His own fairy TV, a sofa through mom, a mother. This that and everything. Each a beauty and its own right. Of our Wailea as luck gauzy swaying nature blessings every month with charm and power as its gift. Allah one to money in your net $1 muda Mala Yadi be not jealous. And ugliness through go through a chain a car, NIA data Tana allele, a young swan love nine Lucci Badaga with his own cloud, in his own pace, in the right time, at the right place. Each find its its own purpose proofs capable. Its own measure

05:00

Take a look at the way that way, good day

Brad  05:46

Welcome back to Insight Myanmar. Today I'll be speaking with Justin Watkins, who is currently the professor of Burmese at SAS in London. And we will be discussing the recent announcement that Soros is intending to terminate this particular position and as a result is intending to terminate a very long legacy of research into Burmese language and culture. So, Justin, thank you very much for joining us, could you for the sake of the audience, tell us who you are and what it is that you do. Certainly, thank you very much.

Justin Watkins  06:19

I'm very pleased to be able to join this insight Myanmar Podcast Series. My name is Justin Watkins. And since 1999, I've been employed at so us in the University of London. I joined the faculty in 99 as a lecturer in Burmese and have, since that time, climbed to the lofty ranks of Professor since 2015. And my role as an academic so as is teaching linguistics, general glowsticks, phonetics and social linguistics and whatever is needed really. And other Burmese side, I teach Burmese language. And I tried to link the two where I can. And on the research side, I've been involved in the languages and Linguistics of Burmese, and other languages of Myanmar, and mainland Southeast Asia. So that's my remit. And that's what I've been doing. I've actually been at so since 1994, I was a student there for a number of years before I joined the staff. So in total, I've been there quite a bit more than half my life. And it's an amazing institution.

Brad  07:35

Well, I mean, that's, that's quite a quite a broad scope. And I happen to know because I had the pleasure of attending the courses that you were also running in Yangon proper. With with with John Carroll before he passed. So you've been doing quite a few things in the in the Burmese teaching space over the last little

Justin Watkins  07:59

bit. That's true. Yes. I mean, so. I, when I took up my position of as then as Lecturer in Burmese in 99. It was because John Urquell, who had been at so us, since I think 1950, I'm gonna say 57, something like that. 5859 Something like that. Sorry, 62 I think it was. So he'd been a very, very long time. And I was lucky enough to have been doing a PhD on a topic, which related to Myanmar, and for which I've been learning Burmese in parks. And to finish that PhD in the year 1999 When he retired. And at that time, it was compulsory. There was compulsory retirement at the age of 65. And incidentally, John had to combat campaigned very hard at the time for his post to be replaced upon his retirement. And fortunately it was so it sets a positive precedent for something we'll be talking about later. But, yes, once he retired, he decided that he wasn't done teaching Burmese, he decided very graciously to step away and leave me to make my own market. So but in the meantime, he started running a series of short, intensive Burmese language courses initially in Chennai, which I think started in 20. In the year 2000. there abouts. So I'm not sure exactly, and he ran those for a few years and they were popular. And in I think it was 2008 We had a plan encouraged very much by a former Burmese language trainee of ours, who was in position as second secretary at the British Embassy and he had gotten so for every every shoe as British diplomats would turn up to be trained to an advanced level in Burmese, so we get to know them extremely well, because we spend many, many, many hours with them. And in this case, she encouraged us to start running together a Burmese language course in Yangon, along the same model using the same model as the courses in Chennai that John had started running. And John had always said that he wouldn't teach Grammys in in Burma, because that was for Burmese people to do taking coals to Newcastle, I don't know if you are familiar with that expression, or teaching your grandmother to suck eggs. Anyway, we weren't were persuaded. And so our plan was set up and a suitable venue for the somewhat more sensitive times that we were in at the time to run a Burmese sandwich was essentially in my summer vacation. So not part of my soul at work, although obviously related to it, so it wasn't so and one thing, we just did it ourselves because of the logistics, essentially, of running something like that in in Burma. So that was all set up to run. And we had people lined up to attend the course. And then sacral Nargis happen, so we had to cancel it. But we ran it again the next year in 2009. And the format was a two week course. So 10 teaching days, and for each learner, essentially 20 hours of tuition from beginner level to advanced level. So we had, I think, six or seven classes, depending on the format from year to year. And in the bit in the early days, it was, it was all very clandestine, we were sort of hiding in the safe safety of a partly diplomatically protected space, and expecting at some point to be rounded up and escorted to the airport to be deported. Although that never happened, and yes, just slightly nervous of what we were doing builds confidence. And indeed, the numbers of people taking the course, grew over the years. And by 2014 2015, we would regularly have, you know, hundreds 120 people signing up. And it would become a sort of annual Burmese language fest. And a great opportunity for us to meet people who are motivated to learn Burmese, and for them to meet each other. So a good sort of networking opportunity. 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. So we ran these courses very successfully, until COVID hit. So in 20, the last one we ran in Yangon was in 2019. And in 2020, we ran it online. And that very unfortunately coincided with John McHale becoming very, very ill and having to leave the course halfway through. But fortunately, we we knew he was he was not well at the time. So we've made contingency plans for the quarter, I'm fine. And then, very sure that was in June, I think 2020 and then support John's life ended on the second of August 2020. So we were he was very lucky to be working and so very close to the end. So he's tragic, but very peaceful, in 2020, so that's what we were doing outside of so as we've Burmese, which of course, attracted a lot of attention to who we were and why we were interested and motivated, interested in interested in teaching Burmese. And indeed when we did it the rest of the time. And so yes, that brings us to the very long tradition of Burmese learning and Burmese teaching and Burmese Language Scholarship, and lexicography and all sorts of other things that have been running unbroken. SOS since 1917 or 90 years. In some pain. Yeah, the first lecture in Burmese was appointed in 1971. So S, which stands for the School of Oriental and African Studies was in fact the School of Oriental Studies in the African was added later and it was in a different location in Finsbury square in the City of London. And from that time it was really a series of Indian civil service retirees so former colonial administrators who had to in their retirement would come to come back to London and and teach The Burmese language, partly then to prepare their successors, to train their successors in Burmese, to go and administer for what was then the British colony, British colonial administration in in Burma. So that was those were the early years of Burmese teaching at London, but they were also teachers in we might. It was interesting to note in Cochin, and Korean and Shan, and a number of other bigger regional languages spoken in Burma, they were also taught to colonial administrators in preparation for their for their work. And that's, that's part of the history.

