Post #35

Randy David Politics of Language For the last four days, I’ve been listening to a group of scholars from nine African nations talk about the language situation in their respective countries. One immediately realizes that this continent has been robbed not only of its past but also of its soul. In country after country, the official language is invariably that of the former colonial master. The people have kept their mother tongues, but these languages, if they are not dying, have not grown. To be an educated African today means going through a painful process of cutting oneself off from the culture of one’s ancestors in exchange for a chance at personal success. English is very much the language of power, wealth and social mobility in the African continent today. Of the nine countries represented in the meeting, only Benin, the former French colony, has not adopted English as the principal medium of instruction and of government. Not only is English very much regarded as the language of modernity, it is also ironically made to work as a language of national unification in societies deeply fragmented by tribal and ethnic differences. The most striking example of this linguistic chaos is Cameroon. This nation of 16 million people has 268 languages. Within a 20-kilometer radius live people who literally do not understand one another. The colonizers attempted to bring them under the dominion of one language. The Germans who first colonized the country made German the official language. Then the French and the British took over and created French Cameroon and English Cameroon. When the country was reunified, it became politically expedient to adopt English and French as the official languages instead of choosing one from any of the native languages. In Zimbabwe, the people speak any of 18 indigenous languages. The most dominant of these is Shona, which is spoken by 80 percent of the population. Yet, the official language is English. It is also the sole medium of instruction from grade 4 to college. The mother tongue, used in the early grades, is taught as a subject in a curriculum dominated by English.