ENGLISH MUST NOT STIFLE 10 OTHER TONGUES

The Times
July 24 2008

Pandor calls for promotion of all SA's languages, writes Andrea Hart

"Languages die without use; languages can disappear," said Minister of Education Naledi Pandor, as she spoke to hundreds of pupils and teachers at the second National Schools' Language Festival.

Pandor was the keynote speaker earlier this month at the event which honoured more than 200 students around the country for their skills in poetry and debating. The two-day festival was held in Pretoria.

With young people from different provinces, the festival reflected South Africa's language diversity.

Kaya FM's talk-show host Masechaba Moshoeshoe was the master of ceremonies. Like the other speakers, Moshoeshoe shared intimate moments of growing up in a household where code-switching (using more than one language) was common and bonds were strengthened through understanding languages.

For students, it was a time to showcase how South Africa's future is keeping the nation's 11 languages alive.

"We as pupils regard the language festival as a great opportunity to give the outside world a glimpse of the exciting and enriching activities that are happening in our classrooms," said Gary Witbooi, a Paarl Boys High School student who spoke on behalf of all pupils at the festival.

"Our poetry speaks of our personal hurts, but most of all of the joys that we as youngsters experience in our daily lives," he said.

For Witbooi's fellow pupils, their poems reaffirmed both their academic skills and their dreams.

"My parents always tell me that I must focus on education and achieve my goals - and I want to achieve my goals," said Emmanuel Ngcobo, a 13-year-old pupil from KwaZulu-Natal.

"My ultimate goal is to be the president of South Africa," said Ngcobo, who got an award in the Dramatised Poetry category.

Preparation for the event involved intense dedication and practice by both the pupils and their teachers.

"Language is a tricky issue and all the students are from a disadvantaged background, so to be able to deliver a speech to more than 200 students and to be applauded did wonders for their abilities of public speaking," said Warwick Brown, a teacher and debate coach for Willowmoore High School in Gauteng.

According to Brown, each debate team had two weeks to review Pandor's 2008 speech and select provincial-specific issues for debate.

"They gained consciousness from the debates."

Learning multiple languages and then developing them through speech has positive, long-lasting outcomes for children, according to linguistic studies.

"There's huge advantages to multilingualism: it helps cognitive development, it creates a certain flexibility and biculturalism," said Ana Deumert, an associate professor in social linguistics at the University of Cape Town.

For the pupils, the sharing of cultural experiences during the festival helped their learning.

"The friends that they made goes beyond the festival; there was a cross-pollination among various provinces, and they all promised to keep into contact with one another," said Michele Thackwray, who co-ordinated the event.

But the English language's dominance can sometimes threaten the indigenous languages.

"Prestige pushes people to aspire to speaking the language, and can sometimes move people away from speaking their heritage language," said Deumert, referring to the appeal of English over indigenous languages.

Though the event largely focused on the pupils' achievements in multi-lingualism, it also looked at the dangers of multilingual extinction in South Africa.

Pandor told the audience to be champions of all of South Africa's languages.

"If you only learned English, then you aren't educated enough. In my opinion you are very disadvantaged," she said.

"In the future let's encourage multi-lingual presentations so that all of our languages enjoy a presence in our festival, " she concluded.