The Nation (Nairobi)

OPINION
May 27, 2001
Posted to the web May 26, 2001

Philip Ochieng'

Were I Philip Okundi, Kenya's English would top the list of industrial items to be banned by my Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS).

For language is the most important of our industrial products. There can be no oral communication except through a complex orchestration of human hands, brains and vocal organs.

I say English because it is our chosen instrument of tuition, work and governance, that is, of producing all our biological, mental and social needs.

My only problem at KEBS would be how to come by the judges of what should pass muster from our language plant. For lack of such dab hands, I would have to double up as language examiner.

For, surely, in Kenya there is no shoddier product. I would, therefore, order padlocked all establishments that claim to produce English and to use it in the production of other goods.

Included in my ban spree would be all living rooms, schools, universities, the School of Journalism, the Kenya Institute of Mass Communication, the Kenya News Agency, all newspapers - including our own - textbooks, radio and television stations, churches.

That is my answer to the readers who write to carp about the level at which I write. Listen to this: "His columns on Sundays are rich both in content and in vocubulary [sic]. The latter is a problem to those readers whose interest is in getting the former. I have particularly found it hard to go through the columns without a dictionary...

"...I would like to suggest that he tries [sic] to deliver his thoughts in simpler English...Otherwise some of us are learning more English at the expense of getting his point."

The statement is clearly untenable. For it is futile to ask anybody to deliver a racy intellectual content in a much more pedestrian language.

To try to separate the two is to be just as illiterate as the Dickensian character who claimed that he was "most oncommon fond of reading" even when he was holding the book upside down.

In good art, form and content are inseparable. And they always interpenetrate at the same (high) level. When content is rich and form is poor, aesthetes rightly condemn the product as "messagism".

On the other hand, when the artist pays all attention to outer "beauty" and neglects to lace it with ideo-social goodies, the product must be like Pygmalion's Galatea, art for art's sake.

That the English spoken and written even by our PhDs is so poor is vitally linked to the fact that their socio-moral consciousness is equally shallow.

But there is no short cut. You can gain such a consciousness only through intellectual travail. Only through ceaseless study have I acquired whatever I know and the language in which to impart it.

Of course, I was lucky to have a solid pre-university grounding. I owe much to my English teachers Barrack Aduwo Ukaya at Pe-Hill Intermediate and Edward Carey Francis, Peter Oades, Joe Kariuki, James Stephen Smith and Robin Hood at Alliance. At Chicago's Roosevelt University, my English teachers included Prof Lourenzo Turner, the eminent black American philologist.

But this was only the scaffold. To build through it, I have had to spend a fortune on books. For, apart from the social tensions around a writer, good books are his most important source of knowledge and the language in which to express it.

If Ali Mazrui defines an intellectual as a person capable of being fascinated by ideas, it is germane to a would-be writer. Without fascination with new ideas, new words, new turns of phrase, new idioms, there can be no learning.

But how sterile it is - like my correspondent - to rush to the dictionary every time one comes across a new word! Much more availing and enjoyable merely to make a mental note of the new word and read on, read even more books.

After one has met the word many times, its meaning will automatically suggest itself from the samenesss of contexts in which it recurs. When at last one looks it up, one is merely confirming what is now, in fact, already indelible in one's mind.

But my correspondents - instead of investing in and struggling to achieve this level of knowledge and language through constant reading - want me to climb down to their own snail's-pace English.

Why should I lower the level of my work to accommodate the "needs"of a lazybones who does not want to bother to better his own mastery of English through the only possible method - constant reading of especially fiction?

As a teacher of English, my task is to raise my students to my level. But I can help only those who make their own efforts. It is futile for me to try to spoon-feed adults.

Any socio-linguistic buff who reads our newspapers must be dismayed by the ethico-intellectual shallowness of our stories, the platitudes which pass as information, how cliche-ridden and threadbare our language. It is no that I use "difficult" words. It is only that my writing is idiomatic and idiom is the salt and pepper of all creative writing.

