SADTU Teachers at Work, History Lesson PanSALB and Kha Ri Gude Lessons for Heritage Day on Languages, Part 4 02 PanSALB PanSALB The Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB), called for at the beginning of the South African Constitution, was established in 1995, so it is more than twenty years old. Its work is not visible in the country. The sign of a developing language, or of a language which has a chance, at least, to survive, is what are described as monolingual explanatory dictionaries. A language which does not have such a single-language (not translation to and from another language) dictionary of its own is at best marking time, and at worst it is on a slide towards oblivion. Most South African languages do not have such dictionaries. There are practical things that can be done to build our dictionaries by "crowd sourcing", which is in fact the only way to build a dictionary. PanSALB is not doing this. After nearly two decades, PanSALB's web site is still "Under Construction". PanSALB's web site is not conforming with the rules on language that PanSALB, among other things, is supposed to police in terms of the Act and the Constitution. This is really a scandal. On 13 January 2016, Minister of Arts and Culture Nathi Mthethwa announced: "I have dissolved the Board of PanSALB with immediate effect. The development of our languages and the promotion of multilingualism in South Africa need to be accelerated. The year 2016 must produce tangible results. Let us start on a clean slate and act decisively on challenges affecting PanSALB." As of 14 September 2016, nothing had been heard about the appointment of a new board. 02a Kha Re Gude 850 Kha Ri Gude Kha Ri Gude is managed by the Department of Basic Education. On its web site, it says: "The Kha Ri Gude Mass Literacy Campaign was launched in February 2008, with the intention of enabling 4,7 million adults above the age of 15 years to become literate and numerate in one of the eleven official languages. This would halve South Africa's illiteracy rates by 2015. "The Campaign enables adult learners to read, write and calculate in their mother tongue in line with the Unit Standards for ABET level 1, and also to learn spoken English. "The specifically designed Campaign materials teach reading, writing and numeracy and integrates themes and lifeskills such as health, gender, the environment and civic education." Kha Ri Gude is a large and expensive South African government programme. A major part of it, and the practical destination of it, is the teaching of English. Kha Ri Gude teaches people literacy in their own language, and then it teaches them to speak English. It does not say that it puts these two parts of its programme together, so as to make people fully literate in English. It does not say so. But it is so. It cannot be otherwise. Heritage of language is not about having government programmes for the extension of the English language. The Constitutionally-decreed indigenous language programme (PanSALB) is not working, while another programme for the teaching of English, that does not teach indigenous languages (Kha Ri Gude), exists on a large scale. This is the way things are, today. __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 14118 (20160914) __________ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/yclsa-eom-forum/003c01d20e5e%24a9d37d10%24fd7a7730%24%40com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
