Source: AllAfrica

Experiences of Bi-, Multi-Lingual Speakers
New Era (Windhoek)
INTERVIEW
30 April 2008
Posted to the web 30 April 2008

By Chief Ankama
Windhoek

What follows here is the transcript of my interview with a Namibian personality here referred to as PK (I am represented by “C” which stands for Chief) on issues related to speaking more than one language.

C. Hi, tell me please who you are, where you grew up and the language or languages you speak.

PK. My name is PK and I speak about three to five languages, maybe more than that.I speak my mother tongue, English as an official language in my country, Otjiherero an ethnic group language in my country, and I speak Afrikaans. I am able to understand one of the South African languages, which is Xhosa.

I grew up in a community where people speak different languages. There was a time when I went to live with my aunt in Windhoek, a cosmopolitan city where people speak many languages. Having listened to people, I was able to start understanding some words and also speak though my conversation language is not very perfect.

So, that’s how I came to know different languages because of having associated with people who speak different languages. And I also went to South Africa where I studied for four years and I picked up how to speak a new language.

Read the full article

Source: New Era (Windhoek)

Namibia: 2nd Language Learning [opinion] Some Namibian students learning English as L2 (second language) are inclined to make specific types of errors both in spoken and written form, usually regional bound. It appears that each region has its own specific types of errors.

This is a very good paper outlining not only English mistakes but also language policy.

Read the full article

APA - Port Louis (Mauritius) The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) Saturday released its Annual report in Port Louis the capital recommending the use of the Creole language as a teaching medium in primary schools.
The annual NHRC report provides an opportunity for both state and non-state actors to take stock of the human rights situation in the island.

Concerning education, the NHRC report highlighted that educationalists should feel concerned at the number of illiterate children the primary educational system is churning out each year. The Creole language should be introduced at primary schools to help children who are at a disadvantage due to their poor knowledge of English and French. Creole should be used not only to teach subjects but also basic values, he opined.

Read the full story

x-posted from Sociolingo’s Africa

Source: AllAfrica.com

Probably, no other issue has been as perplexing and persistent in the deaf community in Sierra Leone as the question of how to integrate the rights of deaf people into human rights and development works at the national and community levels, which is why the Bo sign language workshop organized by El Shammah Mission Sierra Leone between the 13th and 15th March 2008 highlighting the position of sign language used by the deaf people in the country from a standpoint of basic need and basic right must be considered unique.

Read the full story

Posted by sociolingo on May 6, 2008

Please respond directly to Don (dzo(at)bisharat(dot)net

Cross-posted from H-West-Africa list

From: “Don Osborn”
Date: Sat, 3 May 2008 11:10:39 -0400

——————

A recent proposal on the Wikipedia article for “Bambara language” propts me to turn to this list for some feedback. It relates to the issue of where we are in the fashion of using “endonyms” for peoples and languages that was discussed on H-Africa & H-West-Africa in Dec. 2007 (”Names for African peoples & language”). The author of the request below makes a reasonable suggestion to consider changing the article name to “Bamana,” but makes the use of “Bambara” sound like an unqualified insult. My response follows. Any comments on the background, claims, or appropriate course of action would be appreciated.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Bambara_language#language_name :

The name of this article needs to be changed, please. The term ‘Bambara’ floating around in other articles as an alternative name can still link to the new correctly titled article. The name of the ethnic group is the BAMANA and the language is BAMANA (English, German) or BAMANANKAN (lit. ‘Bamana sound’) in the native language. The term BAMBARA is pejorative on several levels. It’s a mispronunciation by the Colonial French (and therefore smacks of colonialism) and has stuck in much of French literature as well as art circles. However, this article is English wiki, and Americans and British anthropologists, sociologists and LINGUISTS call the language BAMANA. The term BAMBARA meant ‘riverworking / hardworking *slave*’ during the slave trade in Senegal, used by the whites and the Wolof to refer to the Bamana, Boso, Kagoro, etc. And, BAMBARA literally means in Fula (and has connotations in other West African languages) ‘pagan, infidel’ as the Fula converted many other ethnic groups to Islam. Many Fula still consider the Bamana as ‘bad muslims.’ The term BAMBARA is tinted with racsim, colonialism, ethnic hatred/distrust and religious tension. Professionals call the language and its speakers the same term that those speakers do. The article’s name needs to be changes. Using BAMBARA in Wiki is like titling a page Beaner or Yank or Lapp or Polack or Limey. Change it. 71.210.91.4 (talk) 02:34, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I’ll post this issue to the MANSA-L list (of the Mande Studies Association), because I think the issue may not be as clear cut as you imply. I think the case for endonyms - as you put it “Professionals call the language and its speakers the same term that those speakers do” - is sometimes overstretched and many now recognize that it is not always appropriate and sometimes even awkward. Where a pejorative association is clear, I think we’d all agree that the change should have no question - we say “Soninke” and have long before Wikipedia dropped “Saracolle” for this reason. I’m not arguing against the change so much as asking for more clarity before it be considered. My understanding is that “Bambara” came into the European languages via Fula <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fula_language>  pronunciation (Bammbaraajo/Bambaraa?e), but that it does not “literally mean in Fula (and has connotations in other West African languages) ‘pagan, infidel’” (although it sounds a bit like a derivative of the root for carrying on the back - wammb-). The history of the term is no doubt complex and I’d suggest more discussion before any attempt to move the articles.–A12n (talk) 14:56, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Source:http://constitutionallyspeaking.co.za/?p=530