Which calls back Mr Okundi's outfit. Doesn't standard imply normal, average, mediocre, run-of-the-mill? Excellence, state of the art, prodigiousness: that's what I recommend for my reader. That's why I refuse to sink to his level.

ochieng@nation.co.ke

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Mr Mukazo Mukazo Vunda's letter to Mr. Ochieng

Dear Mr. Ochieng,

I read with interest and elation your article "Why It's Futile to Spoon-Feed My Customers", and, while I am happy to meet a like spirit, I despair at the depth of the problem, and the ramifications of this, just like you mention in your article, the various facets of our African social, political, and economic existence are indeed rendered mediocre by this deficit, and you can guess the level of competitiveness of the African continent on an international level in these same vital spheres, and being able to compete is of vital importance to us, especially at this period in human history.

It would be true to say that, given the major functions of language, if restricted to these times, the African masses do indeed represent the least advanced intellectual social group on this planet. I am right on this, am I not, Mr. Ochieng. If you wrote for a different audience, let's say a British audience, you would hardly get such reactions, now would you? In fact, and you will agree with this too, the reactions you would get would be the reverse of the ones you get now. Our counterparts in the west, or the far east, with whom we wish to compete in the economic, and especially the creative sphere, have laymen whose language using and comprehending capacities lie far above those of our higher placed individuals, and subsequently, have abilities to understand and take in more complex data than a depressingly large proportion of our own people can, and this is precisely the aim of such like you and me. Isn’t it? We are writing to educate, to enlighten, to inform. What is the use of this when we can only reach a limited audience.

At first contact with western, or far eastern people, one would indeed be led to believe that, technically, they have better intellectual capacities; but this is not so. There is more to the story than meets the eye.

The blame for the African deficit lies entirely with language, and rather than argue a point, or encourage Africans to spend more of their precious time learning a language to the same degree as the few among us who have taken the trouble, which in itself isn’t a bad idea, there are better ways of doing this, I believe. Do not forget, Mr. Ochieng, that the process itself has taken longer, and the acquisition of the linguistic skills we have has come much later than it does for our western counterparts in those same lands where the languages are congenial. One needs only look at the functions of language and, with a little creativity and insight, arrive at the fault.

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. Initially, we are supposed to learn to read and write the same things we already know. We learn the alphabet, then pronunciation, then we put this acquired skill into practice by spelling 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. We have a vocabulary when we enter school for the first time, but instead of using this, and enriching it; instead of regarding it as an acquired level which has to be enriched, it is ignored. Africans 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 stupidity 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. 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?

I have been writing articles, and making public speeches for almost a decade now, a long, lonely period for me as most of the knowledge I have to impart can only reach an ineffective percentage of my own kind, and they are the ones who need redemption the most. Those who least need the information, the western ears, immediately understand and dislike me. Yes, just like you, Mr Ochieng, I have been accused of using language too complex for the common masses to follow. I have been accused of trying to be too intellectual, and worst of all, I have been accused, by interested western circles, of being too western minded. Their reasoning is that I think too much like a westerner. I dine and dance with them, talk like they do, and understand even their most convoluted arguments. When I ask what an African is supposed to be like, they tell me that he is slow to comprehend, dependent, and uses simple language. What nerve. But they are very right about the last.

They actually, indirectly expressing their wish; they do not want an African to be like me, or you, because, I believe, they are afraid of an Africa where the education system works, like it has done for you and me. They are afraid of the likes of you and me because they realize what this would mean for their world dominance, if it became common on our continent.

The western circle who have accused me of being too western are too erudite not to know 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.

I have long realized that the public lynching of the entity English 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 it. It is after all the language 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 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 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. 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 dialect would not steal so much of the required learning time since the language is after all also a bantu language, and similar. 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 the continent over to enable Africans to communicate with each other, and with the rest of the world.

The idea of making Swahili a language of instruction throughout Africa is ridiculous (who was the idiot responsible for the propagation of this idea anyway). 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.

Mukazo Mukazo Vunda.