The Real Colour of English

A few of those who read an article I sent to other sites, which was published by a few, or in opinion columns of some African newspapers, in response to another entitled "Why it's Futile to Spoon-feed my Customers", which is published on my site, sent comments back accusing me of mysticism, or of simply being a racist.

I wrote this article in response to those letters I received, to try and show that there are more people out there who think like I do, and, not to let my claim to be right rest upon numbers only, to show that there are still others who have not left it at that, but have acted by conducting experiments to gain empirical evidence, and the results thus gained have proven the point I aimed to make in my letter to Mr. Ochieng.

In 1976 a young, bright anthropologist, called Pathé Diagne was engaged in an experiment in Burundi. The aim of the experiment was to establish how Africans using a mother tongue as a medium of instruction fared compared to those using a foreign language. The subjects of the experiment were African children. One group was to receive lessons in their mother tongue, while another, the control group, was to be taught in French.

The results of this experiment were to surprise even the most enthusiastic in the project: 65% of the children using their mother tongue passed the exam, while only 5%, I emphasize here, only 5% knew what they had learnt in the control group.

Pathé Diagne packed his bags and went about the business he was used to doing, probably getting letters after that accusing him of ascribing witchcraft, acts of God, or racism to natural phenomena, and though the results of this research were made public, the continent of Africa yawned at them.

This was not the first, nor the last time that something similar was attempted, and met with no response.

Nobody in the ruling elite knew what these results meant for their lands, because if they did, then they would know that an Africa where 65% of Africans understand the education they follow means the average book keeper of such a society would be as smart as the bank manager of a society where only 5% can know "what on earth that teacher was bla blabing about". An Africa where so many can make an exam is one where western experts are superfluous.

It is true that a language has no colour. Qua function and purpose, they are all the same. In this, as a tool developed and used by the being called man, all languages are the same.

Structurally, all languages adhere to one universal logic of construction. They follow similar, if not the same grammatical rules. The articles, the nouns, the adjectives, the pronouns, the verbs, all precede, or follow each other according to universal laws, used by all languages, from the north to the south pole.

In the dictionary, a language is defined simply as a system of terms used by a people sharing a history and a culture. This isn't restricted to instances of a "tree" in English is "muti" in my language. It encompasses much more. There are ways of saying things, and ways of not saying things. These laws are not arbitrary, but a result of the experience that a group has gained about proper and safe speech, behaviour or action in given circumstances, which have found their way into their language, this being the only way of communicating and passing on such complex messages to others, and to those who come after. This acquired knowledge cannot be lost as long as the language into which they have been incorporated stays with the people.

On the other hand, the reason a tree is muti in my language is obviously because of time and the isolation that groups of people have from each other. We see this phenomena today in dialects, which essentially, are languages undergoing the process of change. If we came back to the dialect of a language in a thousand years, we will find that it has developed into a completely different language from that to which it was formerly a dialect, where muti may well have changed to tree.

As languages are an integral part of our everyday existence, we tend to carry them with us wherever we go, whatever we do as a group. A language is our companion through thick and thin. It is there when we are happy, and there when we are sad. It gets richer when we become creative, and gets poorer when we stultify. It is with us through a civilization, when we make advancements in knowledge, and changes, or we change some aspects of it to accommodate the more complex world of that civilization. Language is there when we see things unheard of before, when we experience things that have never been experienced before, experiences we can only express, communicate, and keep in memory by additions we make, in that instance, to the language we use itself.

In this way, language, like the man who uses it, also goes through the process of evolution, gaining, becoming more complex as it goes along. Since language can not exist of its own accord, it remains a medium constructed, and used by man. It is as such, a cultural heritage, like all the other creations of man through time; a growing, developing heritage which tells more of the past of the user than the man using it himself.

Languages that exist on this planet have been around those who use them, and their ancestors, back till a time when some languages fuse into each other, back until we get the mother of all languages. Our biological systems are not the only entities capable of recording evolution. Language can do this too, but in a very different way, following its own unique laws.

The line of evolution of a species like cats, for example, is shaped like a tree, starting with the trunk, when all are one, to the branches, till the present when there are various kinds of cats. Language has also evolved in this way, changing with time until today we have several offshoots of the same language that once existed among the first people to ever use this form of communication, all over the planet. Unlike living, breathing creatures, languages can also re-mix at a later stage.

When languages meet in this way, unless a conscious effort is made by the users of one language to prevent admixture, the languages will form a new, richer language, each language bringing to the mixture its own particular experiences that the respective group has been through.

In time, this mixing too, will get its signature signed and preserved in the new language, and will go with the group wherever they go.

For example: two thousand years ago, the English language was very different from what it is today. The vocabulary was basic, comprising words used for everyday, simple activities. Contact with foreign people (the French, the Saxons, the Romans) brought with it new languages, and within these languages were new words, new concepts, new technology, new institutions, and new forms of expression. Slowly but surely, a new language was formed which is today known as English, which is not that different from the original language whose basic structure it has preserved.

