Friday, February 7, 2025

Why language is a hot potato!

Language in Botswana is a hot potato ÔÇô please excuse the clich├®! Part of what makes the language issues a source of contention is partly because the language matter is not discussed by the right persons.

Locally, it appears that many persons claim to be language experts just because they speak a language. At one level that is true, if we are only referring to the tacit or innate Chomskian knowledge which every native speaker possesses from birth.

However, there is a technical knowledge of language whose discipline is known as linguistics. Such a study of language is broad ÔÇô very broad in fact.

It ranges from a sociological analysis of language where sociolinguists investigate matters of language contact such as code-switching and code-mixing and covers areas such as computational linguistics.

The sociolinguists answer questions such as why do people say stadium-ong, I smsed you yesterday, or Re vaile le bafana ba teng? Sociolinguists also deal with language and class, language and specific professions, and regional language variations. The writings of the late Professor John Honey which include Language is power: The story of Standard English and its enemies and Accent: does it matter? reveal some of the Sociolinguistics concerns.

Linguistics departments would also concern themselves with the study of sentence structures; an area known as syntax. The famous MIT linguist, Noam Chomsky, has made a career out of syntactic analysis. Central to linguistics is also the study of word structures ÔÇô an area known as morphology. The study of a language’s sound system is known as phonetics and the study of how of speech sounds interact in usage is referred to as morphology.

The more modern approaches to language are Quantitative Linguistics which is related to Corpus Linguistics, which deals with analysing massive language databases to identify language patterns. Both these types of modern linguistic study are branches of Computational Linguistics which has computers at the heart of linguistic analysis. To try and discuss all the areas of linguistic study is impossible in a newspaper column, when volumes of books on these areas fill libraries and bookshops.

The reason why I mention the areas of linguistic study here is to demonstrate that expertise in language analysis are acquired over a sustained period of scientific linguistic enquiry not through the memorisation of an obscure proverb or an archaic term.

On national issues that deal with economics, law or medicine, one would appeal to trained persons on such areas to provide leadership and direction. However, on national language matters, we seem repeatedly to listen to those who shout the loudest during radio call-in programs instead of listening to the voice of those who have been trained to study and analysis languages and language situations.

For our environment it would appear the speaker is the expert. This sadly impoverishes us greatly. The less informed language commentator sometimes shouts, not just from the radio, but sometimes from our parliament buildings.

Recently, an argument has been advanced that the Botswana constitution cannot be translated into Setswana because Setswana is a difficult language. These words did not come from a linguist but from a member of parliament, with supreme power to direct and influence policy. Sadly such an honourable member lacked knowledge of translation theory and practice and also possessed negligible practical translation skills. Some have sent shivers down the national spine through their argument that linguistic pluralism is dangerous and divisive.

These are also comments of non-experts, fear mongers who argue that this country would benefit from one God, one currency, one flag, one president and one language. It is true that language matters are contentious and battles have been fought around language matters. However, most of the battles have been fought because individuals were not given the power to speak their language freely.

People fought endlessly because the voice of those who argue that linguistic diversity is dangerous won the day. It has been said before that truth pressed to the ground will one day rise. Falsity ke mmutla wa gae o o maoto makhutshwanyane. The truth is that Botswana is rich because of its linguistic diversity. Her languages should be studied, preserved and maintained. They should have a functional role in our society.

The argument that they should be used as mediums of instructions in schools is not mine; mine is that the languages should be taught in schools as subjects. They should be on the menu. Finally those who argue for these languages to be used as mediums of instructions in schools should cease the hypocrisy.

They should teach their own children in their own languages and should cease from sending their children to private English medium schools. Now that would be commitment beyond lip-service.
They should not expect villager parents to educate their children in regional languages, while they themselves teach their own children in English. A colleague of mine calls it the nostalgia of the intelligentsia.

They feel guilty that they have forsaken their language and culture and now ask others to preserve it on their behalf!

Now, that’s sinful.

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