I write this column from St. Anne’s College, Oxford, and the time is about 8pm and the sun hasn’t set yet.
I think we have about an hour and a half before the sky turns orange in the west. I am here at the invitation of the Oxford University Press (OUP) to work on a bilingual Setswana English dictionary.
The project has been going on for some time now and it is at an editorial stage. Oxford is synonymous with dictionaries. OUP considers its dictionaries to be “The most trusted dictionaries” and that is generally true. Probably the well known Oxford dictionary is the one that is commonly referred by its initials; the OED (The Oxford English Dictionary).
When it was initially compiled it was formally known as The New English Dictionary on Historical Principles since it was aimed at recording each English word from its birth to its death. However this dictionary was simply known as The Big Dictionary because it was designed to be a massive collection of all of the English words, phrases and expressions. The dictionary acquired the name Oxford English Dictionary (OED) much later.
Work on the dictionary gained impetus from the famous paper read by Richard Chenevix Trench at the Philological Society in that cold November night in 1857 titled, On Some Deficiencies in Our English Dictionary. Trench together with his contemporaries was persuaded that: “some kind of divine ordination lay behind what seemed then the ceaseless dissemination of the English language around the planet. God ÔÇô who in this part of London society was held to be an Englishman ÔÇô naturally approved the spread of the language as an essential imperial device; but He also encouraged its undisputed corollary, which was the worldwide growth of Christianity.
The equation was really very simple… the more English there was in the world, the more God-fearing its peoples would be (Winchester 1998: 68).
Trench’s motivation for the dictionary was imperial and theological, and very much in consonant with the 1800s.
In Winchester’s analysis, Trench delivered a formidable critique of the few dictionaries then in existence. He argued that they suffered from a number of shortcomings ÔÇô grave deficiencies from which the language and, by implication, the Empire and its Church might well eventually come to suffer (Winchester 1998: 70).
The dictionary was initially edited by Herbert Coleridge and later flourished under the exceptional editorship of James Murray who had been a member of the Philological Society since 1869. The mighty dictionary was completed 70 years later in 1927: 12 mighty volumes; 414, 825 headwords and 1,827,306 illustrative quotations (Winchester 1998: 189). It is now the definitive record of the English language ÔÇô an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of over 600,000 wordsÔÇö past and presentÔÇöfrom across the English-speaking world.
I am spending this week at the Oxford University Press on Great Clarendon Street, a stone-throw away from the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics on Walton Street, where I completed my MPhil in Linguistics ages ago.
I am reminded that it was here at mythical city that I resolved that I will devote most of my life contributing to the developments in Setswana lexicography and linguistics. As a freshman at Lincoln College I was moved by the dedication that individuals at Oxford in different periods have had, for centuries, to the developed of the English language. Such dedication still persists.
The Clarendon Press also known as OUP has been at the forefront of language research and publication in much of the English speaking world. And this week it hit me that I have become part of that Oxford tradition. It is gratifying to have studied here and to later produce material to be published by OUP for the benefit of Batswana from Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa some 9,000km away.
I have thought hard about our reluctance in Botswana to commit similar energies to the development of Setswana and other local languages. Much of our thinking and work has been taken over by useless politics and tribalism. Such politicking has not aided us to produce material for our languages. It has instead engendered mistrust and fuelled hostilities between individuals and groups.
My approach to all these politics is that we must get on with things. If we are building dictionaries or writing grammars, let us do so without hesitation and prevarication. Life is too short and lexicography and linguistics is a lot of work.
If we fail to produce resources when we have the intellectual capability to do so, history will judge us harshly and as Batswana say maikotlhao e tlaa nna namane ya morago e re tlaa e kotelang. There is also a great challenge for the government to look beyond cheap politics which are anti-nation building and move forward with strategies of strengthening the national language.
The case for Botswana’s minority languages has been made. Debates surrounding their teaching have been carried by the media, articulated through academic papers and discussed over copious drinks of liquor. All these debates must be carried at a national level to influence government policy. They must be dealt with in a sober and practical fashion to protect Botswana’s linguistic heritage.
So tomorrow as I go into Lincoln College, where one could be fined 50 pounds for stepping on its fine lawn; as I pass by Balliol College Oxford where Sir Seretse Khama studied; where in 1555 and 1556 in the middle of Broad Street, Hugh Latimer (Bishop of Worcester), Nicolas Ridley (Bishop of London) an Thomas Cranmer (Bishop of Canterbury) were burnt for their faith; I will keep in mind what that imposing English lexicographer, Samuel Johnson said: “Every other author may aspire to praise; the┬álexicographer┬ácan only hope to escape reproach, and even this negative recompense has been yet granted to very few.”
