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MEDIA ARTICLES
Though there are 11 official languages in South Africa, many young people are forsaking their mother tongues to speak in an American-English mode considered 'cool' by their peers, writes Mike Nichol.
DEATH OF THE MOTHER TONGUE
The Sunday Times Newspaper and online (sundaytimes.co.za) Every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon Thandi Mfikili (not her real name) goes for mother-tongue lessons in Cape Town. She's petite, bright-eyed, 16 years old, speaks English with a Model C accent and is cool - pronounced kewl - about most things but the language lessons. The language she's learning is Xhosa. "I mean, why?" she pouts. "Like why do I need this? If it wasn't for my mom I wouldn't bother." Thandi has a globalised world view where the language is a staccato "Ameri-lish". This language gives her access to television, movies and the culture of her contemporaries. The question her mother asks is: is this good enough? Thandi's mom is a vibrant woman with vociferous opinions about the position English (let alone Ameri-lish) has been given in our political, social and economic life. She's an ardent supporter of the contention that the pro-English tendency is consigning us as a nation to a ghetto of mediocrity. She makes statements such as these: "In schools, English becomes the medium of instruction too early. As a result our pupils have no language background because they have not been given a thorough grounding in their mother tongue. The result is that they have no language skills at all - neither in their mother tongue nor in English. "Our children, my own children, can speak English very well. But I would question their competence in the language. Their comprehension of mathematical, scientific, philosophical and literary concepts is dubious. "For someone who has learnt English without a mother-tongue foundation, the ability to think conceptually is impaired. Their primary focus is on understanding the language. When you have to overcome that barrier first, how can you expect to grasp a subtle concept? "The cognitive ability of our young people has been impaired by this tendency towards adopting English as a 'first language'. We are stunting the educational growth of our children. Their abilities will only ever be mediocre." Thandi's mom is an educator in government employ. As her opinions are unpopular and she is not allowed to speak on the record, she asked to remain nameless. She does not speak with a Model C accent and was educated in a rural village in her mother tongue. However, accent is unimportant. What is significant is that before she learnt English she understood how her home language worked. Grammar lessons were wholly responsible for this. When she came to learn English, grammar was not a foreign concept and she had a firm basis on which to build her second language. Also, the grammar was drilled into her. Thandi has had none of these advantages. Her experience of grammar has been less rigorous. She has been schooled entirely in English in the past 10 years and hasn't been taught in her home language since she passed Grade 3 at the age of eight in 1996. She doesn't think her mother's accent is all that "kule" and sometimes - with a sigh - corrects her pronunciation. What saddens her mother is the knowledge that Thandi's accent is a gloss over a profound chasm of incomprehension. "It is crazy that I should have to pay to have my child take private mother-tongue lessons," says Thandi's mom. "But if I don't I shall be failing her." The other reason that Thandi takes private lessons is because her school in the northern suburbs of Cape Town doesn't offer Xhosa. To her mother, that is iniquitous. Pupils, she feels, should have to learn three languages. In Cape Town that would be English, Afrikaans and Xhosa. In Durban Zulu, English and, say, Sotho. In Johannesburg it could be English, Pedi and Zulu. "Bilingualism is not enough," she says. "We should be multilingual." But, argues Edcent Williams, Chief Director of Curriculum and Assessment Development and Learner Achievement at the Department of Education, the choice of the medium of education at a school is up to parents. "The department advocates 'home language' in the early years," he points out, "but the decision rests with parents. So if any language is seen to be dominant, it is because parents are choosing that language more than others." And that language, invariably, is English. This tendency troubles academic and writer Professor Es'kia Mphahlele. He believes that "by default English is becoming the dominant medium of education" and "government did not think deeply enough about the consequences of the language policy". In fact, the issue goes to the question of political will. As Mphahlele says: "Without the political will to actively promote the language policy, we fall back on the easiest option, which is English. Then again, my opinion is that English teaching is slipshod. The tragedy of this is that the language ability of many pupils has been diminished." The argument that we are lapsing into mediocrity is not a new one. It is a drum that language commentator Neville Alexander has been beating for some time. But no one seems to be listening. So here, again, is one of his arguments: "A policy of de facto unilingualism, that is one that in effect promotes English... as the only language of power for use in high-status functions, necessarily at this moment and for the foreseeable future excludes the vast majority of 'the common people' from the most important decision-making processes, marginalises and disempowers them, and ultimately undermines the very democracy South Africans pride themselves on having attained." The irony, as he has pointed out, is that the language power balance has remained in favour of those who had it throughout the country's history. The very people who were excluded in the colonial and apartheid years are once more pushed aside. To exacerbate matters, the black middle class has adopted English at the expense of African languages and has used it to separate themselves from the rest of the population. Thus, when President Thabo Mbeki does a whirlwind imbizo through rural KwaZulu-Natal, he speaks mostly in English. Partly that is because he wants an international stage, partly because he assumes that his audience has some English. But is that true? A recent study undertaken by Monash University's Ana Deumert with Tessa Dowling of African Voices - an organisation that promotes multilingualism - found that in the townships of Cape Town English is far from common. Their impression was that whole villages were moving out of the rural areas and re-forming in the townships. The villagers then relied on those in their midst who had some English to translate the outside world. Invariably these people were also the source of income, which further entrenched their power. However, the essence here is what does "some English" mean and is that "English" capable of making meaning? Perhaps it is best to refer to this English with a lower case "e". By its nature it is a language stripped of ambiguity, cultural and literary references, figures of speech, idiom, rhythm, tone: it is a language with a limited vocabulary that is incapable of conveying ideas. Yet this is the language that the majority of people in this country are forced to use if they wish to communicate with employers, shops, banks, even government. Strangely, though, a flip through a newspaper won't turn up any adverts for English classes. Xhosa, Zulu, French, Spanish, yes, but no English courses (except those intended for foreigners). "I would have thought," says Dowling, "that learning English would be a growth industry. "I've heard of a place in Langa offering lessons but I don't know how well they are attended." Of course, picking up enough English to get by is as much English as most people are interested in acquiring. So here we have a crippled language that has become the language of power. If Thandi's mom and Neville Alexander are right, most of the people who use it as their primary means of communication have no mother-tongue language foundation and hence wield English tentatively. As Thandi's mom pointed out, their conceptual dexterity in the language is stunted. We also have a pared-down English that is a major means of communication, or more usually miscommunication, for a host of people who only need the language occasionally. The result is that the language of power - this lingua franca - is a faulty, inadequate means of expression. Inexact messages are being sent and further corrupted by those who hear them. Surely we have a problem when mother-tongue English speakers cannot understand the English of politicians or business people or radio newsreaders? At this point, should we not take heed? Alexander once more: "An English-only, or even an English-mainly, policy necessarily condemns most people - and thus the country as a whole - to a permanent state of mediocrity since people are unable to be spontaneous, creative and self-confident if they cannot use their first language. "Even more important, however, is the fact that economic development, which in the modern world is dependent on high levels of scientific and technological know-how, will continue to be stymied because the English-knowing layer from which the expertise can be recruited will continue to be very thin." But while parents decide to have their children taught in English rather than their mother tongue, and while the black middle class favours English as a language of power, South Africa will condemn itself to what Thandi's mom called a "ghetto of mediocrity". Policy points on language The Founding Provisions of the Constitution state:
Sections 29 and 30 of the Bill of Rights say:
The Department of Education's Language in Education policy document, dated July 14 1999, states:
Some key policy aims are:
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