The following column from the Nairobi paper, The East African Standard, was seen on AllAfrica.com at http://allafrica.com/stories/200702260766.html ... DZO
Don Kenya: Mother Tongue And Cultural Identity The East African Standard (Nairobi) http://www.eastandard.net/ OPINION February 24, 2007 Posted to the web February 26, 2007 Egara Kabaji Nairobi The World Mother Tongue Day was marked on last week on Wednesday, February 21. Unfortunately, there was no significant event organised to mark the day in Kenya. The newspapers, radio and TV stations were equally silent yet the question of the place of mother tongue is an important pedagogical issue of our time. The role of language in defining a nation's cultural identity is critical in a post-colonial multilingual state. It is unfortunate that the colonial experience has made it difficult for us to come to terms with our past and draw strength from the mother tongues as source of our cultural spring. Modern education has also set us on a path of self-denial and flight from who we are in terms of language and culture. The more "enlightened", the more we are unlikely to identify with our languages and culture. In my line of duty, I have encountered many people who consider communicating in our languages as a sign of primitivity. Others wrongly equate communicating in our mother tongues to tribalism. Nothing is far from the truth. The obvious fact, however, is that anybody ashamed of his language creates a void in himself. Before the advent of colonialism, our mother tongues were the languages through which we expressed our culture. Through these languages, we told folk stories, sang and dreamed. In the evenings, as darkness engulfed the environment, children would retreat to their grandmothers' or mothers' huts to be told and to tell tales. Literature was delivered in a language that never isolated any one of them. For failing to mark the World Mother Tongue Day, we may be confirming that the colonial war against our languages was won and the situation is irreversible. The war was waged in various stages. Christian missionaries were the first to arrive, followed by colonial administrators. They came to "civilise the natives" and hence the first move was to wage a war on our languages and culture. They launched a sustained cultural imperialism campaign that they hoped would bring about the death of these languages. The effects of this war are visible in our inability to mark such an important day. The colonial anthropologists, historians and sociologists who attempted to study African cultures and languages were shrouded by myths. Celebrating mother tongue day would have given us the opportunity to demystify these myths and create a new awareness; in Ngugi wa Thiongo's words, move the centre. Kenya is lucky to have 61 languages. All these are fortunately living languages. Apart from speaking a myriad of mother tongues, every Kenyan is expected to speak Kiswahili. Thus, to many, Kiswahili is their second language if the individual is not a Mswahili or did learn Kiswahili as a mother tongue (first language). Kiswahili, no doubt, occupies a prestigious position. Being a national language, each and every Kenyan is expected to speak it. Nevertheless, it took the Kenyan government from 1963 to 1986 to realise that Kiswahili should be a compulsory language at both primary and secondary schools. The introduction of 8-4-4 education system was a blessing for Kiswahili by marking it a compulsory subject in primary and secondary schools. Kiswahili is also the mother tongue to many urban Kenyans. It is also inevitably the language of instruction in nursery and lower primary in towns and cities of Kenya. The prestigious position of Kiswahili is, indeed, assured. Apart from being a lingua franca in Eastern Africa, it is now the seventh most spoken language in the world. Apart from the major mother tongues, others are confined to the periphery. Very little print and electronic publishing is done in these languages. This is partly because of the colonial legacy. When the British colonialists introduced English in Kenya, they suppressed the use of other languages. No wonder English is curiously also a language of prestige. To speak and read English bestows the individual with some degree of prestige and "Englishness" which implies being "educated". It is the language of social mobility and economic interaction. Mother tongues (other languages other than Kiswahili) are sometimes referred to as languages of the catchment areas in Education. The fact that mother tongues are never taught after primary three, renders them vulnerable to extinction. A report tabled recently at an international conference in Kenya warned that thousands of indigenous languages might disappear in this century. In many of the indigenous Kenyan languages other than Kiswahili, very little research has been done. These languages have very little written in them. At best, one can only find a poorly translated Bible with numerous grammatical, structural and orthographic problems. It is clear that traditional knowledge found in these languages which include secrets of medicine and how to manage land in environmentally sustainable ways have never been known to the world. The process of globalisation is promoting the use of English, French, Portuguese, Spanish and other European languages at the expense of our languages. We are more comfortable writing and speaking in these languages than our mother tongues partly because they are languages of our intellectual upbringing. The restoration of right place of mother tongues can only be realised through government policy formulation that will see to it that commercial publishers venturing in publishing and popularising reading in our mother tongues are given incentives to do so. Progressive policies will inspire attitude change towards our languages and "brainwash" our people to feel proud speaking their languages. The bottom line is that if the government does not intervene, some Kenyan mother tongues are bound to die at a great cost. Copyright © 2007 The East African Standard. All rights reserved. P.O.Box 30080, Nairobi, Kenya 254-2-540280/1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9, 254-2-540370/8/9 [EMAIL PROTECTED] **************************** Disclaimer ****************************** Copyright: In accordance with Title 17, United States Code Section 107, this material is distributed without profit for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material posted to this list for purposes that go beyond "fair use," you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. Content: The sender does not vouch for the veracity nor the accuracy of the contents of this message, which are the sole responsibility of the copyright owner. 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