Brad  15:53

So I think it is kind of important for us to, to address this because, as you say, so as was founded, I mean, even even the name like Oriental Studies, it's not great. So it was founded very clearly as as a tool of continuing British colonial skill in in a very small sense, we could be generous and say, well, at the very least, the British did care enough to try and learn the local language and culture when they administered a foreign nation. But nevertheless, it's not great. So how how has so as evolved from the early 1900s, to the modern day, in terms of what it teaches? And how it teaches it? Yes, in answer to that question,

Justin Watkins  16:34

the Yes, I Well, I think the words, we can have a separate podcast one day on the on the word oriental and the shifting, I mean, I'm in I imagined that at the time, again, the separating out the name of the institution from its original purpose, oriental at the time simply meant Asian, I guess. And I think at the time of the founding of the institution probably didn't have the connotations that that word has now. And very deliberately, there was a rebranding exercise, I guess, about 1012 years ago, who so it was, it was formally named, rebranded as so as University of London without spelling out the words which salad stand for. Lesson, so I've done for. So we don't, we don't use the words, oriental in our brand new button, the name of the institution and the brand is, is so as University of London, that was the decision that was taken annoyingly without a comma in it. So actually, the institution gets referred to it was so at university and the London kind of get slapped up. But the intention at the time was to link us to the University of London, which is a rather new federal grouping of institutions, which formally made up what was the University of London, and of which services apart and, and the acronyms so SS is the name that were known by mostly. So that was one way of obscuring the word, oriental, I think. But of course, obscuring the word oriental also obscures the word African. And there's been concerned particularly recently that the Africa African Studies side of science has been somewhat neglected at times. So there's a promising effort to try and re re re vivify the Africa focused parts of south which is great. But yes, the we can be make no bones about the about the fact that the institution was set up to train colonial administrators and offices and whatnot. And that I'm not going to make any comments on the awfulness of the British colonial projects around the world. It is what it is. And so I suppose it wasn't part of that machine. But I think the transformation of sass into and well, actually, to add to that we've we still, until somewhat recently have had, I guess, a continuous function of training diplomats, you know, that's the same kind of role that science plays. Although perhaps being a diplomat isn't, it's not really fair to draw a comparison between that and being part of the colonial project. There's a topic for discussion, which we won't get into. But the point being that in the in the last few decades, at any rate, so as has transformed itself into an institution, which focuses on them within academia, on social sciences, and humanities, and arts and humanities, I guess, and that's our academic focus. So we are slightly unusual, we're very small university We've since I think for about 10 years or so we've, we've been issuing our own degrees. So when I was a student that so as my degrees were University of London degrees, that's no longer the case we have our own degree brand, if that's what you call it. And we put, I guess, power on Pharaoh. So the the current focus of the school the new vision, which has been set out by our new director, new since beginning of 21. Adam Habib is one of promoting equitable partnerships with academic institutions in the Global South, which is, I guess, a at its heart, a decolonial Ising project, a way of engaging meaningfully and equitably with knowledge systems in the global south. So that's, that's the stated vision of south at the moment, which is that I think it's an exciting and healthy one. The devil is in the detail interacting with institutions, and academics and the global global south is logistically not not a simple activity to set up. There are inequities of funding and resources and setting up joint programs that aren't just exchange programs where students are shunted back and forth, or indeed faculty members are shunted back and forth actually interacting on projects and degree programs in common is not an easy thing to set up. But that's the vision and and that's what the institution's trying to do now, as well as continuing in its own academic endeavors of teaching, research and research. And I think the direction now is, is facades to become more of an intense, research intensive institution. And that's partly because then it's hard to pay the bills with teaching their fees alone. And we need to focus on getting external research grants to keep ourselves financially sustainable.

Brad  22:13

I think that's it's an important point to raise. Obviously, we want to focus on science here. But I think, in in academia, in general, definitely throughout the English speaking world, especially in countries where you don't have an emphasis on private institutions, but rather on the sense of, of public, or more or less public, tertiary education institutions. There is this push to commercialize and to raise revenues. And whether that's foreign students who pay higher fees, whether that's increasing the number of students coming in, whether it's publish or perish, whether it's patents or perish. I think there's been a very unhealthy push and a lot of institutions of research and teaching across a lot of different fields, whether it's the medical field, scientific fields, Humanities fields, there have been a very aggressive push against academics, I think, to raise revenues, instead of focusing on quality work and collaboration or cooperation between academics and between institutions. So I think that's just an issue that we're facing in the entirety of Western academia right now, I don't know whether you'd agree with that. But that's the the impression that I've been getting? Well, I

Justin Watkins  23:22

think we have to be, we have to be careful not to blame the institutions themselves for the environments in which they operate. So certainly in the UK. It is the case that the introduction of the changing of the financing of higher education in the UK has changed. There's been a lot of change over the past 15 years. When I was a student, there were no fees to pay. And my education, my high my university degree was essentially free. I wasn't paid to study but I've got two older sisters and the yeah, my oldest sister was indeed given a grant to study and all students were given a grant automatic aid study, I think, and that's me going back, I guess until back to the early 80s. But now the case is that students undergraduates have to pay fees, which they can borrow from the government so they have student loans to repay after they've graduated. And the amount of fees that university can universities can charge is kept by the government for students from the UK and until before Brexit, the EU also. Whereas students who come from anywhere else, now outside the UK, or indeed from the EU, students have to pay a fee which is up to two and a half times as much. So it becomes very expensive for them to study but also it is a way for universities to raise funds in order to run, because they don't they don't get into them. They get some funding from the from the government directly. But much of it has to be put together in from teaching fees. And indeed other streams of income such as external research grants, which play a very important role in keeping the university running. So yes, we and this is the this, these funding arrangements for universities in the UK are relatively recent. And one of the downsides of that is that we haven't had long to adopt the culture of philanthropic fundraising, and asking our alumni and indeed, wealthy people all around the world for money, we do some of it and we do some of it very well. But we haven't had long to make that a routine part of our of our of our economic activity. But you can also compare the situation in the UK with, I shouldn't say the UK, I should say England and Wales, the funding arrangements in Scotland and Northern Ireland are different. But with, say Germany, where no students pay fees, as my understanding of France where students pay fees, but it's very, very little. So there are other ways of doing it. And there is the system in the UK is, is one which is more commercial than other parts of Europe. So it's it will be hesitant to say, the West, in this case, they're different different parts of Europe have very different systems, and much of the much of many other countries in Europe do not charge their students to study at university. So yes, it's difficult. But

Brad  26:47

in a situation where

Justin Watkins  26:50

universities have too dependent on the fees that students pay for part of their income, then, of course, that brings the question of what you do with subjects that don't attract many students. And that could form part of the next part of our compensation.

Brad  27:09

I mean, absolutely, that's, that's what I want to say. It's like, Okay, so moving away from the generic statements of, of academia across different countries in different contexts. Let's look specifically at so as you know, how has so as been doing this lately? And how did so us sort of weather the storm because I know a lot of universities struggled with COVID-19 and the associated restrictions on on travel, especially if you're dependent on foreign students, that's a very important element to take into consideration. So how did so us sort of deal with that whole calamity? Well,

