On 4/16/07, Patrick Bond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
ravi wrote:
> further excuse for such phrases as "the language of the colonialist".
Yikes, Ravi, you don't mean that scorn I hope. We had a visit at our
centre from Ngugi wa Thiong'o at the end of last month, and a colleague
did this report:
The Mercury
English versus indigenous languages
<snip>
He captures the paradox of English versus indigenous languages in the
world today.
Children usually have no trouble learning more than one language if
they are given instruction from an early age. Whether there are
enough teachers, materials, etc. for more than one language -- or even
just one -- for mass education in a country is a matter of political
economy. A lot of people in the world are still illiterate or
functionally illiterate in any language, even in their native
language, and that's one of the problems. I sometimes wonder if
religious intellectuals are winning more followers than secular
intellectuals in many countries in the global South in part because
the former are better at oral communication than the latter (lots of
religious communication happens through sermons, prayers, etc., i.e.
oral communication, delivered directly at places of worship,
indirectly on cassette tapes, radio, TV, etc.)
Another is that when a question of teaching more than one languages
comes up at all, it's almost always a matter of a native language +
English. If not that, it's a native language + a European language
(depending on who the longest-time colonizer of the nation was). The
other day, I was talking with my Persian teacher about this question,
and he was saying that, even to learn about Iran's neighbors like
Pakistan and Afghanistan, Iranians tend to go -- sometimes have to go,
depending on the topic -- to the media, scholarship, etc. of the West,
and vice versa. Direct, lateral communication between non-Western
countries has been inhibited due to the history and present reality of
imperialism, which has political implications for constructing a new,
more egalitarian world order. But what is to be done about it is not
an easy question.
Yet another is whether Americans and other English-speaking nations in
the West are willing to spend time to learn foreign languages,
cultures, politics, etc. The lack of equity comes not from the fact
of other nations' intellectuals studying English, US politics, etc.
itself but it's mainly one-way communication, and when the opinion
makers in the US get themselves interested in the affairs of the rest
of the world, they only listen to those who tell them what they want
to hear politically (preferably in English to spare the costs of
translation, so that means listening only to a relatively privileged
minority in the case of many nations), whether or not what they are
telling them is true.
In any case, about this issue of language, Roy actually has something
to say, too -- e.g.:
<http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=6136>
Superstars and Globalization
Interviewing Arundhati Roy
by Sonali Kolhatkar
and Arundhati Roy
August 31, 2004
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
*Sonali Kolhatkar*: The issue of globalization from the perspective of
activists who want justice, is an interesting one because it brings up
ideas and challenges that I noticed – in the World Social Forum there
was one topic that kept coming up was the issue of language. You had
all these people coming together – most of them didn't speak one
common language. And Nawal el Saadawi [famed Egyptian feminist] was
talking about rejecting the use of the colonial language, English.
Even though the "God of Small Things" [Roy's first novel] has been
translated into many languages, your primary language that you write
in is English. Do you think that language, colonial or not, is an
issue that activists should be trying to solve?
*Arundhati Roy*: I don't think it's an issue about what is imperialist
or not. Because Arabic is also imperialist at some point. So is Hindi,
Sanskrit. So on what basis are you going to say what is imperialist
and what is not? I think it is true that language is a very
complicated issue in India, say. Because I often feel why am I
supposed to speak in Hindi? I am not from the north. I speak
Malayalam, I write Malayalam. But I can't go into a meeting in Delhi
and speak Malayalam. But I can speak English. I can also speak Hindi
but the point is that it's complicated. Because of course, in some
ways, English is the language that is common all over India.
As a writer, as a writer of fiction, as a writer of literature, I have
to say that I suppose I have a sort of upside down notion of language
which is that I don't feel that I am the slave of language. But that
the language is the slave of me and it's my art to make it say what I
think or make it do what I want. But that is the privilege of a
writer. Often people are enslaved by language. Like if you think how
frightening is it for somebody in the Narmada valley to have to go
through a Supreme Court affidavit in English? How would we feel if our
lives were governed by a language we feel we have no access to. But at
the same time, I think the solution to that is that there has to be a
way of facilitating translations in ways. It can't be that you use one
language at the cost of someone else.
*Sonali Kolhatkar*: So communication in the end is the main issue…?
*Arundhati Roy*: Yes.
--
Yoshie
