[Ugnet] Swahili and Ignorance

Tue, 28 Dec 2004 16:08:32 -0800



You would denigrate Kiswahili only out of ignorance

SIR� Anybody calling Kiswahili �pidgin�, non-indigenous or a language of criminals, is exhibiting extreme ignorance about the language. Would you call Italians criminals simply because of the mafia? Or the Germans war criminals because of the holocaust?

Any scholar worth his or her name can trace the origins of Kiswahili by studying the Bantu dialects stretching all along the East African Coast, from southern Somalia down to Mozambique and across to the Comoros. The Swahili people have interacted with the East: Arabia, Persia, India, etc, for more than 1,000 years. This interaction predates the coming of Islam to the coast. There are records of Kiswahili poetry in Arabic script, dating 1,000 years. Would any unbiased person call this a language of uncultured people?

The English language borrowed heavily from the French after the Norman invasion of 1066. Does this borrowing make English a Latin tongue? No.
Why do all major radio stations carry Kiswahili programmes? To mention a few, VOA, BBC, DeutscheWelle, Radio Beijing, Radio Moscow, All-India Radio, etc. Which of these carries Luganda programmes, for example? None. At least Kinyarwanda and Kirundi feature on two of these radios!)
I appeal to our people to stop being inward-looking. Even the African Union has given Kiswahili official status because of its growing influence in Eastern and Central Africa.

Mansur Ali
Masindi

Published on: Friday, 24th December, 2004

 

Swahili should not be and cannot ever be Uganda's national language for obvious reasons. 

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