The following item from the Harare paper, The Herald, was seen on AllAfrica.com at http://allafrica.com/stories/200612200028.html . This column also has a lot of food for thought. the concluding question, "Whose language did you use when you woke up your child this morning?" is a very practical one in the context of discussion of African languages in the home & family... DZO
Zimbabwe: Let's Rediscover Our True Selves The Herald (Harare) http://www.zimbabweherald.com/ OPINION December 20, 2006 Posted to the web December 20, 2006 Joseph Chikowero Harare THE subject of the fate of African languages, often called indigenous languages to distinguish them from those brought to Africa by colonialists and then "indigenised", arouses diverse opinions each time it is raised. Herald features writer Sifelani Tsiko's recent articles are a wake-up call to the centrality of this subject in broader national development in Zimbabwe. This is a contribution to this critical debate. To start with, indigenous people in post-colonial Africa need not look down on their own languages. They should use them whenever possible. It is not possible to expect a foreigner to respect your language when you do not respect it yourself. Admittedly, one of the major hurdles Africans face is that we still have the psychological hurdle that we need to overcome before we can realise our true selves. Even with our Shona totems like "Mhofu Yemukono" and "Bvumavaranda", we are still essentially British at heart. This is a rather painful truth. The reasons are many and one of these is that the colonial and school experiences trained us to speak and write good English or French while nothing positive was said about command of our mother languages. In other words, one's mother language was the language the sangoma (traditional practitioner of herbal medicine, divination and counselling under the guidance of ancestral spirits) and uneducated people used in the schoolbooks, the same people that the textbooks regularly denigrated. Almost every Zimbabwean has something to say about the tragic experience of being punished for speaking in Shona or Ndebele within school premises. Teachers often joked that this was the most effective method of curbing "noise". For who knew how to be a nuisance in English? "Noise" then meant anything said in Shona or Ndebele within the school grounds. The problem is that such experiences that occur during our childhood years tend to haunt us for a long time. The solution lies in cultivating a positive culture towards our mother languages which, are after all, the languages we cry in. Sometimes even elders unknowingly stifle the development of indigenous languages. How many times do we show off our children's command of indigenised foreign languages? And we are proud of it. Our children should be encouraged to master both their indigenous and second former colonial languages rather than marginalising the former, as is currently the case. This situation will not change for the better as long as we have supposedly educated parents among us who even have the temerity to proudly announce that their son or daughter is doing very well in all subjects, except in Shona, Ndebele, Tonga, Kalanga or Chikunda. Parents need to appreciate that they are their children's first heroes and heroines and should, thus, lead by example. The second issue has to do with material culture. A language is an intrinsic part of a people's culture; it is inseparable from culture. Some will even say language is culture. What this means is that as we grow up in Africa, we are constantly reminded about how "great", say, the English language is by hearing about the great achievements of the historical owners of that language, in this case the British and the Americans. In other words, we associate the former political power of the British and current political power of the Americans with a particular language: English. We hear about their great empires, their big cars, their powerful computers, their space rockets, their irresistible music, their winners of Miss World and Miss Universe titles, their memorable films, their fabulous cities, their great sportsmen and women, their Internet and so on through that same language. This writer's point here is that in the real world, one cannot separate language from the culture that it mediates. A language that is associated with "great" things in various spheres of life is the language that will dominate communication. The sad thing is that in Africa, our lawyers may make the habit of addressing each other as "my learned colleague" and all the other clichés and yet they will never be recognised as part of what English as a language and culture represents outside Africa. To pose a practical question, how competent are our court interpreters? Tied to this last point is that language needs to be developed simultaneously with visible and invisible material culture. This material culture could be global or regional trade in diamonds to producing commercial music in indigenous languages. Such processes tend to be very slow but strides have already been made in Zimbabwe. If one listens to Oliver Mtukudzi and Thomas Mapfumo's early music, one will find that they sang mostly in English, imitating those "great" musicians from a material culture they aspired to achieve themselves. Now they sing mostly in the languages they cry in, so to speak, and have enjoyed unparalleled success. This is one way of measuring progress in advancing indigenous languages in Zimbabwe. Unfortunately, this is never enough. We also need to develop our economy so that when droves of Chinese, Russians and Germans come to Zimbabwe to do business, they are "forced" to learn more about our languages and cultures. At every reputable university in the United States of America, there is a language centre of one form or other that specialises in short and regular foreign language courses for Americans planning to visit Africa for a variety of reasons. It does not take the proverbial rocket scientist to figure out why Swahili, Yoruba, Xhosa, Hausa and Arabic are the dominant African languages at Western institutions of higher learning. Any languages whose material culture (in every sense) has something to offer will be considered attractive and learnt even with minimal official intervention. Kenya and Tanzania are good example of this. These countries have the lion's share of tourism business in East and Central Africa. In fact, with the exception of South Africa, these two East African countries are the "places to go to" for Western tourists. In