All languages equal but English (and Afrikaans?) more equal?
Posted on Language Policy list April 30th, 2008 by Pierre De Vos

Is it not strange - as a writer asks in an interesting piece in The
Herald newspaper - that 14 years after the advent of democracy in
South Africa, “the language spoken in our courtrooms still resembles
the apartheid era and in no way does it reflect the demographics of
this country”? While witnesses and accused persons can testify in one
of the eleven official languages and can rely on the services of a
translator when doing so (as Jacob Zuma did to great effect in his
rape trial) lawyers, magistrates and judges may speak only English and
Afrikaans (with less and less Afrikaans being spoken). This happens
even when all the parties before the court speaks a first language
other than English or Afrikaans.

Does this not make a mockery of the provisions of the Constitution
that recognises that the official languages of the Republic are
Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda, Xitsonga, Afrikaans,
English, isiNdebele, isiXhosa and isiZulu? And what does it say about
the much bandied about need for transformation of the legal system in
South Africa? The problem is that our Constitution is as clear as mud
on the issue of language rights. Trying to strike a compromise between
what is practical and what is ethically demanded, it contains a rather
muddled provision that in effect allows for English to be treated as
more equal than the other ten official languages (as George Orwell
might have said). Section 6 of the Constitution recognises “the
historically diminished use and status of the indigenous languages of
our people”, and places a duty on the state to “take practical and
positive measures to elevate the status and advance the use of these
languages”.

This is a rather broad injunction and it is not so clear exactly what
practical steps should be taken by the state to give effect to it.
Section 6 does seem to give some clues on what would be required when
it states that both the national and provincial governments “may use
any particular official languages for the purposes of government,
taking into account usage, practicality, expense, regional
circumstances and the balance of the needs and preferences of the
population as a whole or in the province concerned” - which normally
means that because of the expense involved in using other languages
English wins out.

At the heart of the language provision in the Constitution is an
understanding (as stated in section 6(4) of the Constitution) that
“all official languages must enjoy parity of esteem and must be
treated equitably”. This does not mean that all languages must be
treated equally or even that all the dominant languages in a region
must be treated equally. It only means that they must be treated
fairly “taking into account usage, practicality, expense, regional
circumstances”. But because English is such a dominant language and
because it is also the aspirational language of most people in our
country, even second language speakers of English often do not insist
on fair treatment for their indigenous language. English is seen as
the language of money and status and often amongst lawyers and
magistrates and judges (as well as most others in the professional
classes) this means that it is taken for granted that everyone will
speak English and if they cannot or will not speak it well, that they
are stupid.

The water is further muddied by the fact that the only South Africans
who actively promote and fight for their indigenous language are white
and Afrikaans and often do so in ways that seem to have more to do
with a disappointment about the loss of power and status and with
racism than with a genuine concern for the indigenous languages of
South Africa. Maybe it is time for people who do not speak English (or
Afrikaans) to put pressure on the government to deal more pro-actively
with the language issue and to develop a language policy for our
courts. Perhaps this policy could allow for regional differences as
suggested by the Constitution. This would mean, for example, that in
the Western Cape lawyers and magistrate and judges would be allowed to
speak not only English and Afrikaans but also Xhosa in court and to
draft documents in any of these languages.