Justin Watkins  27:46

I think, before COVID saw us in some ways was facing something of a of a perfect storm. So Brexit, which threatened to cut off the stream of use Jews from the EU, which would attend were 10. So as it also cuts out of European Research Council, and funding for research, which has been disastrous for the UK. So there's Brexit there was the changing of the fee structure by a series of well, not initially, Conservative government fees were introduced under the Labour government, Tony Blair, but the system was ascending entrenched during subsequent conservative governments. And, and, for example, so as used to get, I think it was the last time I knew the figure about one and a half million pounds to support the teaching of minority languages, essentially. So. So it's traditionally taught in a large number of very large number of languages, some of which attract large numbers of students like Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and then perhaps in the second tier languages like Swahili and Persian, and a few others. And then at the other end of the scale, there are the languages that have never attracted students in large numbers. So languages like bunnies, or Tai or Amharic, or Georgian, or Tibetan, those sorts of languages, which which have much smaller classes. And so there was the central government funding available there to to underwrite the teaching of those smaller languages, and so that they could continue otherwise. In the new system, they were going to be not viable. And then little by little that funding was sliced away until it was no longer no longer present and for a while, and I won't get into the details of the various restructurings that have happened in sales, but for a while there was a very conscious cross subsidy from the profit making parts of so as to the loss making parts of sellers which were essentially that language teaching parts. And because Language Teaching isn't there's lots of Monarch, lots of languages that don't attract large islands and students can't be done profitably. So that's the Empress subsidy was, was part of the financial structuring of science for a while. And, and then I guess what happened around when COVID hit but not because of COVID. Actually, it was just happened to coincide with COVID. In 2020, sites went into something of a financial meltdown. So this a number of for a number of reasons, the finances of the school were unhealthy, and it all came to a head and I'm not gonna get into the details of that, partly because I don't know, all of them. And I had no hand in, in dealing with the situation. But while we were all confined, in our houses dealing with COVID, and learning how to interact on zooms, and teams will rest of it. So as went into a, an intense period of cutting costs, and that meant introducing schemes of surpassing the wage bill, by inviting people to take voluntary severance, or to retire slightly early or to go part time in some cases, and to consolidate degree programs into into into amalgamated programs that would attract more students, or building was told that none of this is secret, I don't think anything, I'm giving away any anything that's not in the public domain, it was a difficult time. And so if clearly had to take urgent action, or the university was going to be closed down by the, by the authorities for not being able to pay its bills, and that was a very serious situation, which was averted, it was very stressful, it was very traumatizing, many staff, both in teach on the academic side and on the administrative side of long standing work on. And as part of all of that system goal of that situation rather, at the end of the summer, in 2020, I was told that the My position was I was at risk of redundancy, my position was at risk of being cut. Which came as a horrible shock I had at the time been at so as a as a member of staff for 21 years. And I'm not really sure why my position was chosen. It may have been because at the time, I have no externally funded grant projects running. And that's in part because I've become a parent a couple of years before and had been on research. I've been on parental leave rather, who knows. But anyway, that they they actually decided they needed to cut a post and save some money. And mine was the one that was chosen. So as I was told, so as well no longer funds, your position, internally, you have to go find money, go and raise funds to support your job. So I tried to do that. And I set up a fundraising plan with two Burmese billionaire associated with Yamaha group. So again, raising funds from within Myanmar is not something I've tried to do before. And obviously there's quite a lot of money sloshing around in your mind that has unsavory sources. So money that so it wouldn't have been able to accept as a donation. But we did find people who were willing to help and whose funds were from acceptable sources, which is great. And we're very grateful indeed for the help that we receive from. And yes, so at that point, we had a plan to raise funds, a good agreement was signed, so I was given a certain The plan was to give us some money upfront, and then over the next few years, raise further funds to to build up an endowment that would secure the funding further Professor Brumbies post in the long term, and then in February 21. So that was around September 2020. We'll be doing that February 21. The coup and Myanmar happened and the whole project was towards gone overnight, understandably, because the situation in Myanmar changed completely. And people were no longer in a position to be helping higher education in the UK. They had clearly other pressing concerns and different priorities, which is tragic and awful, and we won't get into the terrible things that have been happening in their mind. But it left my situation back at back at the sharp end on the strength of this fundraising plan So I said, Give me a two year further two year stay of execution, which expires this month. And I went looking for further fund donors, and found someone who unfortunately turned out to be a fraudster and who strongly and so as long for many months, well over a year, so that wasted a lot of time that could have spent looking for funds elsewhere. Anyway, no, so no funds have found have been found. And as things stand, the post ends at the end of September 2022. So at the end of this month, type of recording, and, and we are or I am, we are collectively, the people who value the teaching of Burmese language and Burmese studies. And the other the other activities associated with the professor of Burmese post, have been trying to put together a bit of a campaign to try to persuade sides to change their mind. So I know that to some extent, it is a luxury to afford senior positions in teaching languages that aren't going to attract many students. But in fact, as I mentioned earlier, when you ask me the remit of some of my post includes a number of activities wider than that in linguistics and then in research. And it's also true, that's to some extent. So Esther has been proud to have been able to recover them largely from the financial crisis of 2020. So again, I don't know the details or the extent to which there is spare money sloshing around. But it's worth a try. So we're trying to persuade someone to change their mind and not terminate the post, so that the century old tradition of teaching Burmese and scholarship and research into Burmese and languages of Burma and Southeast Asia can carry on because otherwise it will be the end of a long and unvalued

Brad  37:10

tradition. So, I mean, this obviously comes. I mean, clearly, as you've said, this, this began pre two. But the way that this is now happening, it's it's possibly the worst possible time for for researching to Burmese language Burmese culture and the Burmese context in general, to end these the worst possible time to be drawing attention and focus away from this country. Is there do you think any sense in which they might be looking at this going? Well, we don't really want to be teaching Burmese we don't really want to be associated with a country that is that is very possibly going to descend into full blown military dictatorship again, for decades, or, or do you think they're just not connecting any dots, they just decided to to remove this particular position. And the coup was coincidental.

Justin Watkins  38:04

I think that that yes, they could I think it's a an unhappy coincidence. I think they needed to chop a post. And the professor Burmese post was the one that was picked to a degree arbitrarily. And I think the fact that the coup then happened I should it should be said that interacting and studying countries with in difficult situations with military dictatorships and the like, and so it's his bread and butter, you know, it's not it's not certainly not something that would shy away from we study, the Global South, and that, and Africa, Asia and the Middle East is our is our remit, with no, with no discrimination of which parts of the world might have political political systems of one kind, or another. But certainly it is. It certainly is unfortunate that now that they're now that Nama is a country that needs to do all they can to attract the attention of the rest of the world. It's very difficult in the UK, certainly to get in the news. It is, it is not a great time to be reducing the UK is academic capacity to deal with NUMA. And to what extent I contribute to that, it's hard to say, I think certainly I'm part of a broad network of people through the network of students that I've taught hundreds of students that I've taught over the years, a network of people who do amazing things in my contribution is indirect as a language teacher, and a facilitator of research. But nonetheless, it's and there is, you know, they I think It's part of what's been an ongoing decline of academic capacity in Southeast Asia generally. And more particularly, we've lost various staff members in over the last decade, who focused on NUMA. And there's not much Burmese folk Burma focused activity left asides, but there is some. So the plan now, I have a language teacher colleague, who teaches part time, and we will be able to, I think, teach one module of Burmese a year. So sometimes language teaching would be able to continue but not to an advanced level. And that's a matter of great regret. And this is part of the general thinning down of the language teaching capacity and quite a lot of the languages that so as teach that attracts more numbers. So cases, as I understand it be impossible to study Beyond The Beyond the second year. Whereas previously, it would have been possible to study two years of language it's so as possibly do a year abroad in a place that speaks that language. And then a further year, further final year, so after four years in total, which enabled us to get our students in Burmese and lots of language languages to a really impressive level of ability. So that's sort of already happened. And so Burmese hasn't necessarily been cut completely, but it's certainly been reduced to a tiny sliver of what was formerly available.