The additions to this language can still, even today, be traced right back to their origin, and this can tell a lot about the culture of the time, and that of today, and also of the people using the language then, and now.

Every language on this planet has gone through a similar process.

This is reason enough to accept the argument posed by many that what Africa is going through today is a process that is just as natural as any other. Africans have to accept English, Portuguese, or French because, after all, they are also a part of their history, and as such, like local languages, have become a part of the people's heritage.

It isn't quite like that.

The process by which Africa got stuck with western languages left Africans with the shorter end of the stick, and experiments like the one Pathé Diagne carried out reveal this flaw in the arrangement, if restricted to our complex times. But then I do not think that thinking people in other, simpler times would have accepted such an outcome.

Tradition, another word for a group's accumulated knowledge, is gained around, and with the help of language. As such, tradition is dependent for its expression on the group's particular language. In a tribe, or group's particular language, the group's traditions find their expression. There can be no substitute language for this.

It speaks for itself then that it would bear wrong results to try to express another tribe's culture and tradition using a foreign language. This would be similar to the result you get when you translate a book from one language to another. The translated work is a mere interpretation of the original, and as such, lacks fidelity.

Apart from the loss of a cultural heritage is the inevitable mental backwardness that results when individuals in a society are divorced, at an early age, from the language they first used when they were born, but, instead of a permanent divorce from one form of communication to another, they are thrown into the center where language skills in no particular language are done justice.

There are no two ways about it. African languages must be reinstated as official and tuition languages. The reasons for this are clear.

A letter I read on the Internet had the writer fascinated by the number of things he can express in the English language as opposed to his local language. The writer, a poet, was conscious of the loss of a cultural heritage which Africans will suffer if they lose their languages completely, a process that, though in its initial stages, is sure to go all the way if left unchecked.

The writer also gives recognition to the fact that his poor use of his own languages is obviously a result of the neglect that the languages suffer as opposed to the language of instruction, the official tongue, whose every twists and turns, themselves born in foreign climes, become a part of the African psyche. If the vital part of our years are spent learning how to express ourselves in our own tongues, then surely the many complex ways we can express ourselves in the foreign tongue can also be achieved in our own tongues, given that we, like those individuals in those other countries in which the tongues are germane, take a conscious effort to enrich our tongues with new words, new forms of expressing, which themselves probably existed in the languages and have become redundant because of lack of use.

At the end of his letter, the writer proposes a mild remedy for this situation: the encouragement of literature in local languages.

This has been tried, but has failed wherever it has been tried for the simple reason that the languages are not official, tuition languages. There is no need to learn, as a human being, how to communicate one's thoughts effectively in a language that is not required in academic and social encounters. The only way out of this impasse is a full fledged reinstatement of local languages.

Man and Language

A human being is born without language, and spends the first part of his life learning how to use this tool whose uses and advantages are various. The first language we all learn is called the mother tongue. Every person has a mother tongue.

At the age of approximately five or six, we are introduced to formal education where our acquired skills are put to use. We are supposed then to learn how to read and write, to add and subtract. Initially, however, we are only required to learn to spell, pronounce, read and then write the same things we already know.

For this, we first learn the alphabet, then we learn to combine the letters of the alphabet to make simple sounds, also called phonemes, then we put this acquired skill into practice by spelling and pronouncing the things we already know, like house, car, table, tree, girl, boy. If the introduction to the learning process goes like this, it is smooth. But unfortunately for the African, this isn't how the learning process goes.

African children have a vocabulary when they enter school for the first time, but instead of using this, and enriching it; instead of regarding it as an acquired stage which has to be enriched - it has also been a part of the child's learning process thus far - it is ignored. It is cast asunder. African children are taught an entirely new vocabulary based on the English, French, or Portuguese standard.

An African child already knows what a tree is. Some form of conviction makes someone want to teach him a new name of a tree, which the poor child has to associate with his knowledge of what a tree is. In fact, the African child is forced to learn an entirely new language first, understand its various grammatical rules, and learn to build a precise vocabulary on this basis, while at the same time the child is made to keep up with the western standard, keeping up with the progress expected of a child that age in France, Portugal, or England, grade after grade, year after year, expecting the child to learn as fast and as well as children of the same age, in the same classes, in western settings. This is a roundabout process, you will agree. The children of the English in their native clime will be building on what they already know, while our own children will be struggling to do what the English children did when they were a year old.

Why do we retard our own children in such a way? Why do we retard ourselves in such a way?

Let us not forget here that logic is universal, that only the language used to describe it can differ from time to time. If I can comprehend western thought processes, which I, for the sake of the matter at hand, will call western logic, then I am capable of this simply because I have acquired in full the tools needed for the comprehension of western logic, and undeniably, also posses the intelligence needed for this, and nothing more.

