Time and Trust

By Samuel Minev-Benzecry, SILICON Intern

During the summer of 2024, Unicode’s internship program included interns from Stanford University, Northeastern University, and Google’s Summer of Code. Several of the interns have shared their experiences. The first featured piece is from Samuel Minev-Benzecry at Stanford University.

I am Samuel Minev-Benzecry and I was born and grew up in Manaus, a city at the heart of Amazonia, a concrete dot in this green sea. Amazonia is a complex socio-environmental system, bathed by the waters of the rivers that are part of the Amazonian basin and one of the most ethnically and biologically diverse places in the world. The city is located at the confluence of the Amazon and Negro Rivers, a portion of Amazonia that has been inhabited for thousands of years. 

The Portuguese colonization and later annexation by the Brazilian Empire led to cultural and linguistic shifts often based on religious and social pressures through governmental and non-governmental institutions and structures. The Cabanagem (a popular revolt in Amazonia that took place between 1835 and 1840), which was crushed by the Brazilian Empire, led to the death of more than 40% of the population, mostly speakers of indigenous languages. In the following century, the rubber boom, urbanization, immigration, and expansion of media and the education system all led to a push of indigenous language speaker clusters into rural parts of Amazonia. Understanding the land and its people is extremely relevant to understanding some key factors surrounding time and trust and their role in language preservation.

Manaus, State of Amazonas, Brazil

What Amazonia experiences now is what California lived through 200 years ago. The “march to the West” and large-scale shifts in ecosystems and waterways are the first similarities that emerge, and more worryingly, one can peer into the tragedy of language homogenization. With the jump from oral and non-written languages to digital in less than 70 years, many languages are in a fragile state, as the speaker communities of these Indigenous languages often face external pressures from other existential threats, forcing some away from traditional ways of living and disrupting the passage of language and therefore the knowledge of several cultures. Simultaneously, Brazilian society, especially its coastal majority, is broadly ignorant of these issues, which in my point of view is a symptom of a wider project of Conquest of the “Green Hell,” which is the way the Brazilian government had labeled Amazonia in a not-so-distant past. With all of this in mind, it becomes clear that language preservation in the digital age is a time-sensitive issue.

Approaching a group of people with a certain issue or demand and offering free support is suspicious when context is removed. In the context of Digitally Disadvantaged Language (DDL) speaking communities, this has severe colonial implications, as people doing this activity to this very day have questionable objectives concerning non-Western communities. Considering this context, and a basic understanding of what epistemic injustice entails, one can place a sense of trust and allyship as central to working with any DDL community. This could be applied to anything in human life, but it is important to state that it is impossible to build trust just from words; one must allow past actions to speak. For example, I can point to my past project, Linklado, a digital keyboard for Amazonian languages, which has opened many doors for me while doing the SILICON/Begin work.

Looking back at all the connections I have established within the last 10 weeks, all of them can be traced back to actions I took 2 years ago. In the conversations I have had during the internship, I felt this more than ever, as in one of them, I was contacted because I had worked on Linklado. While it is hard to build trust in such a short period, what is at the core of any work like this is legitimate care. When one embodies time, there is no greater sense of trust that one can convey. To be present, to be curious, and to attempt to help, speaks beyond actions, and enters a realm we don’t see as often anymore.

If I had to point out one major distinction between non-DDL stakeholders and their DDL counterparts, it would most likely be the feeling of urgency I felt when talking to the latter group. Trust built on time carries this urgency more than anything, which can be seen in the lines when one is talking about the looming fears concerning the next generation and the changes affecting these communities, from the expansion of television and the internet to the school system. It takes courage to share the fight against time with people not from your community. Language exists in a larger context, and to work on its maintenance is to become part of its ecosystem. Individuals might have a relevant role in the preservation of a language, but their impact is only of use if returned and inserted into a language community.

Understanding the long-term impact that losing the passage of a language can have on a community, even if this interruption is only for a couple of years, is key to grasping why there is a feeling of urgency when discussing solutions for these communities. DDL community leaders are eager to present what they think can be solutions, especially when it comes to the next generation of speakers. From my experiences in Amazonia to conversations with Dev Sunuwar’s team, I felt this looming concern with the next generation of speakers and ways to pass down the language through digital tools. A recurring example, heard in discussions with both groups, was that gamification was needed to capture younger pupils’ attention. 

This shows that while existing in very different contexts, DDL communities across the world struggle with a lack of support in the educational systems and by those in power. The road to the inclusion of these languages is long and multi-faceted, with some advancements taking decades to see the light of day. Sunuwar, for instance, took more than a decade just to have its script encoded after the first interaction with Unicode. But, to be in support of these communities for such a long period, through frequent contact, is proof of reliability and the only way to build lasting trust.

Considering all of this, it is important to approach the issue of language preservation in the opposite direction from missionaries and colonial entities. One must build trust, show clear intentions, and attempt to truly understand the context in which a language exists to preserve it in an organic and just way. As we march towards a connected future, holding these standards is more important than ever. In a broader context, to build trust is to unmake the walls lifted in the past, and build bridges for a diverse and resilient future.

Samuel Minev-Benzecry is a junior double majoring in Linguistics and Earth Systems and minoring in History. Originally from Manaus, in Northern Brazil. Samuel is passionate about language preservation, philosophy of language, understanding food systems, mycology, and environmental history. In his free time, Samuel enjoys film, reading, and photography.

Read more about their work at https://silicon.stanford.edu/ and @StanfordSILICON on Instagram, YouTube, and BlueSky.

Samuel’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samuel-minev-benzecry-23166a18a/

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