Brad  41:40

And I think this is like an important point, isn't it? We can argue, and a lot of people might say, well, you know, what's the point? Really? Why do we have Burmese soldiers, the Burmese people already speak Burmese, they don't need to understand Burmese language and Burmese culture. They already have it. And if you're, for example, a Thai person, the war, why would you fly to London to do that, like so as one would presume, is overwhelmingly serving a western audience who have no real easy way to access education services that are being provided in Africa or in Asia proper? And so the obvious question is like, what is the significance of the work, the research and the teaching that institutions like so as to do even if they are focusing on on a western audience like what is the positive impact of this,

Justin Watkins  42:30

but I think it's first to say that science is student body isn't isn't particularly Western. And if I cast my mind back to the classrooms of students learning Burmese over the, over the past 20 years, many, many, many of them are from other parts of the world, from Southeast Asia, from China, from Japan. And we, I think one of the things that we that science can do is offer degree programs, both at the undergraduate and postgraduate level, in subjects which are attractive and interesting, which enables students to learn a discipline such as economics, development studies, law, politics, some, some discipline of some kind, alongside specialization in the language and perhaps the region. So we might have students from Thailand, doing master's programs in development studies and learning Burmese at the same time, or students from China coming to do undergraduate degrees in law with Burmese alongside and indeed, you know, any of the other languages that Burmese teach. That was, that's the sort of model and I think that's our unique selling point. And of course, it's an opportunity for people from non English speaking parts of the world to do a degree program in English, which has its own benefits. So I think that's the attraction of, of the UK of London, that the teaching and learning all happens in English, which is a value and, but also that we are an institution that has this diversity of linguistic interest. Where if you want to learn Burmese, alongside history, or whatever it is, you're not going to stick out or be unusual. That's that's kind of the norm for somebody to students to be learning became a non European language as part of their studies, either at the center of their studies, or alongside so many, many possibilities. And it's very sad to see the diminishing of that ability to study so many languages to an advanced level. But that was one of the consequences of the cuts that were made in in trying to treasure

Brad  45:02

And so what like is what is the impact of these? These people who study this? Like knowledge? Can we can we say that institutions like size, are going to bring benefit back into these regions or so is predominantly focused on creating academic researchers who, who just furthered the general understanding of the field, but don't necessarily apply that knowledge on the ground?

Justin Watkins  45:29

Well, absolutely both, I think. And I think you need both. So we need researchers to discover, compile, contextualize, and publish knowledge so that other people who want to apply that knowledge directly have it available. So I wouldn't draw a line between those two necessarily, but certainly this year, they saw as graduates, popular populate, perhaps then stereotypically populate NGOs who do good stuff, I mean, that's very, I'm not going to get into the complex relationship between NGOs and development and whether they do good or not, but organizations of all kinds that are on the ground doing things of value in places that are populated by people like Sara's graduates. And if those people have an ability to operate in the Burmese context, in in using the Burmese language, then so much the better. Because I think that avoids the inadvertent, you know, linguistic recolonization, or parts of the world that aren't English speaking by requiring development activities, interactions of whatever kinds to be in English, the more the more it can be a two way street using English international language. Of course, that's going to be part of the mix. But without devaluing Burmese, which is the language that most people in your mind know best planning, it's fair to say.

Brad  47:08

This is an interesting sort of elements of it, because a lot of people would not actively think about this, we have this general impression that language is a thing that everyone has everyone speaks a language, some people speak multiple languages, and the different ways of just encoding the same basic information. So information presented in one language is fundamentally the same as information presented in another language. So particularly from a monolingual perspective, there will be a general belief that which language, something has been done in which languages it has to be translated through, do not have a significant impact on the overall assets, and the ability of different groups of people to cooperate. So I'm wondering if you can shine a little bit of light on just why it's important to understand the difference between operating in in let's say, a major lingua franca, versus operating in a local community language when you're trying to engage with a with a specific population?