It isn't English that has made an African intelligent, but his intellect itself which has been able to master the language. The forms of knowledge thus learnt are not understood because they are read in English, but because the mind comprehends them, albeit deciphered through the medium of the English language. Intellect and capacities lie in the head, and, though they are helped by language, they do not depend on a particular type, or kind of language.

Every language can be used to the same effect, no matter how complex the civilization or technology. It is after all a tool, made by man, and not the other way around. As a tool, any language can be shaped, and reshaped by our hands, to fit a purpose, and this is the job that Africans should no longer shy away from.

It has long been time to drop the complex that Africans have gained about their inheritance, about cultural artifacts, and realize that, as artifacts, they are subject to our control. We can make them what we want them to be.

The good news is that, to this end, there is already a lot of research going on. The bad news is that a lot of physical energy is getting wasted because a fact about language is being overlooked. The Africans who are involved in these projects, with their western counterparts, understand the necessity of comprehending the structure of the languages before any such construction and adaptation of African languages to the modern world can begin. The mistake is that they are trying to use western languages to understand the structure of African languages. Africans should abstain from the analyzing of their own languages through the medium of foreign languages. No single language can be advanced enough to be used as a medium for analyzing another language. This will give wrong results, or, as explained above, will result in a mere interpretation of the truth.

Apart from this is the opposition that such a venture attracts. Some time ago, when I was doing research on this topic, I was confronted by an erudite European with the question: "Do you want to make hybrid languages of African languages? That is wrong. A language should be original, if not natural." He was saying this to the wrong person. He might have convinced a less critical, uninformed man. Where on this planet can one find a language that is entirely original? They are all hybrid languages, especially western languages which still have clear signs of artificiality. Why would it be normal and acceptable for European languages to have terms borrowed from all over the planet, and disastrous for African languages to do the same, if they find that they lack certain scientific and technical terms that they could also easily borrow from other languages?

I have long realized that the public lynching of the entities English, French, Portuguese, etc., will indeed be the redemption that our continent has long hoped for. Otherwise a way has to be found to encourage Africans to learn more of these languages. They are after all the languages they use as a medium of instruction, thought and communication. To be able to learn English to the fullest would be to give it all the time this learning process requires. We cannot allow ourselves to be outdone by our competitors. If we choose to learn any western language to the fullest, and benefit from the functions of language, then we need to neglect our mother tongues because, after all, these are the culprits that are cashing in on the time needed to learn the English language, and be proficient in it.

But then again, as I said earlier on, this would be cultural genocide. A rich and profound heritage will be lost this way. A vital connection to our past, and our ancestors, will be given up.

In order not to be stuck in the present setup, with a major disadvantage in a world which is becoming more vicious by the day, with technology, biology, genetics, economic strategies, intellectual resources, all being used to gain an advantage over others, and complex communication to a large strata of a population is becoming more and more vital, the African has to make a decision.

My proposition is this:
If we look closely at the experiment done by Diagne, we would not consider the idea of making Swahili a language of instruction throughout Africa. It would lead to the same chaos as western languages have caused. Imagine the Zulus, Haussas, or the Eritreans in a Swahili school, and then picture them at home, away from the formal learning environment and you can guess the language they will use to communicate. Their local languages would cash in on the time needed to learn in full the important language that will be so vital to their lives later on. Once not acquired in full, the major functions of language can also not be realized in full.

A language closer to home is the best choice that can be made. A common Bantu language for Bantu people of a certain region could be a better solution as a replacement for the English tongue because the local dialects would not steal so much of the required learning time because a dialect is simply a regional form of a language not considered standard. In other words, a dialect is just another version of a standard language.

People who speak Bantu languages know what I am talking about. Words and sometimes phrases in Rwanda and Kenya are similar to those used as far afield as South Africa.

This similarity will allow the learning African child to be able to communicate what he has learnt in school to his mother, his friends, or his younger brother, who will give some feedback too. The learning process will subsequently not have to end at the school door, when the student closes the books, solely intended for the student alone in the classroom environment, but will extend to all who were not in the classroom, in this case the mother and the little brother, etc.

This is feedback.

You can agree that the little individuals brought up in such a setup will be much more informed and articulate than those brought up in the present setup, and that this enrichment will not only end with students, but will extend to other members of the community not involved in the learning process, as mother too will be able to learn something from the explanation that little Vunda will give of a process she takes for granted in her kitchen, because he will explain it in a language she knows, using terms she is familiar with. The whole community will be much the better.

This means a Kushite language for Kushite tribes, and so on. Then, on an African level, a lingua franca can be taught as a "second language" in all schools to enable Africans to communicate with each other, and with the rest of the world.

Mukazo Mukazo Vunda.