Hands up if you know where Tiohtià:ke is. Or Cadi. Or Te Whanganui-a-Tara. If you’re struggling, don’t feel too bad – you already know these places, just more likely as Montreal, Sydney and Wellington.
The names given to the places where we live frequently come loaded with historical, political and cultural baggage. Those who wield the power often do the naming and older names that may have stood for centuries can be legislated out of existence with the sweep of a pen.
But in one former outpost of the British empire, a small step was taken recently to remind everyone that indigenous languages – and the people who spoke them – were there first.
Last month, Australia Post announced that it would begin to deliver items addressed in the country's Aboriginal languages. It was a victory for Aboriginal activist Rachael McPhail who fought for the recognition of languages spoken in Australia for thousands of years before Europeans arrived.
“Australia has an amazing history that spans back at least 60,000 years and can be celebrated by all Australians,” she said. “Every area in this country had an original place name, prior to being given its colonial town/city name, and I believe that it’s important to acknowledge this.”
The fight for indigenous language rights – through education, the granting of official status and more symbolic gestures such as altering place names – takes place where history, nationalism and colonialism intersect.
For Prof Stephen May, a languages policy expert with the University of Auckland, a starting point is to acknowledge that different languages can co-exist in one political space.
"The key principle needed for states to acknowledge or accommodate minority or indigenous languages is that of linguistic pluralism," he tells The National. "This requires, in turn, rethinking the principle of linguistic homogeneity, which still underpins most nation-states' language policies."
Aboriginal school children being taught in class to speak in their indigenous language is important. Alamy Stock Photo
This policy, Prof May says, has its roots in the development of modern nationalism from the French Revolution onwards.
“The consequence of this has been the marginalisation or banishment of other languages [including indigenous or minority ones] spoken historically in these territories,” he says.
“This basic pattern of suppressing other language varieties, and promoting a [usually] single national language has since been adopted as the norm.
“Both have usually been achieved via education – with the national language used as the language of education – requiring or forcing other language speakers to learn the dominant language. The result of this, over time, is language shift and loss of their first languages.”
Attempts to recognise, protect and promote indigenous languages seem to have had varying levels of success. In Australia – once one of the world’s most linguistically diverse territories – recognition of older languages is on the rise. In 2018, Queensland restored Mount Jim Crow and Mount Wheeler’s Aboriginal names: Baga and Gai-i.
Amazigh singer and poet Fatima Tabaamrant performs during a festival in Morocco. In 2012, she became the first MP to use the language of Amazigh in parliament. AFP
But at the same time, only a fraction of the country's surviving Aboriginal languages are being spoken by children – often a barometer of a language's chances of survival.
Does embracing a country’s older place names carry anything more than symbolic value? For Prof May such steps are only part of a bigger picture.
“Symbolic representation is a start but only that. The key for a minority or indigenous language is for it to be recognised and used publicly as a language of civil society. This includes the media, education, and where possible, the civil service.”
“Welsh is a clear example here where, since [political] devolution in 1999, it has once again [alongside English] become a language of everyday use and a public language, used widely in civic administration, education and the media.”
In Prof May’s native New Zealand, the Maori language went from being excluded from schools for more than 100 years to acquiring official status in 1987. Maori is now on the country’s passports, Maori place names are recognised by the postal service and the language can be used in courts.
In the Mena region, there have been some moves towards pluralism. In 2016, Algerian MPs voted to give the Amazigh (or Berber) languages official status, building on a 2002 decision to allow the languages to be taught in schools. Morocco’s 2011 constitution made Amazigh an official language alongside Arabic – in 2012, singer and poet Fatima Tabaamrant became the first MP to use the language in parliament.
Elsewhere in the region, however, minority languages have fallen foul of shifting borders, state building and nationalism. Turkey, for example, has a notably fraught relationship with its most widely spoken minority language: Kurdish.
Prof May says the principle of linguistic homogeneity can lead some countries to regard minority languages – and those who speak them – as a threat to the state.
“Indeed, in much social and political discourse, the idea of the maintenance of minority languages, and associated minority language rights, is [still] somehow attributed as disloyalty to the state,” he says.
A Kurdish man standing at an intersection in the town of Hasankeyf, Turkey. The Turkish government, which has a fraught relationship with the minority language Kurdish, has deemed that all signboards in the Kurdish regions be in the Turkish language. Alamy Stock Photo
The irony in Turkey’s case is that the republic’s predecessor – the Ottoman Empire – was a multilingual enterprise. Old photographs of Istanbul show shop fronts in Turkish (written in Arabic script), Greek, Armenian and French.
That linguistic diversity seems to be shrinking. Unesco estimates that 6,000 of the world's languages are under threat and says that half of these could be gone by the end of the century. Although recognition is an important stepping stone for a language's survival, support for its public use and respect for its speakers are vital for its viability.
Irish writer Brian Friel's 1980 play Translations depicts the humdrum work of changing indigenous place names. Two British army cartographers survey north-western Ireland in the 19th century, diligently translating or anglicising the local landscape. Cnoc Ban, for example, becomes either "Fair Hill" or "Knockban" – a meaningless word but something easier for the powers that be to pronounce.
Friel’s play and Ms McPhail’s postal campaign reveal that language is more than communication. And although changing street signs or postal addresses can’t make up for historic injustices, comprehending that language taps into powerful currents of identity and meaning should be easy – no translation required.
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Email sent to Uber team from chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi
From: Dara
To: Team@
Date: March 25, 2019 at 11:45pm PT
Subj: Accelerating in the Middle East
Five years ago, Uber launched in the Middle East. It was the start of an incredible journey, with millions of riders and drivers finding new ways to move and work in a dynamic region that’s become so important to Uber. Now Pakistan is one of our fastest-growing markets in the world, women are driving with Uber across Saudi Arabia, and we chose Cairo to launch our first Uber Bus product late last year.
Today we are taking the next step in this journey—well, it’s more like a leap, and a big one: in a few minutes, we’ll announce that we’ve agreed to acquire Careem. Importantly, we intend to operate Careem independently, under the leadership of co-founder and current CEO Mudassir Sheikha. I’ve gotten to know both co-founders, Mudassir and Magnus Olsson, and what they have built is truly extraordinary. They are first-class entrepreneurs who share our platform vision and, like us, have launched a wide range of products—from digital payments to food delivery—to serve consumers.
I expect many of you will ask how we arrived at this structure, meaning allowing Careem to maintain an independent brand and operate separately. After careful consideration, we decided that this framework has the advantage of letting us build new products and try new ideas across not one, but two, strong brands, with strong operators within each. Over time, by integrating parts of our networks, we can operate more efficiently, achieve even lower wait times, expand new products like high-capacity vehicles and payments, and quicken the already remarkable pace of innovation in the region.
This acquisition is subject to regulatory approval in various countries, which we don’t expect before Q1 2020. Until then, nothing changes. And since both companies will continue to largely operate separately after the acquisition, very little will change in either teams’ day-to-day operations post-close. Today’s news is a testament to the incredible business our team has worked so hard to build.
It’s a great day for the Middle East, for the region’s thriving tech sector, for Careem, and for Uber.