Justin Watkins  48:10

I think that's an excellent question. And I could talk for a very long time about it. But I think so one thing I'd say is that there is a sort of expectation now that any sort of self respecting language with any status of any kind should be out there with a number of established resources like Google Translate, and online dictionaries, and, you know, online learning resources and that sort of stuff. And that's where you see that languages like Burmese are at the back of the queue, as it happens for me is is on google translate itself there, and some other languages and the other two, incidentally, but it's not very useful. If you're translating in Burma into Burmese, then because Google Translate hasn't decided to deal with the diglossia. The distinction between formal and colloquial, Burmese and what you get out is probably not going to be very useful to you unless you really know what you're doing. So to come back to your question, which is about I guess, issues of inequity, inequity, there is well there was a unrealistic belief in some cases that yeah, knowledge in one that created in one language can be seamlessly and losslessly transmitted in through another language and to the people who wish to engage with that knowledge. And that's absolutely not the case. And reminds me actually of a very long time ago now, and not this isn't related to Burmese but it's a nice example. nonetheless. I had a phone call it was just before I was going off to China to do on sabbatical research. So I was unable to interact with the with the caller. But what was I have a long Conversation with a research I think from Nottingham University who found out, he was interested in putting together a research project which would seek to quantify what was lost through translation. The researcher himself was crop scientist, I think. And the proposal, as far as I can remember, it was to do two parallel studies of the sort of performance the problem not a crop scientist, so I don't know how to talk about it. But the properties of a kind of grain in I think it was an Olivia, which was grown in an area where a number of indigenous languages are spoken. And the plan was to do the design and experiments to study this crop and its properties through English, and being reliant on the local people's ability to speak and languages, and to replicate the study, but making sure that the knowledge of the crop was and was gathered through use of the first language of the people who knew most about it. And then you would have two sets of statistical data which you could then compare, and that as a way of quantifying literally what was what the cost in knowledge, the difference or the mismatch, or the loss, between engaging with knowledge in a local language compared to them, trying to access that knowledge through translation into into other languages, which I thought was a very, very neat idea what happened to it, my mind was on other things afterwards. But that kind of thing happens a lot. So in Miller context, it's very common to see organizations of various kinds, interacting, seeking to do good seeking to do research, to improve situations and lives in their mind. But engaging with the applying knowledge that's conceived in English and expecting people from Myanmar to access the concepts and ideas and knowledge that are being introduced through whatever project or, or what have you, by learning English, in order to be able to understand it, rather than seeking to make sure that what's being done, can is explainable and explained through the medium of Burmese. And I think one of the one of the unintended consequences of that is that it's quite common for trainings or workshops that organizations might might put together to use a sort of hybrid that the language being spoken might well be Burmese, but the buzzwords and the words with content and the words which encapsulate the value in the project might well remain in English and not really be interrogated or inspected for meaning and content. So we can be talking a lot, but not really necessarily be be sure of what it is that say, which is a tricky situation. And I'm by no means saying that that's what organizations and we might do, but it's a situation that I think everyone who's spent time in Myanmar would be familiar with a situation where buzzwords in English, pepper conversation and Burmese and people not necessarily being sure what what those words and mean on what the concepts behind them are all about. And that really leads us to the problem of Burmese having in certainly the second half of the 20th century and to some extent been denied the opportunity to replenish itself. So, at the during the decades of early contact between Burmese and the colonial British, you see examples of new concepts, Technic, technologically innovative for the time, inventions being introduced to the country and then acquiring lands in Burmese without problems. So Burmese is quite good at inventing was quite good at inventing words for for new things. And my one of my favorite examples then is the early word which is still around but not the word that's usually for television, which is a very Bernie's feeling for words. compound which means yummy and Tanja which is picture see The sound here, which encapsulate encapsulates the focus of the TV, very Burmese word formation pattern. And it feels very Burmese. And that's kind of been taken over by the word TV, which doesn't have the beauty of a Burmese word formation. And then at some point, I think Burmese got out of them got out of the habit of forming new words in the same way. Or perhaps it was the more more concepts needed translating, who knows. And there are structural reasons why it's quite difficult to translate complex vocabulary into into Burmese in a systematic way. And so I won't get into the linguistic details of that. But there are, there are reasons why for example, if you have a word like efficiency, in English, we can very easily form the word inefficiency, we can make an adjective negative in a very predictable way. And that's something that Burmese doesn't do very easily. So there are certain sorts of word formation patterns that are not programmatic English, which are a little bit difficult for Burmese and you end up with instead of words, you end up with sort of phrases or explanations or something that's a bit too heavy for a word, but not quite a sentence. And it's difficult. So there are reasons I think, structural reasons why building up new complex vocabulary is is a third is not easy for Burmese. But the same is true for lots of other languages. It's not it's not I'm not singling out Burmese as being defective in any way, it's just a different way of organizing language that that creates a problem. And so where are we I think we're in a situation where in order to avoid the further erosion of the ability of Burmese to perform in the 21st century, as a full, you know, big language with, let's say, around 60 million speakers, you know, there's nothing minority or lightweight about Burmese as a language. You know, we need to make sure that when we're interacting with the country, we, from the beginning of our interactions plan, how the linguistic ecology of the interaction of the research project of the plan is going to is going to play out. So that we reduce as far as possible than loss of knowledge by assuming that the Burmese speaking, let's say end users of whatever the project or plan might be, so that they there's no point at which they might be expected to ingest English or, or work in English. I think, you know, more languages better than one. And I'm not saying that should stop people remark from building industry, of course, we shouldn't get a useful language. But we also need to remember that Myanmar isn't an English speaking country in the same way that some of its post neighboring countries with similar colonial histories like Singapore and Malaysia, principally, which became countries which were English is a is that, that that history has been broken in nimasa, the decades in the 60s 70s 80s, when the speaking of English was, was disapproved of and discouraged, but certain kinds of times in the education system, and periods during which the country was cut off from the outside world that sort of cut the threads of a continued tradition of competence in, in English as a main language in your mind. And once it's lost, it's hard to get back. So that's, you know, in the way an analogy for what's happening and so as you know, if you if you close down languages like Burmese or let's think of other languages that size is lost, Georgian or Tamil, or Mongolian, or I think how sir all languages you know, once you once you lose the capacity, it's very, very difficult and effortful to, to build it back up again. So NUMA isn't really an English speaking country and should not be dealt with as if it's as if it were. But at the same time, I think dealing with people in your mind respectfully and also understanding that Myanmar via the Burmese isn't the only language spoken in the country there are over 100 languages. So just being conscious of the The Language ecology of whatever activity you're, you're engaging in, I think is, is the way forward. And to make sure that you're not by accident, assuming that English will be the language of communication,

Brad  1:00:19

and the rest of the stuff stuff there like that there's a lot of content, I think it's all very good. I just want to go back to something because you, you, it resonated with me when you said that, that situation of the buzzwords being peppered in in English. And that was just so, so common. And it's not it's not obviously, it's not just the means where that happens. You know, European languages very, very, very often do that. Especially when it comes to terminology that has been taken over in, for example, business, but there are a lot of very business specific terms. But, you know, back in the day, 100 years ago, or 200 years ago, many languages had this sort of phase of language purity. And you would have periods of saying, Well, no, we can create our own vocabulary. We don't need to borrow vocabulary, if there's a new concept, we can just name it ourselves. I think Iceland sort of stands out as the as the very canonical case study on on this approach.

Justin Watkins  1:01:26

In France as well, right?

Brad  1:01:29

At the Academy, yes. Although I refuse to change the way that I spell the word onion, I will continue to spell it with an eye. And I don't care what the Academy has to say about that. That's my heel, and I'm gonna die on it. But that notwithstanding, the, there was an article that came out a few years back, and I read it, and I found it quite compelling. But I think that it may have given a very poor impression. Because the article basically says that Myanmar as a, as a community, lacks the necessary vocabulary, not not really, to talk about certain topics, but to talk about topics with a certain degree of professionalism, or a certain degree of respect. cases that were brought up included sexual health, and it was saying, well, they don't really have vocabulary that is clinical, and medical and technical, to deal with sexual organs, and things like this. And he gives an analogy, take that on board. And, again, it's not unique to Burmese, there are a great number of languages where we find that the terms that we use for these things we've inherited from hundreds of years ago, and if we literally examined the origin of the word, we would say, Oh, God, like that's, that's not reflective of, of what we believe as a society today, it's just a hangover from an earlier period. But the impression being given here, and the impression that's being reinforced by seeing so many English buzzwords, peppering Burmese, is that Burmese as a language is incapable of handling a lot of the very high order very complicated notions of an ever changing, you know, developed world and developed context. And that, as a result, you know, Englishes is simply needed, it is necessary for for Burma to be able to, to function and I, I rather think that, that Burmese like all languages just has these layers and layers and layers of meaning and depth and significance. And, and just with, encoded within the language, they're all being discarded, because, well, English doesn't have equivalents. For those who we don't really listen to that we don't really care about it. It's so irrelevant to us. We don't translate it. And then when there's something that exists in English that we want to translate to Burmese and the Burmese say, well, we don't have a word for that. We think, well, this language is defective. So I'm wondering, what's your take on that whole thing? For what's

