This column from the Malawian site, Nation Online, brings up a lot of ideas about what languages to learn and teach in Malawi and Africa in general... DZO
The language factor by Desmond Dudwa Phiri, 10 January 2006 - 04:50:59 http://www.nationmalawi.com/articles.asp?articleID=14554 One of the most distinguishing factors between humans and animals is that humans have languages whereas animals do not. At least to us humans, animals do not seem to have any. Because humans have languages they have been able to develop civilisation whereas animals of today live very much like their ancestors of Darwinian centuries ago. No matter how backward a tribe is, it has a language of its own. As communities and tribes come into contact with one another they learn each other's language. In the course of time one tribe's language becomes a lingua franca or common language. Various incidents have resulted in languages spreading or dying. Greek spread on the Mediterranean coasts and Asia minor following the conquests of Alexander the Great. His successors embarked on Hellenisation, trying to force the people they ruled to adopt the Greek language and religion. There was some resistance as we learn from the history of the Maccabees, a Jewish family that revolted with arms the reaction of Greek gods in Jewish temples. All the same Greek spread. Though it is now dead in ancient universities and high schools it is still being studied by those who want to read Homer, Aristotle and the New Testament and other great books in the original. Latin spread out during the apogee of the Roman Empire. When the Roman Empire collapsed Latin was adopted as the official language of the Roman Catholic Church. Someone in one of the Nordic countries has suggested that Latin be adopted as the language of the European Union. It is doubtful if this suggestion will be appealing enough to those countries whose languages are already lingua francas. The English language spread out during the heydays of the British Empire and the industrial revolution. It remains the most widely spoken language partly because it is the language of the United States, the world's most powerful nation. People who want to go and study at institutions of higher learning in the United States or to go and do business there find it necessary to study English. During Belgian rule in what is now called the Democratic Republic of Congo, when Belgians tried to compel Africans to learn Flemish one of the two Belgian official languages, Africans refused saying they would rather learn English after having learned French. During the apartheid era, an attempt by government to force African students to learn Afrikaans in preference to English resulted in students boycott of classes and street riots. People chose to learn a particular foreign language because of the opportunities it offers for business and jobs, as well as education. While attending the Harare Book Fair in the Year 2000 I learned that the fastest growing language is Spanish. Perhaps there is something in Latin America which people want to have or it is just the desire to read Don Quizote in the original language. The most widely spoke African language is Swahili. It is the official language of Tanzania and lingua franca of Kenya. Congolese leader of the independence era Patrice Lumumba and Moise Tshombe spoke good Swahili. Kanyama Chiume in his autobiography speaks of Lumumba having acted as Chiume's interpreter at a conference where French was the official language. Whoever decreed that Swahili should be taught in schools throughout Tanzania or for that reason Tanganyika did the Tanzanians Yeoman service. The language has united them to an unmatched extent in the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa. The easy acceptance of Swahili as a lingua franca was due to the fact that it belongs to no tribe. Though it originated in the east coast of Africa it never became an exclusive language of any tribe. The tribe nearest to Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania's commercial capital called Zaramo has its own language. When I used to live and work in Dar-es-Salaam I had some Zaramo speaking friends. I was surprised that their language had more in common with such Nyasa (Malawian) languages as Chinyanja and Chitumbuka than Swahili. I first noticed this when Zaramo dancers went out to welcome Mwalimu Julius Nyerere from a New York trip where he had gone to address the UN on Tanganyika's desire for independence. I heard the dancers singing 'Baba kabwera' my Zaramo friend said it meant 'father has come back'. You can see resemblance with Chinyanja. In Swahili it would have been 'Baba amerudi.' Time has come when students in some of our schools should study widely spoken African language. The first on the list should be Swahili. This should facilitate our contacts with East African countries which both educationally and economically are well ahead of us. At pan-African languages Swahili has been recommended as Africa's lingua franca. Also to be taught more widely should be Portuguese. It is astonishing to find so many Mozambicans speaking English more fluently than some of our political leaders. Because of this I think they know more about what is going on in Malawi and other Anglophone countries than we do about what is happening in Mozambique and Angola. Unless you can read a country's newspapers you cannot know a great deal about its opportunities for business there. The same desire for learning African languages has prompted me to accept a role as a patron at an organisation in Mzuzu which wishes to revive the Ngoni language. It may be asked of what use will it be. Is it not a dead language? Well, not as dead as a dodo. Singoni or Chingoni is a dialect of the widely spoken South African language called Zulu. Learning Ngoni would actually mean learning Zulu. In 1951 the late Wedson Gama of Bulala in Chief Chindi's area in Mzimba wrote in the African Weekly pleading for the revival and teaching of Chingoni. Two readers opposed the idea, and these were not from Ngoniland Mzimba but beyond. Apparently, they thought Chingoni would threaten the Chitumbuka language. But this need not be. Of great historical and sociological interest is how the Yao who settled among the Nyanja have managed to preserve their language while speaking fluent Chinyanja as well. The Ngoni who settled among the Chewa quickly gave up their language, so did the Shangani Ngoni who settled among the Tsonga of Mozambique. >From about 1850 to the end of the World War I many people in Mzimba were bilingual—they spoke both Ngoni and Tumbuka. This is testified by the fact that some of the composers of the hymns in the Ngoni hymn book Izingoma Zobukhristu (Christian hymn) have Tumbuka names such as Elija Chavura composer of Amadoda Abuthana (Men have gathered) and Jonathan Chirwa (grandfather of Vera) composer Baba Wethu Sisondela ku Wena (Father we move towards you) and Hezekia Twea, father of Wilford, composer of Inhlupeko Ikhona. Some smaller languages like Chitonga ought to be given thorough studies as they can help us in deepening our knowledge of African history. For instance, Chitonga accents in Adaa (father) Amaa (Mother) Awaa (no) have no parallel in neighbouring Chitumbuka or Chichewa words, but you find them in Swahili words like jamca (relative) jogoo (cock) and some Tanzania dialects like Chagga on the slopes of Kilimanjaro where you read Mangi Mukuu the great chief. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Something is new at Yahoo! Groups. 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