LANGUAGES FACE 'GENOCIDE' THREAT
Staff Reporter

The Cape Argus & IOL Online (www.iol.co.za)
July 7 2006

Language experts are worried about the "genocide" of certain African indigenous languages in South Africa.

This follows recent case study findings that some schools are reluctant to include African indigenous languages as part of their curriculum.

The issue came up during a presentation on complaints associated with language use in schools and how the Commission on the Promotion and Protection of cultural, religious and linguistic rights had handled these in the past.

The presentation was made during a conference of the Linguistic Society of Southern Africa and the Southern African Applied Linguistics Association, hosted by the school of language, literature and linguistics at the University of KwaZulu-Natal yesterday.

Presenting the study, University of the Witwtersrand research fellow Patricia Watson said children who learned in a non-mother-tongue language struggled to excel in their studies because of limited parental involvement as a result of not being conversant in the language.

She said the country's constitution called for the protection and promotion of indigenous languages and if deprived of learning their mother-tongue language, children were deprived of their rights.

The Dean of Education at UKZN, Professor Renuka Vithal, said there was a need for a radical approach by the state to promote indigenous languages.

She said that not only should schools include African indigenous languages but they should work towards using these languages as media of instruction.

Vithal said that in other countries, certain schools were earmarked as mother-tongue schools where only mother-tongue languages were used as the medium of instruction.

The starting point should be developing technology terms in indigenous languages.

"In KwaZulu-Natal where more than 80% of the population speaks isiZulu there is a need to develop the language as an academic and technology language," said Vithal.

She said the number of students studying IsiZulu at university was low because schools were not promoting indigenous languages.