Justin Watkins  1:03:52

my take on that? Well, so I think, first of all, a close examination with examples on the sorts of phenomena that we're talking about would be much more interesting with some of the speakers in the discussion, so I'm hesitant to sort of comment on on Burmese in detail without the participation of some Burmese speakers. However, you know, obviously got an opinion, because I'm academic, and I have an opinion. And my opinion is that I think, and I think that leads to before I think that the Burmese has just that had just got out of the habit of replenishing itself. You know, there's there's nothing defective about it. But you know, in order for a language to continue to replenish its own vocabulary and keep pace with a fast changing situation in a worldly world. Worldwide language like English, let's say, then you have to be quite fit and you have to be quite practiced at doing so. And if we look at for example, Chinese so Chinese are St. Louis keeps pace with the development of concepts and the need for new vocabulary and stuff, linguistically, and is in no way dependent on English. And that is one of the incredible strengths of Chinese that it can that it can, on its own terms, using its own linguistic structures and vocabulary pointing them conventions and traditions, Chinese is is able to develop as much new recovery as it as it likes, because it's always done so. And it's perhaps also the case that in Chinese there, there are structural reasons why it's just awkward to dump English vocabulary into the language because it just doesn't really fit the structure is very different. If you look at places of intensive contact between Chinese and English, like Hong Kong, you do see more words with English origins being used in Chinese but not not that much, really, and often, in ways that are so disguised that you wouldn't really realize they were they were words with English origins. And there are some nice examples of that in Burmese too. So Burmese think so. Again, hard to prove, but if you look up the word gun in Burmese, in the dictionary, it says that the origins of the word snap hard, which is a Dutch word for something like blunderbuss, which if you spell it out in Burmese, and then read it, read it in following pronunciation conventions, you get the word Senate, which is a word that has coincidentally in its spelling, the words that looks like the word die in Burmese, so it looks like a word for gun because it might involve death. And Burmese is really nice. One of the nice things you find in Burmese is that it borrows words, and then generates folk etymology is to explain imagined Burmese origins often, which I think is an indication that once words are borrowed by most Burmese at a deep level, then it really, you know, adopts words, all languages borrowed from other languages. But what we're talking about here is, I guess, the pace and furious pneus of fast pace and the seriousness of change in technology and everything else in the 20th century and the need for large amounts of new vocabulary to keep up and, and, and I think Bobby's just got out of the race at some point, and lost a lot and got unfit. But I don't I think that also, it is possible for Burmese to absorb a certain amount of of English. As long as they're the spelling's become conventionalized. And stable, then Burmese can take on words from other languages, like all languages do and make them their own. It can also translate words and enable its concepts to have their own history. I mean, one nice example if they can think of two nice examples one is the word of the Burmese word for culture. Which I guess in its origins means something like politeness or civility. And then has also taken on this second meaning of culture, which is perhaps something more of a borrowed, borrowed concept, so perfectly, you know, like languages and sophisticated enough for the same words to have two two distinct and actually a meanings. So that's a nice example. And the other one is the work of politics Nanga years, so matters to do with the nation than 99 a year, which has also is a word which, on the surface, it just translates the word politics, but which actually has taken on a life of its own in Burmese and often has cleaner if you say someone's doing nothing, are you doing politics, it might often have the connotation of them being somehow embroiled in politics in a negative or complicated or dangerous way. And that is a nice example of languages needing to make words their own to fit the context in which they use them. So doing being politically active is a dangerous thing. It has been quite a lot in the last few decades in Myanmar. So it's not surprising that that word has taken on these sorts of connotations. So what we do about enabling Burmese to recover, or languages opened recently to recover their ability to regenerate themselves. For new vocabulary on their own terms,

Brad  1:09:47

we were talking about the way in which Chinese as an example has created a lot of new new terms. I actually know that there are competitions definitely for Japanese To invent new characters as well, that all sort of intricate and clever in the way that they take the symbolism of individual character components and combine them into characters that capture specific phenomenon that have come up, there was a, there was a very nice one with the Zoom meetings, having its own character that looks like the meeting for the character for meeting, but with the big zoom set at the bottom, and things like that, and contrasting that with with the means I think you were talking about the example of nine ng as was recreated.

Justin Watkins  1:10:37

Yeah, so I think yeah, I would not. I don't think Chinese gets into the sort of game of inventing new characters, it's pretty much got enough already. But so I mean, by way of example, my my Chinese is sort of locked into the 20th century, because I did Chinese University and worked quite a lot as a translator, but haven't done much since then. The, in the last 20 years, so the words, technologically innovative words for things like podcasts, and smartphone and all those sorts of things, vocabulary that I wouldn't have learned because it didn't exist when I was learning Chinese intensively. But I know that I could go on to the Translate now and find Chinese words for all of those and they wouldn't be borrowed from English, they would just be perfectly transparent, well formed Chinese ways of expressing those, you know, the names for those things, or those functions. Because that's what Chinese is just really, really good at, and it doesn't need to make up new characters. It doesn't do that kind of thing. But in the case of Burmese, that is much harder. You know, Burmese is a very expressive language, we're not, you know, we're not, we're not saying that it's defective. In any way, it's just lost the skill. And it's got out of practice, at forming on its own terms, using its own patterns and its own structures, words, large amounts of words, for new things. There was there's a nice example also of a series of words for things that were technologically innovative. Hundreds, let's say years ago, things like X ray, which is so using the prefix death, which is formed from the Pali words, tattoo, which means sort of elements. So adapt picture is a photograph, adapt glass is an x ray, dat spare lump is a battery adapt flat thing is an LP record, an audio record. So that's, you know, there were there was sort of conventions that probably could get into when it needed to get into them. And that we could use to kind of adopt to coin new recovery when it needed to. And it hasn't done that then since. So we wonder why. And that would be an interesting study in and of itself. So English is both for Burmese essential, but it's also a bit of a curse, right? But English is the other outside language that most people are most familiar with. So it's going to be the source of words associated with contact with with the rest of the world, of course, but also the ready availability of English is also what, what prevents Burmese from doing its own thing, linguistically, which isn't to say that it doesn't ever do that. I'm sure if we went and looked. So for example, one innovation in Burmese that has been observed recently, is the borrowing of verbs as from English as the verbs in Burmese. So normally, if you borrow a verb from Burmese into English, you you take the verb you dump it into Burmese, and then you use a sort of support verb to do load. So if we want to download something, we'd say do download, download, loading. Or check email with the email check to do a check on your email. But recently, you can see the word like check, get uses verbs and you stick verbal suffixes directly onto the word check without them adding in this Burmese support verb which can perform all the functions and have all the suffixes and what have you added to it in Burmese. So that's an invasion, which I think is slightly encouraging. So actually, if Burmese is going to be structurally a little bit less picky about what sorts of verbs nouns and verbs are throws into what categories of Burmese that could that could make a difference. And maybe that's a sign of Burmese sort of loosening up and getting itself ready to get going again and adapt in ways that it needs to. So who knows what's going to happen that interesting topic?

Brad  1:15:16

I mean, interesting topic. And of course, the the question of the day years, are you going to be in the employee of sauce in the next couple of years to be researching these changes that may or may not happen in Burmese as they come? So returning to that theme, if if source were to go ahead with their plan, effectively ending your position, I understand this would leave so as with one lecture of Burmese language, and nothing else, what would what would really be the impact of this position being ended for so as

