The following item from the Kenyan paper The Standard may be of interest. It goes beyond the subject in the title (note for instance the call for more reading materials for children in African languages). Fwd from H-Swahili... DZO
http://www.eastandard.net/hm_news/news.php?articleid=36681 Sunday February 19, 2006 Give Kiswahili same priority as English in national fora -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Prof Kimani Njogu The recent statement by President Mwai Kibaki that Kiswahili should be used more deliberately in order to build national cohesion and increase communication between the political elite and citizens is commendable. Of concern to advocates of Kiswahili in East Africa, however, is the fact that the language has not received the status and prestige it deserves, despite its immense potential for political and economic integration. The elite are not making deliberate efforts to know the language well. We need also to move fast and establish key institutions for the development of the language. The East African Community has adopted it as the _lingua franca_ of the region and a team is busy putting together the protocols for the establishment of the East Africa Kiswahili Council. Uganda is now taking the language seriously and the Constitution now recognises it as a national language. It is still, however, disappointing that a big number of our national leaders have to resort to English, even when the audience would feel more comfortable if addressed in a Kenyan language. Language is not just a mode of communication, it also defines who we are by giving us identity and a sense of belonging. It is a form of cultural expression and a carrier of memory and history. Languages play an important role in resisting injustices and regenerating more just, meaningful and ecologically balanced lives. Through the facility of language, localities are able to develop and nurture vibrant, innovative and dynamic social processes. Languages facilitate self organising the coming together of people in organic, contextual ways. They create self and collective efficacy which is vital for social transformation by injecting faith and belief in one's ability individually and with others. There is need to increase the memory of the African continent and to release it from the fetters and constraints of the past and the present. Ali Mazrui and Alamin Mazrui have, in _The Tower of Babel_, drawn our attention to the fact that although Asia was also colonised, nobody has divided it into zones on the basis of the imperial languages. Yet we talk of Anglophone Africa, Lusophone Africa and Francophone Africa. Through this strange division of Africa, we witness a linguistic anomaly indicative of Africa's levels of dependence. According to these scholars, the difference between Asia and Africa `lies in the scale of political dependence on the imperial language, linking them much more firmly to the African countries, and their identities, than to the former Asian colonies of European powers.' It is time we started creating a larger space for Swahiliphone Africa and extending its borders. The struggle for indigenous languages to survive is interconnected with the larger struggles for democracy, access to justice, rights, freedom and economic well-being. Whereas there has been a strong sense of linguistic nationalism in Asian countries, the same cannot be said of many African nations. In certain cases, the push has been for the acquisition of more Western languages, especially among the middle-class. But there have been significant moments in East Africa when Pan Africans have urged that the central role occupied by the Queen's English be re-considered. They are pushing for the development of `Englishes' and celebrate linguistic diversity. How do we develop a language policy that would both accommodate the languages inherited from the colonial experience while at the same time create an important space for the development and promotion of indigenous languages? Colonialism presented two scenarios for Africa vis-à-vis the language question: Whereas the British system of indirect rule made use of traditional systems of knowledge and governance, whenever possible, by making local languages important for the colonial administrator, the French policy of assimilation gave very little regard to indigenous languages, prioritising instead the French language and culture. The British colonial regimes introduced English, even if to a limited degree, but allowed at least in the initial stages, the growth of indigenous languages. Towards the end of the colonial era, the British government in the colonies seems to have accelerated the use of English among the people as a way of preparing the local elite to take over and to perpetuate and protect British interests. The presence of languages that are in competition with each other in Africa creates a situation of contestation and the urge to realign the relations. In a discussion on linguistic descriptions and language planning in Africa, Paulis Djite argues for the ecological approach to language planning, in which standardisation and uniformity of speech types are questioned. Instead linguistic diversity, as a way of maintaining cultural, biological and environmental diversity, is presented as the most viable for Africa. The position advanced by Djite is similar, to a significant degree, to the one proposed by many Kenyan linguistics such as Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Okoth Okombo, Mohammed Abdulaziz, Alamin Mazrui and myself, among others. The promotion and development of African languages is a necessary prerequisite to political, economic, social and cultural emancipation. We link language with the decolonisation of the African continent in all domains of life. Although globalisation a process of cultural interconnectedness, homogeneity, integration, and disintegration is contributing to language loss, there are other factors that might also accelerate to the loss of some Kenyan languages, such as Suba, Ogiek, El Molo and so forth. One factor is that languages which do not have a systematic and vibrant writing and reading tradition and which rely heavily on orality, are likely to die out if one generation fails to learn them. Current generations are not learning, reading or working in the languages of their parents. There is need to develop reading materials for children in local languages. The writer is a Kiswahili author and scholar Yahoo! 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