Multilingualism Spotlight: Dr. Madoka Hammine

Dr. Madoka Hammine, a teaching professor of Japanese at DU, is proficient in Japanese, English and the Ryukyuan languages of Okinawa and Yeayaman; she has also studied Finnish, Swedish, and Italian. She originates from Ryukyu Islands in the southern part of Japan: "Historically, it was a separate country, so we have a different...cultures and languages compared to mainland Japan." Her connection to Yaeyaman shaped her interest in the preservation of indigenous languages, which is her current research specialty.

Dr. Hammine’s research addresses how colonization can repress people’s native languages, a situation that she experienced first-hand when growing up in Japan: “I became bilingual in English and Japanese before knowing my own language. It's because of assimilation and colonization and it took me a long time to realize it.” She didn’t learn her heritage language Yaeyaman as a child, even though her grandparents spoke it as a native language. Due to language shift, she was taught Japanese as a child: “Because of cultural assimilation to mainland Japan, a national education system is based on the national language.” 

While working on her master’s degree in linguistics in Scottland, Dr. Hammine learned that the local indigenous language of Scottish Gaelic was respected in the larger culture and that heritage speakers had the chance to learn it at some schools there: “They can learn Scottish Gaelic in elementary school, if they choose to and if the environment allows it, junior high school, and high school, and then I realized that kind of education is possible. People can have multicultural or multilingual identities and society allows them to pursue that side of themselves.”

When pursuing her doctorate in Finland, Dr. Hammine witnessed a different dynamic surrounding the Sámi language, which was repressed within the dominant culture: “They have experienced cultural assimilation. They were forbidden to speak the indigenous language, and they had to create a space where they can revitalize their indigenous languages. I met a lot of people who learned the indigenous language after the language shift in Finland.”

During her graduate studies, many people asked her about her roots, and she realized that her knowledge of her heritage was limited: “They asked me so much about my history and my culture and my language, but I realized I didn’t know much about it, so from that time, I started to read about my island's history, I started to reclaim my language and I started to connect with people who are in the same situation, and gradually I started to realize that, oh, I have an indigenous background.”  Learning Yaeyaman as a second language proved challenging: “As a community member, people assume that I know a lot about the language, but because I didn't acquire it as a child, I'm learning it as an adult, so you know when you learn a second language, there are some things that are hard, like quote pronunciation, intonation, and so on.”

Having only learned Yaeyaman as an adult, Dr. Hammine is committed to helping others to regain connections with their heritage languages: “I work with my own community at the moment, and we create a lot of digital materials for the people who want to learn their heritage languages. I have worked on a website for people who want to learn the Ryukyuan languages. I also collaborate with local TV programs, and I help them with making short videos.”

Dr. Hammine has several current projects connected to the preservation of indigenous languages. She is working with a colleague on a comparative study of language revitalization in Japan and Peru. They are studying “the knowledge of indigenous women, how they are using their own experience to connect with their native languages.” Another ongoing project is the creation of a multilingual picture book.

Dr. Hammine finds that “when cultural assimilation is very strong and successful people sometimes view their own language as not as good.” It is vital for people to regain a connection to their heritage language, even if they must learn it later in life and cannot achieve native fluency: “Members of native communities may think, ‘oh my competency in my native language is not so high…so maybe I shouldn’t speak it’, but it’s okay I think using it even though you are not fluent. It makes a difference.” Since coming to DU, Dr. Hammine has appreciated the value that the university places on linguistic diversity, and she hopes the university will create even more spaces “to celebrate, use, and create visibility for different languages.”