Justin Watkins  1:15:52

well, I think what will be left? When will be Yeah, so one, what she's called a she's a teaching fellow. That's the R word for what you called lecture. So a non research post, and she is a dear colleague and experienced, certainly teaching Burmese at the intermediate and advanced level much less experienced at teaching at the beginners level. Because what we found over the years and sizes are the magic combination for people learning non European languages, is at the beginning stages to have both a non native speaker who's learned the language themselves, who often has the ability to might have a bit more experience in explaining the language in terms that beginner level learners will understand, combined with a native speaker teacher, who might not have had them the opportunity to gain much experience in language pedagogy, and those sorts of skills. But as a native speaker, and with experience in teaching, can give students everything they need to practice learning and understanding language at higher levels. And really, the combination of the two is what's really, really, really valuable. So that probably is will be lost the capacity to teach modules at a range of different levels, every year will be lost. And also what will be lost is research capacity in Burmese. So very specifically, one of the things I want to do next in Burmese now that my periods of parental leave are over and I'm ready to get stuck into research, again, is a project that would combine, combined compile, compile a large digital corpus of Burmese text a really enormous one. So for example, if in English, we want to look at the development of verbal structures from the 15th, to the 17th centuries, if that's something we're interested in, we just click five buttons on a computer and we can engage with truly massive corpora of English text that are tagged and labeled and sorted and picked over and available to us as a resource to investigate. Changes in structures or whatever we want in the language is all of that groundwork has been done on a huge scale in English and in many other languages with with money and research funding behind them. But for languages, the size of Burmese it's, it's quite unhelpful not to have any of those sorts of resources available. So if we're interested in asking that research question, How did say, formal Burmese? How did the colloquial variety of Burmese developed over the centuries that have developed, there's nowhere we can go to sort of start looking we have to create the resource first so that we can then consult it and investigate the questions we're interested in asking. So any research project becomes quite unwieldy, because you have to start from the ground up and build your own structures. In order to to you have to start as the architect to build the structures in order to even ask the first questions that you want to you want to ask. So that's something I like to do because there are lots of research questions relating to Burmese that can be investigated if we had a truly enormous digital corpus of Burmese with sufficient amounts of it tagged and sorted and labeled and available for consultation. So that's something I'd like to get into. By have also a project research grant application, which is already submitted, which I'll hear about soon, and which is going to be working with a post doctoral researcher on some chin languages in southwestern Myanmar, to look at the ways in which language contact so these them southern Southwestern Qin languages, their contact with Bangalow on the back of their side and with Burmese and Rakhine on the Burmese side, what words and structures are Grammatik lized? What what things in the language change through contact with other bigger languages and expand contact between smaller languages. So that's a research project, which I'm going to be working with a postdoctoral researcher to carry on. And we very much hope we get the funding, if I'm not in post, I'm not quite sure what the situation is, it will be if we do if we are successful in that application, which is already in, then I guess it would be churlish if so as to turn the funding down from one of the UK government research funding bodies. So I'm not sure what what the situation will be there. But then, you know, I'm ready to get going and start completing some of the work I've started. But some finished, it was quite a lot. And I've gone through a period of having very young children where I haven't been as productive as I might have been. But there's a lot to do, you know, really a truly massive amount of work to do, which I hope I'll be able to continue with, if so as can be persuaded to change its mind. And thank you proposed open. Also a state actually is research and teaching expertise in Southeast Asian linguistics more generally. So if you do linguistics, and so us, one of the things that makes us a great place to do linguistics, is that our frames of reference are by default, non European. So if you want to learn about, you know, basic phonology, or syntax, or phonetics or whatever it might be, so as then you're going to do it with reference to non European languages from the outset, which sets you up very good setting to, to understand linguistic diversity around the world without being by in the early phases confined to a small set of European languages. So that's a really good thing about linguistics. At the moment, I'm the person that sort of covers Southeast Asia. And there's no one else who who does that. So we leave Southeast Asia out of the picture, we were strictly sales, which will be a shame as well.

Brad  1:22:37

You know, a lot of people that that's going to sound quite sort of sad, esoteric, in a sense. And so like, well, you know, language is a language is a language. But, you know, I came from that that same thing, I mean, the language the often learning English, obviously, the languages that I sort of studied at school in a University where I studied Latin and classical Greek, and I majored in French and I minored in German, and Persian and things like that. So I had a very strong language background, but then come to move to Myanmar, and realize that, no, I had a very strong indo European language background. And as it transpires that does not translate all that effectively into the Burmese language context, because not every language in the world is is stuck within the dynamic and the paradigm of the Indo European or, let's say, na Stradic don't tell the other linguists I said, family. And, and therefore, once you're, once you're confronted with the language, right, we're like, oh, but, you know, break, break the sentence for me, you know, draw the syntax tree with, you know, which part of that was your adjective, and they just look at you like, we don't, we don't fully have the same concept of adjectives that you have, like something that you took for granted, because everyone would you've ever seen has done that. And everyone was the professor that you've ever worked with also has an indo European background, and therefore have also assumed that adjectives are just adjectives, and they work like adjectives work. And then you go to Burmese, so every adjective is just, you know, secretly a verb. It's a big deal. It's a big deal going through your undergraduate not being penned into that or corralled into that indo European way of thinking, so that you don't have to break down those barriers that you've constructed for yourself.

Justin Watkins  1:24:32

A big deal but most a lot of linguistics is European. And that's a that's a problem Eurocentrism in going into Euro centrism in in linguistics as a discipline is really hard. So you often get, for example, speech and speakers of languages like Thai or you know, Burmese or whatever, who Yeah, who have learned linguistics, and expect the category adjective and are themselves in their own languages unable to see that These things are really verbs. And you can, you know, it's easy to demonstrate very quickly. So well, how do you negate them, you do various tests that you would do to find out what category a word is in. And you can show very quickly that they're verbs. And incidentally, there are a few real adjectives in Burmese because they're borrowed from Ponte, which does have adjectives. So there are a few, or they're not really, really Burmese. But, ya know, I think that's it's a really nice illustration of the problem. And esoteric it may be, but in the size context, it's not esoteric at all. So as so as you know, call remit is to promote scholarship in the languages of Asia, Africa, and Middle East. And if we're leaving Southeast Asia out of the picture, if we take out Southeast Asia, Asia kind of means Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, which is three languages, that's really super important languages, of course. But there are 1000s of others that we could be looking at. and Southeast Asia as a hotbed of linguistic diversity is an important part of the world to include when you're looking at establishing coverage of some kind of linguistics, of linguistic scholarship in Asia. So that's not so esoteric in science context. And Burmese, you know, is, as I've said, a couple of times already, is not a small language, it's a big language that people speak.

Brad  1:26:33

I mean, you know, just looking at the map like, this is a country which, which it looks small, because it's close to the equator and the way that map projections work, you know, it's disproportionately off. And that's, that's neither good nor bad. That's all map projections are inherently going to be untruthful in some dimension, that's how projection works. But when you actually look at the country, I mean, it I think it shocks a lot of people, when you point out this is a country that is larger than then Ukraine, and Ukraine is the largest country, which is wholly within the continent of Europe. And this is a country with a population of three to 4 million, that will put it up in the higher levels of of European countries, we're talking about comparisons to the UK into France, but the majority of European countries couldn't hold a candle to that. And yet, we sort of ignore just how massive this country is just how many people speak and the literature as well, I think, I don't know what the source would would teach any of golden pines, works, I'd be very interested to know whether you you do go into the literature and the history of stories, but even just, you know, talking about about memes and cartoons and things, and you say I don't understand what this is, and people say, Oh, but we know like, this is the way this character is always portrayed. And this is a character from a story that we have and someone related story to me about a giant, you know, monstrous giants coming down and, and there was an argument about a baby and hang on, you were counting the Torah story of King Solomon, and the two women fighting over the baby, because you're recounting that story to me, only to discover the Burmese have their own version of that story that traveled eastward. I mean, that was a revelation to me to know how narratives have moved and changed and this isn't, you know, the Burmese didn't just come out of a dark age of not knowing what writing is before before. You know, me the

Justin Watkins  1:28:29

Emmys, has been has, has an continuous history of the language for quite a few centuries longer than English and literary tradition, which is, which is rich and long and interesting. And yes, at times, I mean, I'm not a literature specialist, but I have been wheeled out to do sort of survey lectures and whatnot on service literary topics. And we do attract the odd PhD students in those literature which is fantastic. And we can cater for them. Your London is a great place to study Burmese literature because of the library resources available. So that yeah, that's that's definitely a plus. And yes, yeah, the we do need to we'll be south has strengths in Southeast Asian literature's in translation and circumcision literature's in general and Burmese is, is going to be lost largely from that, which is a shame.

