Well, we’re continuing our little series here about some of my process in the writing of Song of Kardu. I don’t want to give away all trade secrets because too much transparency can ruin a good escape, but I’d love to address the idea behind Cash and Yora’s ancestral language Joropa.
You see, once upon a time I lived in South America. I was a church missionary preaching some good news and spending my would-be crazy young adult life in community service and avoiding little worms that like to burrow their way into bare feet. Did I get one of those worms? Yep. Dug it out with a needle.
Paraguay is one of those places you have to see to believe. The culture is relaxed and lively all at once. People know to celebrate, and also how to wake up at beyond early hours just to sit on the immaculate dirt in front of their house to sip tereré. On the rural roads of northern Paraguay, somewhere between the bird eating spiders and deadly green snakes, I got to speak with a lot of those people. They’re quite friendly, as a whole. You can’t walk down the street without a thumbs up from just about everyone. You also can’t sit on one of their patio chairs without hearing stories, stories about the many pieces of culture that define each individual.
First, there’s the Spanish, of course, and the Portuguese, infamous but inevitable in their conquest. If you’re looking for an interesting story about that age of history, you should check out The Mission. It has a young Liam Neeson, Robert De Niro, and Jeremy Irons. Holy crap. But we’re not here to talk about them.
Second, we have the German Mennonites. I didn’t meet a lot of them but I got to know a lot of German looking Spanish/Guarani speakers.
Third, but not least, and certainly not last because we forgot the Italians, the Guarani people. They were among the original and the most prominent of the tribes that have the oldest claim on Paraguayan soil. Unlike most of us in North America, Paraguayan culture embraces all of its heritage, especially the Guarani, and Guarani is the second official language of the country.
But here’s the thing, and why this small history is relevant to Song of Kardu. Guarani is really a dead language. That’s a hot take, and I’m not sure all scholars would agree, but as someone who lived there for years, I can bear witness to the language’s decline. It’s mixed in with Spanish in something that the people call Jopara. Jopara for real, Joropa in my book. You see what I did there? Jopara in Guarani means “mixture” or even “tossed salad” as explained one of the books I had down there that helped me learn the language. Jopara is Guarani with borrowed words, mostly from Spanish, but I even heard some English ones. I can’t tell you how many people tried to convince me that “Grapefruit” comes from the Guarani word “gréifu.” Hint: it doesn’t.
So, when I was coming up with a language for Cash’s people, I messed with the phonetics a bit for many Guarani words, then I mixed in other elements that I either borrowed from other real Earth languages or just completely made up. The idea was to create a colloquial, incomplete dialect that the reader finds in the process of linguistic decay. Joropa is still spoken, more by some people than others, such as people that Yora comes in contact with (that dang bear), but if I made a complete language with solid rules, I would miss out on the philosophical undertones of syncretism and its role in cultural development. It’s not like coming up with Elvish or something rich like that. Joropa is a tragedy. It’s impossible to learn because the books that recorded it are yellowed and dying and the people who would learn it are getting schooled by foreign tongues. Thanks a lot, Seth.
I know that’s probably a lot to think about, and whole books could be and have been written about syncretism in Latin America especially. So look it up if you want to find out more. Any cubic centimeter of dirt on planet Earth that’s seen human feet has seen cultures spring up, die, and form again, each with small and large helpings from the past. I happened to learn this principle on Paraguayan roads and gave those people a shout out in my book.
Where have you seen the tragedy of linguistic/cultural syncretism? I’d love to read about it in the comments. It’s a topic I’m not finished with yet and I’m dying for more research.
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