At the beach in Sisal, Yucatan, after a full day of language documentation work (credit: Sarah Bryden)
“Why do you study Maya?”
This is a familiar question for me, given that the language is not commonly taught in the United States. I have a standard answer: I study linguistics at university, I’m curious about languages that are different from English, and Yucatec Maya is a fun and fascinating case study. Usually this answer is met with nods and smiles, but on this day my interlocutor– a taxi driver in the Maya-speaking region of Yucatan– frowned.
“What I mean is,” he clarified. “Why do you study a dying language? Why bother?”
My profession of curiosity and enthusiasm suddenly felt very hollow. I had been asked variations of this question before (often in the form of inquiries about the “usefulness” of learning Maya), but never so directly. I was in Yucatan that summer as an envoy of US academia, where the importance of studying endangered languages is widely discussed; I had never faced such a point-blank question about the value of my research. A bit shaken, I said something semi-coherent about the link between language and culture, and my hope that language documentation work can prevent language loss. I left the taxi with new self-doubt. Why couldn’t I explain my motivations? If I couldn’t put my motivations into words, was I wasting my time?
The taxi driver’s general sentiment is widely echoed in America, as evidenced by the recent slew of dirge-like op-eds about the death of the humanities. On campus, students with all kinds of niche, specific, “impractical” interests are facing this same essential question: why bother? Some are choosing not to, turning instead to an explicitly pre-professional program of study. They cite compelling reasons, including a pressure to be employable, concerns about student debt, and a desire to see a return on the (substantial) investment that is a Columbia education. Others have found a compromise, choosing to dabble or even minor in a field of interest, alongside their more “practical” major.
Underwriting all of this is a general consensus that the most practical disciplines are the ones that generate data, solutions, or findings which can be immediately leveraged to save lives or make money. Compared to STEM work, the applications of humanities research are less immediate, less quantifiable, and less self-evident. On the spectrum of practicality, language documentation work may be closer to “life-saving cancer research” than to “underwater basket weaving” (for example) – but as evidenced by the taxi driver’s question, that is not a universal perception. Practicality is relative, and also subjective.
However acute the issue may feel today, it is not a new one; the value of the humanities has always been a bit hazy. In book 6 of The Republic, for example, Adeimantus asks Socrates how he can argue for a philosopher-king when philosophers are so “useless” to society. For my senior thesis research, I’m reading bundles of letters to the Spanish Crown from friars on the ground in the “New World”: again and again, they complain that there aren’t enough books, that their fledgling universities are underfunded, and that their monasteries are neglected. As a point of comparison, the friars look bitterly towards well-funded mines and plantations– operations that were hugely profitable, and so were generously supported.
Defending the value of the humanities is an intimidating task which has been taken up by many admirable writers already, including in past Rose posts. Their arguments– that the humanities foster empathy, that research often has unexpected applications, that even the most quant-heavy STEM projects rely on skills and motivations nurtured by the humanities– make sense to me, and probably bear repeating. But my experiences with language documentation have shown me another answer to the question of “why bother?”, one which I think can apply equally to humanities and non-humanities work: research can generate excitement.
For the past two semesters, for example, I have been part of the “Language Documentation and Field Methods” class at Columbia. We are working with a man who speaks Kalmyk, a Mongolic language that has around 80,000 speakers (even less than Maya). We spend hours transcribing our consultant’s speech, making painstaking translations, and arguing about small details in our data. This work is difficult, but seeing our interest in Kalmyk has amplified our consultant’s enthusiasm for his language; he’s shared our work with his friends, family, and Kalmyk-speaking community members. Just by doing research, our class has been able to spark excitement and pride. This is an immediate and major application of research, even if it falls outside the realm of academia.
The same could be said for research in almost any field. Most people, myself included, don’t grasp the scientific importance of Mars rovers or nuclear fusion; these advances matter to us because they are impressive, and make the world feel more wonderful. Although I absolutely plan to return to Yucatan, I doubt I’ll find my way into the same taxi a second time. If I could answer the taxi driver again, though, this is what I would say: I study a small language because it brings interest, connection, and excitement to my life. Those benefits are not only practical, but necessary.
Sarah Bryden, CC’26