Lawyers trained in the Western Cape could then be required to take a
non-English language course of at least one of the other two regional
languages to qualify as lawyers. This would not be very popular with
white lawyers I would imagine, but if we want to start somewhere to
respect the language diversity of South Africa, we will have to be
forced to do it. As someone who has twice started taking Xhosa lesson
only to abandon them, I know I will probably not learn the other
language of my region unless I am forced to. So what we need is a bit
of government intervention to force us to do the right thing -
otherwise everyone will just revert to English.

http://constitutionallyspeaking.co.za/?p=530

Source: African Book Centre

CHICHEWA/CHINYANJA-ENGLISH DICTIONARY
Paas, Steven (Ed.)

Chichewa is probably the most widely spoken African language across the regions of Southern and South-Central Africa, used extensively in the private and public spheres: in the family, schools, government, NGOs and media communications. This is the first authoritative, and most comprehensive dictionary of its kind, a notable scholarly endeavour, and with major practical applications. The dictionary grew from an ad hoc missionary publication of Chichewa/English translations from the 1970s, but far exceeds the scope of any previous efforts transcribe the Chichewa language, provide accurate English equivalents, and reach a popular audience. 400pp, MALAWI. KACHERE SERIES.

2004 9990816662 Paperback
Price: £30.95

Available from: African Book Centre

And African Book Collective

ALSO
English - Chichewa/Chinyanja Dictionary 3rd Ed.

Third Edition. Revised and Enlarged

Edited by Steven Paas

ISBN 9789990876307 | 456 pages | 216 x 140 mm | 2005 | Kachere Series, Malawi | Paperback

£29.95

Available from: Africa Book Collective

See also:

http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/translation/Chichewa/

Posted by sociolingo on April 29, 2008

Proper use of mother tongue the way forward

(This article was originally published on page 9 of The Cape Times on
April 21, 2008 )
http://www.eltworld.net/news/tag/use-of-english-in-south-africa/
In this article in our series, Neville Alexander, director of the
project for the Study of Alternative Education in South Africa at the
University of Cape Town, argues that to ignore the language issue is
to entrench the domination of powerful elites. South Africa has
arguably the most progressive language policy on paper. This fact is
acknowledged by most people who are familiar with the sociology and
the politics of language.
n spite of this, however, if one reads only the Afrikaans press, one
would have to conclude that this language policy is a total failure
and that we are moving rapidly to a situation where the de facto sole
official language is the “hated” Queen’s English.

The reader would be surprised, therefore, to hear that some of us hold
the unpalatable view that, because of what we call our “languish
policy”, this country is in fact simply carrying out in practice a
neo-apartheid language policy. For, in spite of the fact that
Afrikaans is being driven out of many domains of social life and being
replaced by English, it is still the most favoured official language
next to English. Why is language policy important? And why is it a bad
idea that we should all be forced to operate in English only when we
transact business or are involved in any public domain?

The simple way to answer this is by means of a five-dimensional
argument. Incidentally, although there is a very important polemic
taking place among linguists about the exact meaning and even the
validity of a word such as “a language”, this is not the place to
enter into that debate. Suffice to say it is an important debate that
may eventually lead to significant changes in the ways we speak or
write about the language question. The fact is that I am writing this
article in Standard South African English, and expect to be read and
understood by hundreds of South Africans and other users of a notional
international standard written English.

Many of these readers, I expect, will tell others, who either have not
read or cannot read the article, about its contents in whatever
linguistic means they have in common. And, somehow, for my current
communicative purposes, this seems to be in order. The
five-dimensional argument refers to the relationship between language
use and language policy with the social processes of diversity,
development, democracy, dignity and didactics.

It is generally accepted that cultural diversity, which includes
linguistic diversity, is as necessary an aspect of human survival as
is biological diversity. This point is the subject of much
controversy, but it is bound to prove useful for our understanding of
the continuum between “nature” and “culture”. This debate, which is as
yet confined to a small group of linguists concerned about the rapid
disappearance of “languages” on Earth may yet turn out to be one of
those revolutionary moments in humanity’s self-understanding such as
the, initially quite esoteric, discussions that led to the Copernican
Revolution, as a result of which we now know that the Earth revolves
around the sun and not the other way around. In this regard, because
of our constitutional commitment to the promotion and maintenance of
multilingualism, South Africa is, in principle, on the side of the
angels.