Brad  1:29:33

So, so getting back to the mechanics at play here, is there anything that can be done at this point to stop so us from from getting rid of this position and losing that institutional knowledge and losing that opportunity for students?

Justin Watkins  1:29:49

Well, I think what we have to do is to persuade them that it's a bad move that the current temporary custodians of service should think twice and think very carefully before removing the Burmese research and teaching post from the structures of service, that will be a great shame. What can we do, we have to write to the director of service and try to persuade him, if we feel strongly about it, that's something we can do. We can also, one thing that would remove the problem in a second would be if we could find funding to fund the position independently. And unfortunately, for that, we need about 5 million pounds. That's what it costs you and outpost in perpetuity. And at the moment, although there may be some flexibility on that, so you know, anyone with that amount of change down the back of the sofa, they then should get in touch. But of course, it's difficult to fundraise for higher education in a rich western country, when your mind is in such a dire situation and in such need of funding. So there is an ethical problem there too, people who wish to do good for Myanmar, may well wish to spend their money on on other things with different priorities. But you know, it's a big world and there are, there's a lot of money around. So it doesn't have to be a zero sum game, it doesn't have to be either or. So yes, we need to raise funds. And certainly if I if so as to change their minds and keep the price going, then one of my tasks will be to try to between now and my return, find the funds to make sure that when I'm no longer in the position, then there is funding for the for the post to carry on. Because if if what we value is the longevity and the permanence of this post, then your points of vulnerability will will come up again in the future for sure. So we need to try to solve those some of the some things we can do yet. So yeah, there's also been a very successful petition that colleagues at the Australian National University initiated. And in the space of about a week, we can a couple of days, we managed to get a total of 1000. And I think 49 signatures and that's been submitted to the authorities, the powers that be so so I think yesterday, so we cross our fingers and hope that the strength of opinion, represented by that position will have some effect. I have no idea. And I'll, of course, keep you posted on any developments. But it's been very encouraging to see the strength of opinion, and the levels of support for various SOS around the world as part of organizing that position. So yeah, it's been good with there is definitely room for hope, I think, but who knows, we cross our fingers.

Brad  1:33:01

Absolutely. And I think I think we've made a case reasonably strongly for why so as should should reconsider, and what sorts can really do, unfortunately, I don't have $5 million or 5 million pounds, even was in this exchange. Right. But but you know, I think I think this is absolutely something that that should be funded, it should be funded in in perpetuity. And if anything expanded, as well as as Myanmar opens up, this is another thing, if we looked back at the new wing period, and everything up to the pseudo democratic period post, so 2010, Myanmar did have a very strong sort of isolationist policy and even in the in the pseudo democracy that followed, it opened up but it didn't open up all that phenomenally. But towards the end of that MLD era, you at least from my experience being a foreigner living there. They seem to be steady acceleration of tourists and backpackers who were coming through and also expats who were working for foreign companies or like I was I was teaching working for a local school, it seemed to be expanding and in order to make us useful to Myanmar society. Logically, we should be able to learn to speak the language and understand the culture and interact with the people on their terms in their country, as is fair and appropriate. And to if anything, the direction Myanmar was headed, meant that there was a greater need for education on Myanmar language and culture, not a need to pull back and say, Well, you know, we've already we've already done the job and the MLS opening up and everything's fine now. So it seems absolutely counterintuitive. So hopefully, that there will be something if if if So as does go ahead with this, though, do you know of any other institution that is performing this type of function anywhere outside of Myanmar itself teaching Burmese language and culture people? Well,

Justin Watkins  1:35:14

I mean, there are a few institutions around the world. I mean, what are we talking about? So as we're talking about learning the language in an academic context, right, and there are other universities around the world that do that. So in Japan, and and in where else in Korea, there are some places in China, Thailand. Also in North America, there's three or four universities that have stable or, or reasonably stable Burmese. And then in Europe, there's UNESCO in Paris. And it has Burmese and there is Burmese at Humboldt in Berlin, and a couple of other places, but not that, sadly, I don't think in Germany, and Russia, two has, I think, managed to keep them is just about in Moscow, and may have just lost it in some Petersburg with the loss with the recent death of Rudy answering, which is a great shame. So we don't know. There are a few places to do it. If if it's a matter of Burmese language, learning Bernstein was teaching outside an academic context, then yes, you know, there are there are plenty of opportunities out there. And whether or not I, the professor of Burmese post at science continues, then, you know, part of my remit, I think, is to be involved in making sure that people who want to learn Burmese can do so online in an accessible way, in a way that, that makes the most of their, of their aspirations, and gives them the best opportunity opportunities to learn the language to as, as high level as they want. And so that those, those projects will, will continue one way or the other, I hope. But of course, you know, keeping things going in the university is the best way of underwriting that scholarship with in the context of a stable university is that is the best way forward. So that's what we hope for, and I cross my fingers.

Brad  1:37:26

So I think, you know, we've, we've covered a lot of these bases. And I think I think we've really made the point that this education is, is intrinsically valuable, whether or not it's economically profitable, it has intrinsic value. And it sort of reminds me of the Burmese idiom Yash, we call, which I probably mangle the pronunciation of, but knowledge is a treasure that cannot be stolen. And I think that there was a lot in that. And I do think back to that evening, and quite frequently. Because I think these institutions offer something that is intangible, but that changes lives and changes communities for the better decades after the education has been done. And losing the steam and the momentum and the internal knowledge is is something that causes irreparable damage to, to an entire field, which which deserves to be studied for its own sake and on its own merits. And things that deserve to be taught because they are intrinsically useful and are intrinsically valuable. But those are just my sort of feelings on the matter. But I hope that the audience members would would also see the value in these things. That being said, I just like to invite you, as we always do on this podcast to, to leave us with any thoughts that you may still have lingering or give the audience something to mull over as they as they go on with their day.

Justin Watkins  1:39:00

And what should they mull over? I don't know, I think that so as is thinking of so it's a it's a it's a valuable and, and extraordinary institution with a complex and amazing history. And I think in terms of vulnerability, we need to look after the weakest. And an institution like so as is, as we've seen fragile, and maybe we could reflect on ways in which we in our lives can protect fragility where we see it and avoid inadvertently losing things of value when we know that there are ways they can be preserved that we are

Brad  1:39:52

succinct. So Justin Watkins, I'd like to thank you very much for for sharing your insights with us today and hopefully we'll we'll have you on and all Two episodes to discuss the relevance of Burmese language and culture.

Justin Watkins  1:40:03

That will be my great pleasure. Thank you very much insight Myanmar, it's been great.

Host  1:40:19

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