both countries, the language of wider communication is Swahili. Because tourists will need to communicate with hotel staff, drivers, warders, food sellers and a host of other people in the tourism and related industries, nobody has to force the tourists to learn Swahili; they do it themselves before they set off. The result: Swahili is commonly taught at many American and European institutions of higher learning. The language is even thought to be so good that whole families subsist on producing "kangas" and other cultural artefacts with Swahili proverbs that they sell to tourists. In fact, the "kanga" -- with the Swahili proverb inscribed -- is the evidence that one has truly visited Tanzania or Kenya. The opposite is true: the San/Basarwa languages will probably be restricted to anthropological texts in a few generations partly because the San themselves have little to offer the world in material terms. Many African languages face this grim prospect while some are already extinct. Another way to ensure our national languages remain or achieve vibrancy is to use these languages to teach other technical subjects within the school curriculum. This is where the recent announcement by the Zimbabwean Government that Shona and Ndebele will be taught in all Zimbabwean schools from next year is noble. Besides fostering national cohesion, this policy, if pursued to its logical conclusion, will ensure greater currency of both languages across the nation. English and French are so dominant today because they have been used in communicating knowledge about everything from Quantum Physics to the latest anti-virus software. In other words, as we consume knowledge about these things and products, we unconsciously consume the languages they come in. The Chinese and Japanese, for example, suffer no inferiority complexes in terms of language use because they have tailored their indigenous languages to carry knowledge in whatever field of human endeavour. In Zimbabwe, we still think it is impossible to make Mathematics more accessible by teaching it in Shona or Ndebele. If this writer's memory serves him well, most teachers who taught me Maths were bad English language speakers and half the time I did not understand the concepts. Could there be a link between the teachers' poor command of English and the absolutely pathetic performance in Math exams? Why not use Shona or Ndebele? Is it any coincidence that the Japanese and Chinese are so advanced technologically when they make Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Biology available to their children in the languages those children cry in? We should stop the rhetoric and think outside the box. Finally, we all need to be pro-active in developing our mother languages. South Africans are strangely way ahead of us, never mind their nation is still in its teens. Films and television drama series such as Tsotsi (which won the prestigious Oscar award for best foreign film produced in 2005), Carmen eKhayelitsha (another big award winner), Yesterday, Forgiveness, Yizo Yizo, Generations and many others are mostly done in indigenous South African languages, with sub-titles where necessary. Look at a Zimbabwean film or TV series and you will see some nervous actor risking biting his or her tongue over some English word. Kenyans and Tanzanians have their own Wikipedia online, the Kamusi online dictionary, in addition to many online fora all conducted in Swahili. The Chinese write their e-mails in their language, but Zimbabweans, like many of our African brothers and sisters, still think that the cyberspace is too sacred for our Shona, Ndebele or Tonga. Still in South Africa, one of the biggest success stories in that country's media industry is that of the Zulu language daily newspaper Isolezwe. Recent reports indicate that the tabloid sells almost 100 000 copies a day and accounts for a readership of about 644 000. Food for thought. When many Zimbabweans think of the few indigenous-language papers, they think of outrageous stories of men with 40 wives, self-mocking jokes or stories of witches who fly from some rural area and are "captured" by early morning town dwellers after something goes wrong in mid-air. What values are we investing into the languages that tell such stories all the time while stories concerning noble efforts to rein in the rampant inflation are discussed in the Queen's finest language? Honestly speaking, no self-respecting Shona person should be proud of Si Brindley's recent launch of the on-line Shona podcast. What good are we if we have to wait for our indigenous language to be made available to the outside world by a white Briton married to a Zimbabwean? Brindley must have been surprised that nothing of the sort had been done at all in an age when, say, one can read all of Shakespeare's classic plays online, complete with audio aids. While our British son-in-law's good eye for business opportunities deserves unconditional praise, we need to ask ourselves if we have taken our place in the global world at all. Should we still be content to have such vital cultural aspects interpreted to all corners of the world by the likes of Brindley? It is clear that many of our problems are largely self-created. In fact, one of the great ironies in the field of African languages at the moment is that as Africans stampede to Western cultures (learning Western languages is the best example of the seriousness of these efforts), Western academics are making whole careers out of doing research in African languages. These Western academics and anthropologists are the interpreters of African languages to the world. How far have we moved from the classic case of Clement Doke, the University of Witswatersrand linguist who "standardised" Shona for Shona speakers back in 1931? The best way to preserve a language is to share it. The British colonialists gave us an excellent example of that and it's time to think out of the box. Whose language did you use when you woke up your child this morning? Asante sana, ndatenda hangu, Changamire, thank you. l About the author: Murenga Joseph Chikowero is a Zimbabwean at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, US. Copyright © 2006 The Herald, Herald House, George Silundika Ave/Second Street PO Box 395, Harare, Zimbabwe 263-04-795771 **************************** Disclaimer ****************************** Copyright: In accordance with Title 17, United States Code Section 107, this material is distributed without profit for research and educational purposes. 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