It is also accepted that language policy at the workplace and in
business transactions generally is a vital aspect of economic success.
Languages have market value - hence the desirability of English as the
most important of the global languages today - and it is one of the
tasks of any national or regional government to frame language policy
and use it in such a way that the populace at large is empowered by
the fact that the linguistic resources which they possess become
“cultural capital” that they can use to earn their livelihood and to
improve their life chances.

Much detailed research is essential in this regard since politicians
tend to “find” the will to act once they are convinced that there is
real economic benefit in a given policy approach. Our score in this
area is quite bad since, with some notable exceptions in both the
public and the private sector, there is a very strong tendency towards
an English-only policy, although it self-evidently restricts the
productivity, efficiency, creativity and job satisfaction of those
engaged in the economic processes of production, exchange and
distribution. It is probably useful to remind ourselves here that it
is a myth that only “unilingual” countries have become economically
successful in the modern world. If you study the question seriously,
you will find that it is the levels of literacy that determine
economic success in the modern world.

Democratic polities require the full participation of the citizens in
the important decision-making processes. It is axiomatic that such
participation is only possible when these processes are conducted in
languages that the citizens understand and are able to use. This is
the very foundation of freedom of speech. Again, our balance sheet is
patchy, even though I believe there is a genuine commitment on the
part of government to move in the right direction. Parliament and the
SABC are examples where, recently, major steps have been taken towards
treating the official languages as well as sign language equitably.

However, because of a simplistic, short-sighted knee-jerk reaction to
Afrikaans (as the “language of the oppressor”), many obvious steps
that ought to, and can, be taken are skipped. It is incomprehensible,
for example, that we still do not use African languages on our
airlines or on our beaches (except when we need to warn people about
dangerous circumstances or behaviour); why can we not also have road
signs and official instructions in numerous contexts in the relevant
African languages? That difficult decisions would have to be made is
clear, but we have to make these all the time, whether it is in the
domains of transport, health, crime fighting or education. Much more
urgency is required.

Human dignity, the right to use the language of one’s choice and not
to be discriminated against on the basis of language, is inscribed in
the Bill of Rights and there are institutions such as the Pan South
African Language Board, the Human Rights Commission, the Cultural,
Religious and Linguistic Commission and, in the final analysis, the
judiciary, that have been given the powers to enforce these
provisions. Despite this, however, and in spite of numerous
complaints about the violation of language rights, mainly from
organised Afrikaans-speaking and other smaller African
language-speaking communities, these provisions remain a dead letter.
The example of the European Union and the Council of Europe, in spite
of a yawning disparity of resources, is there to show the way and we
have in fact learnt much from post-war Europe in this regard. There
are close connections at all levels between Europeans, Asians,
Americans and South Africans who are committed to the implementation
of a consistently democratic language policy.

A mother tongue-based bi- or multilingual educational system, the
didactical dimension of the language question, is the sine qua non for
all development in South Africa. Space does not allow any further
explanation of this proposition, but it is essential that it be seen
as the challenge it is intended to be. Besides the obvious pedagogical
issue of teaching children in languages they understand rather than in
those they do not understand, this question involves the critical and
urgent question of early literacy learning which, if you think about
it carefully, is the basis of economic success or failure in the 21st
century. The Western Cape Education Department has begun to take this
challenge seriously and is involved in numerous initiatives to find
out what the problems and the most effective approaches to solutions
would be. The national Department of Education supports these moves in
principle.

However, language policy in education is a sensitive matter, and most
parents do not have the necessary information at their disposal in
order to make the most appropriate decisions in this regard. A major
advocacy campaign is imperative. In conclusion, beyond the issue of
political will and the prioritisation of the language question, we
should be looking more carefully at how language policy and use are
being managed currently. The Asmal Commission that considered the
efficacy of the Chapter 9 institutions has not been very kind to the
Pan South African Language Board, which was intended to be the
keystone in the linguistic architecture of the new South Africa.
Whether one agrees with all its recommendations or not, I believe that
a case can be made out for a radical redrafting of this entire
complex.

Without language communication, hardly any complex operations are
possible for human beings. To ignore the language question or to take
it for granted is merely to entrench the domination of the powerful
elites in our society. Above all, let us agree: it is not a question
of the highest levels of competence in either English or the mother
tongues. It is a question of all individuals having the power to
communicate, learn, work and be creative in both the mother tongue and
English. Many, of course, will want - and be able - to function in
more than two languages.

This article was originally published on page 9 of Cape Times on April 21, 2008