FYI, this item was seen at
http://www.redorbit.com/news/international/370823/curse_hangs_over_african_languages_in_senegal/index.html
(Google also pulls up some other sites with the article). This article is quite
good, touching on several issues and mentioning the Year of African Languages."
DZO
Curse hangs over African languages in Senegal
By Daniel Flynn
DJIBONKOR, Senegal -- Legend has it that the Bainouk people of southern Senegal
were cursed by a tyrannical king, who with his dying breath condemned them to
wander in poverty forever.
Today, the Bainouk eke out a meager existence from agriculture in the forests of
the lush Casamance region, their ancient language and lifestyle under threat
from the encroaching modern world.
"If we speak our language no one can understand us, so we use Diola if we go
into town," said 60-year-old Jacques Sanya, referring to the Diola language
commonly spoken in the region.
Seated in front of his mud hut weaving a reed basket, Sanya laughs at the
mention of the curse.
"Our parents just told us they left Guinea to come here ... Now we cultivate
crops and make baskets to earn some money."
There are an estimated 1,000 speakers of Bainouk scattered in villages in
Casamance -- a labyrinth of tiny inlets and creeks sheltering dozens of other
ethnicities and languages.
In the freshly painted village schoolhouse in Djibonkor, Bainouk is not taught.
It is a familiar story in Africa, home to a third of the world's more than
6,000 languages.
"Here we speak French in school. We also study English and Spanish ... We do not
use Bainouk," said Lilian, 12.
Linguists say many African languages are dying because speakers believe foreign
tongues are more useful. To prepare students for business, linguistics
departments in West African colleges usually teach French or English.
"It's like throwing a Picasso down the toilet if you just allow a language to
die. A wonderful culture would die with it," said Roger Blench, an expert on
African languages.
"It's a story about globalization ... Should the whole world be eating
McDonald's and drinking Coca-Cola?" he asked.
"DOOMED TO DISAPPEAR"
Senegalese student Serge Sagna has returned to his isolated village of Essyl --
some 10 miles southwest of the regional capital Ziguinchor at the end of a dirt
track -- to study the Bandial language, one of the Diola tongues.
With a fierce history of independence, the Diola peoples of Casamance resisted
the onslaught of Mandinka-speaking tribes from the Sahara. Unlike the rest of
Senegal, they also maintained Christian and animist beliefs in the face of
Islam.
But with trade, mass media and tourism reaching ever deeper into Casamance's
quiet palm groves and mangroves, languages like Bandial are under threat.
"It's a language which is doomed to disappear maybe in two generations," said
Sagna, adding that some parents in the village have already stopped teaching
their children Bandial.
"People from our villages used to be self-reliant. They used to cultivate their
rice; they used to depend on their own production," he said. "Now, people go
away to the city and when they come back, they come back with a different
language."
Senegal's national tongue Wolof has become one of Africa's "killer languages,"
like Hausa in west and central Africa or Swahili in the east of the continent.
Wolof is spoken by around 40 percent of Senegal's 11 million people as their
mother tongue, and by around the same number as a second language. Its success
threatens the roughly 30 indigenous languages spoken in the country.
"Wolof has more prestige than our language, because it is associated with
fashion, with hip hop (music)," said Sagna, who is doing a doctorate on Bandial
at London's School of Oriental and African Studies.
Locally produced hip hop and rap music in Wolof have grown in popularity in the
former French colony since the early 1990s.
"Intellectual people choose to speak French and those who want to look cool
speak Wolof," Sagna said.
YEAR OF AFRICAN LANGUAGES
The United Nation's Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
says one world language disappears on average every two weeks. To draw
attention to the problem, the African Union has designated 2006 the year of
African languages.
While experts recognize languages such as Bandial will never be widely spoken,
they can at least be saved from extinction.
"The first step is the media: There should be more broadcasts in vernacular
languages. Where this has been tried, as in northern Ghana, this has had a good
effect," said Blench.
Education is the other key step. Governments must encourage the use of
indigenous languages in schools, experts say.
Last year, South Africa embarked on a shake-up of its schools system to enable
students to be educated in any of the country's 11 official languages -- an
effort to develop indigenous languages which were suppressed under apartheid
rule.
Ethnologue, a language database, says less than 1 percent of Bandial's 10,000
speakers are literate in their language. Eighty percent of African languages
have no orthograpy.
"I can speak Diola but I cannot write it even though it is my mother tongue,"
said Michel Diatta, 21, from the western Casamance village of Kabrousse. "If I
could meet someone who knew how to write Diola, I would love to learn."
For Sagna, there is a clear personal motivation for fighting to preserve his
mother tongue.
"When I speak Diola, I am more relaxed: I am at home. When I speak English or
French, I just don't relate to some things.
And he believes a deliberate effort is needed to save the language, which has 10
words for the local staple rice.
"You have to be a missionary! You have to make the same effort missionaries made
to bring French here," Sagna said.
Source: REUTERS
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