CALL ME A COCONUT BUT AFRICAN TONGUES ARE DESTINED FOR OBSCURITY
Kopana Matlwa

Sunday Times
Oct 7 2007

"When a French woman stumbles over English words, we are captivated. When a Zulu woman knocks herself on English words, we find ourselves concerned"

"African languages will one day become an arbitrary subject offered at universities, studied only by the eccentric bead lover and a few curious others"

It is sad that recognising the value of indigenous languages, and their attendant ways of thinking and being, will not be enough to save them, writes Kopano Matlwa.

The state of indigenous languages in schools or tertiary institutions is sad. But then again, who cares? I am no authority on the topic, just a young person, growing up in now South Africa, torn between that flourishing, booming world that benchmarks itself against the proud Western standard and a vague almost contradictory voice within that screams: "Can't we do it our way!"

But who cares and who is listening anyway? Indigenous languages have fizzled out in Nigeria, Liberia, Togo, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Sudan, Liberia and Sierra Leone, so what makes us think we are any different and that we will survive natural selection?

Perhaps, as some suggest, it is progressive to leave all of it behind, move with the times, adapt and stop trying to politicise everything. Languages, they will tell you, are in demise all the time all over the world, Latin, Welsh, Cornish, Yiddish being some of the few. Societies are dynamic and as they change, move and evolve so do languages.

But is it that simple? A light matter of adaptation? Are languages not more than just strings of words that can be forgotten and discarded like plastic jewellery?

It is debates such as these that one hates, that force one to dig deep within, that result in one sharing personal experiences one had no intention of mentioning at the outset. One cannot speak about issues around language, heritage, race and culture diplomatically, without coming out of it with a number of smelly feet in one's mouth. So do not say I did not warn you.

The state of indigenous languages in schools and tertiary institutions is not just sad but dire. Not so much because the structures or policies are not in place, but because of the mentality about indigenous languages, the mentality that goes "if it's black, it's wack", a mentality that has been with us from before-before and that refuses to leave us still.

We have been brought up to believe that anything that is even mildly reminiscent of old Africa is backward, regressive, slow and inhibitory. And language is merely an outward manifestation of those deep-rooted convictions. So what if your school offers Sesotho as a subject. If you do not believe it will get you anywhere, of course you will not take it.

When a French woman walks into the room staggering and stumbling over English words, her heavy accent making it near impossible to decipher what she is saying, we find ourselves captivated. When a Zulu woman walks into the room knocking herself on English words, bumping and smashing terms in her way, her heavy accent making it difficult to discern what she is up to, we find ourselves concerned. In this day and age, at a time when education should be freely available to all, she should at the very least be able to communicate the basics in English, we think.

When a Russian accent walks into the lecture theatre and puts up its slides, conversations abruptly cease, pens and highlighters are held ready because what is to come is surely founded on intellect and years of research and study.

But when a Tswana accent walks into the lecture theatre and sets up its slides, conversations pause to check out the curious form, note pads are forgotten in bags and pens are used only to take down references to be checked after the lecture has ended.

On the playground, when an English-speaking girl attempts to repeat a phrase in Sepedi and calls a cat a mat, we smile and hug her warmly because her heart is in the right place. But on that same playground when a Xhosa-speaking girl calls a boy a she and a she a man, we cringe and hastily correct her and hope, for her sake anyway, that she never makes that mistake again.

A friend of mine had this to say on the subject: "The Chinese can be arrogant about their languages because they have a product the world wants; we cannot be arrogant about our languages because we have nothing to offer the world. As long as we are dependent on the Western world we have to play the game according to their rules."

But is that right there not the problem? We do not believe we have anything to offer the world, and worse, that we will ever have anything to offer the world. We ourselves do not consider ourselves, let alone our tongues, worthy. How then do we expect anyone else to see them in that light?

I dare say it has less to do with what you speak and more to do with how you feel about yourself and your people.

The languages of old Europe that are no longer spoken were not so much lost but transformed into other languages, like Latin which gave rise to French, Spanish and Italian. That was natural, as a result of a mixing of peoples. But what has happened in Africa is not the least bit natural, it is a deliberate swapping of Tsonga for English, Lomongo for French, Kimbundu for Portuguese, anything for anything that does not sound African.

I can say this with confidence because I know. I grew up at a time when the rules had changed but the sentiments hadn't, when Mrs Van Vuuren said we weren't allowed to speak that nonsense to each other - meaning our home languages - because she could not tell what we were up to, when we got laughed at for sounding so black and when we practised the "English of the Nose" in front of mirrors at home.

Our foundations in academia, business and literature are in English. I write this article in English because the sad truth is that I have never been equipped to express myself as expansively in any other language. Many will, as a result, call me a coconut.

Some of us were fortunate to have parents who insisted on speaking indigenous tongues at home, who fostered a firm belief in love for self, but many weren't. Besides, what chance did any of us have against the strong current of society?

The state of indigenous languages in schools and tertiary institutions is pretty pathetic, but wait a minute ... do we really care?

Of course we do. We care because we recognise and realise our impotence in the face of this reality. We care because we know what we stand to lose.

I am with the school of thought that believes that language goes further than just communication, that it extends to a sense of belonging somewhere and, more than that, a sense of pride in that somewhere.

Languages come with their own unique way of thinking and way of living. It's not just the words we lose, but the culture and heritage that comes with it. When languages die, whole peoples die and along with them, everything they have to offer to society at large.

Some will go back and try to relearn what has been forgotten. Some will fight for textbooks to be translated. Those with a little more power than most might change a street name or two; those with a little less power and ingenuity will change their English names to African names, and others will buy dashikis.

But the reality is that none of that will ever be enough. Those African countries that won their freedom years before us made the same attempts and look how colonial languages rule their tongues still.

It is sad but true that unless something drastic is done, something radical, something absolutely insane, African languages will one day become an arbitrary subject offered at universities, studied only by the eccentric bead lover and a few curious others.

So, let's just make peace with that fact. You can call us coconuts if you like, but that's the reality.

Matlwa, a medical student, is author of the novel Coconut, which won the European Union Literary Award