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datalab2.sbs.sunysb.edu>August Culver writes: Frank Ashen focussed on the divisive effects of promoting one of several indigenous languages to the position of official language and used the much quoted justification that speakers of not-chosen languages may feel disadvantaged. He did not mention the effect of the introduction of a foreign world language on the vernaculars. The introduction of foreign official language has, in Africa, led to explicit negative attitudes amongst the speakers themselves towards their languages. Negative feelings about vernaculars seems related strongly to the non-existence of written literary traditions. Languages without them, seem to be devalued both by outsiders and speakers. To the best of my knowledge, there is no such language anywhere in the world which serves as the exclusive national language of a nation. It is significant that Swahili and Malagasy (I believe the only indiginous languages to serve as exclusive national languages in Sub-Saharan Africa, both have written literary traditions which predate European colonization. The origins of these attitudes is an interesting question, but I don't believe a language policy can afford to ignore them. The alternative to the selection of an indigenous language as official language seems to be to disadvantage the whole population. In most African countries the foreign official language generally has a very low penetration so that only the elite know it. Knowledge of the official language then becomes a new factor that determines access to power and the well-paid jobs. At the same time the vernaculars are ignored or stigmatised. This means that no or very little funds are available for their development and teaching. This means, to come back to Tove Skutnabb-Kangas' comments, that the population cannot exercise their "right to learn their mother tongue, both orally and in writing, up to a high level." The assumption that Frank Ashen quotes is based on a false departure point, namely that only a colonial language can save an African country from being torn up by its own internal divisions. I don't recall any wars based on language differences prior to colonisation. Africa solved its linguistic diversity by developing lingua francas. And the use of Swahili as a national language in parts of East Africa shows an indiginous lingua franca being used. However, it is a red herring to state that there were no language based wars in Africa prior to colonization. The situation and national boundaries were very different. To the best of my knowledge, there were no language based violent disputes in India prior to colonization, but this didn't prevent very violent disputes from arising from the attempts of sizeable portions of the population to resist the imposition of Hindi as the sole national language. Djit? recently (1993) showed that the use of so-called international languages such as English and French have not solved the communication problems of the African masses but in many cases contributed towards the "pathology of linguistic bakwardness". The fact that these languages (such as Wolof, Swahili, Hausa, Lingala) are actually spreading - without much official help - seems to indicate "a general willingness for cooperation and a cultural and linguistic tolerance that ignores the political boundaries inherited from colonization" Djit? (1993:162) . Spencer (1985:395) claims that the introduction of European languages to Africa retarded the spread of what he calls "African vehicular languages". However, Adegbija (1994:26-27) is sceptical of the ability of African lingua francas of being accepted outside their present geographical domains. He also warns against the imposition of these languages. It would seem that we need a three-language policy such as that of India: one language for communication with the outside world known by a relatively small section of the population; one lingua franca for national and regional communication and the various vernaculars for local business and primary education. In many African countries this is the de facto situation and trilingualism is more common in Africa than outside linguists seem to realise. This suggestion might avoid the subtractive language learning (that characterises many African communities) and that Tove Skutnabb-Kangas finds "a violation of minorities' linguistic rights". This sounds good in theory and some variant of it may be an eventual solution in a number of African nations, however, we should be mindful of a number of points: 1) The three language policy in India grew out of the resistance of a large portion of the population to the imposition of Hindi. 2) The policy works insofar as it provides a cover for practices which are fairly distinct from the theory. Hindi is not used in much of the south except where absolutely required for communication with the central government. In much of the north, a South Indian language is not learned as assumed by the policy but another North Indian language, sometimes Sanskrit. 3) Africa is not India, India has a large number of languages with written literary traditions and thus speakers who feel that they are adequate to be national languages. Africa has a shortage of such languages. What works in one situation may not work in the other. The sources that I referred to: Adegbija, E. 1994 Language attitudes in Africa: a sociolinguistic overview. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Djit?, P.G. 1993 "Language development in Africa." In: International journal of the sociology of language 100/101:149-166. Spencer, J. 1985 "Language and development in Africa: the unequal equation." In: Wolfson, N. and J. Manes (eds.) 1985 Language of inequality. Berlin: Mouton:387-397. August Cluver, Department of Linguistics, University of South Africa Frank Anshen Dept of Linguistics State U of NY, Stony BrookMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU>Cluver's posting about the adoption of an "international" language like English as the official language in various African nations indicates the complexity of the topic. Particularly interesting and important are his observations about such languages becoming elite, since they are acquired with schooling -- and in many places most people cannot afford (pay the money) to go to school. However, the situation is even more complicated and ambiguous than Cluver's message indicates. For example, there might seem to be a contradiction in his claim that on one hand the official adoption of a foreign language makes "people" (which people?) look down on their own language, and, on the other, that African lingua francas continue to spread without governmental help (a misstatement for Swahili in Tanzania, to criticise the overgeneralising in his examples). About the first hand, it is not my experience that people look down on their own language just because they find some other language, European or African, useful for wider communication. Thus, in Bantu-speaking East Africa at least people have a great deal of respect and pride in their ethnic languages. Rather than look down on them, as they adopt wider languages they become insecure and apologetic about their inadequate command of their parents' language. And parents complain about their children's control of it too, e.g., to quote one Digo parent (Kenyan coast) "when I sit down with my friends we could talk Digo for 24 hours without uttering a single word of Swahili, but the kids today can't go five minutes without saying at least 5 Swahili words." The issue is NOT as Cluver presents it for East Africa. What is happening in Namibia may be something else, but its history and social conditions are different. I remember some Angolans telling me that the Portuguese educational system there would try to make them look down on their own languages. But the Portuguese, like the French, wanted the Africans to "become" Portuguese and French. The English and Germans had no such parallel plans for Africans under their control. There is a major historical difference in colonial attitude -- and yet I'm not claiming that African attitudes toward their own vs. official languages correlate well with colonial policy. However, if they did, Namibia (German than Afrikaans) should be more similar to Kenya than Cluver would have us believe. Anyway, I find it objectionable to generalise to all parts of Africa on the basis of one, or even two, three, four locations. And why would something generalise to a world as complex as Africa, but not far beyond? As is well known from, say, the writings of Carol Scotton, English is indeed very prestigious in Kenya, and used in marked ways in some contexts, among those who speak it. My favorite example, however, is from someone who does not speak it. We went for a drink at a bar one day, as we had done several times before. My companion said, "Benji. Talk English to me today (we always spoke Swahili or Digo) because today I have money." But he only knew about three or four phrases in English. No matter. The message was clear. The people in the bar knew me and knew him, and now I was talking English to him. For your next language policy class: what did the people in the bar (nobody talked English there) think? BenjiMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue