[thinfox]

Happy New Year 2008, which is the "International Year of Languages"! *

In general I'm thinking that, among other things, IYL in Africa offers
the possibility to continue and advance the effort begun by the Year
of African Languages.

Whatever the case, one proposal I would like to put forward is that
during this Year, there be an absolute prohibition on beating, shaming
or otherwise punishing children for speaking their mother tongue at
home or at school.

All the rest is commentary.

Punishing kids for speaking their mother tongue is not new, and has
not been limited to Africa. One can read about this sort of thing in
biographical accounts, formal or informal, and that is just the tip of
the iceberg. What is surprising is that it still continues - for
example, I just received an email from someone in Tanzania who
mentioned teachers threatening young students with a beating if they
spoke their maternal language. Not long ago there was mention in an
article of some parents in Uganda beating their kids for speaking
something other than English at home.

People will justify some kind of punishment for whatever reason
(curriculum, language learning, etc.). The kind of punishment is
another issue (important but another issue). But the issue here is
that if learning is the object, there are better ways to achieve it
than by limiting expression and condemning maternal languages as out
of place.

Once the punishing of children for speaking their mother tongue stops,
then maybe some good thinking can go into what are the best ways to
promote learning overall, including in first and second languages.

It should also be clear from a moratorium on punishing children for
speaking their mother tongue for the duration of IYL (all of 2008)
that the alternative to such punishment is not babel and ignorance.

Any feedback is welcome. Can this idea be spread widely?

http://groups.yahoo....ricanLanguages/
-------------------------------------------------

If you grew up and educated in ghana, i'm sure you can sympathize with this and have plenty of stories to share, so let's here them.

[Cybria]

Wow, I never knew that kids got punished for not speaking english. I would have thought it was okay for them to speak it at home at least. It sounds like it would be more effective to let children verbally know that there is a time for speaking english and a time for speaking their native language.

[thinfox]

Cybria, on Jan 3 2008, 06:57 PM, said:

Wow, I never knew that kids got punished for not speaking english. I would have thought it was okay for them to speak it at home at least. It sounds like it would be more effective to let children verbally know that there is a time for speaking english and a time for speaking their native language.

i'd think so too but even that, what happens if the child just can't speak the language? should (s)he be forbidden from expressing him/herself? to be fair, not every parent beat their kids for not speaking english. it's mostly those middle and upper class families, which is a very small number. for most ghanaians, our parents can barely speak (if any at all) a word of english so they're not likely to punish their kids for not doing so but a child is more likely to experience such a treatment in the classroom.

[Cybria]

Yeah a friend told me that when he was growing up, his family spoke their dialect amongst each other, but at school and when they had visitors, they spoke english. I don't see why that can't be the case with everyone. Spanish-speaking familes who emmigrate to the US from mexico and south america usually speak spanish at home and then the kids go to school to learn english. There's no punishment involved.

[thinfox]

unfortunately, people equate the ability to speak english to intelligence and the educated fews tend to look down on people who speak a ghanaian language language since they percieve it as primitive. in a way there's a method to their madness. in terms of education, all lessons are offered in english, national examinations are offered in english only and so students and parents are easily convinced that they needed to master this language in order to excel. as far as society as a whole, every government services are offered in english only (formally) and so if you lack this language requirement, you're likely to be denied access. the funny thing is that less than 10% of ghanaians can speak english proficiently.

This post has been edited by thinfox: 04 January 2008 - 01:49 AM

[Cybria]

less than 10%? That sounds like a double standard if everything is offered in english. If you go to a government office in california you have forms available in at least eight or ten different languages. Maybe it's because we take english for granted here. But i can understand if speaking english in africa is equated with being intelligent or educated. I just don't see why a native language should have to be eliminated altogether. What good is a country if it's full of intelligent, successful people who have no remnant of their own culture?

[BlueHue]

Quote

I just don't see why a native language should have to be eliminated altogether. What good is a country if it's full of intelligent, successful people who have no remnant of their own culture?

I agree with this statement.

Why would people punish their kids for speaking their own language and where is this actually happening?

Strange!

[thinfox]

unfortunately, it happens in almost every country in africa.
i know some schools in ghana used to do that, but i don't know if this kind of practice still goes on. i've heard stories of people begging whipped or cane for speaking their mother tongue in school.
the following article describes the type of punishment dished out to students caught speaking their mother tongue in kenya:
In Kenya, for example, speaking in vernacular was forbidden in schools and punished. One popular method was to embarrass pupils by making them carry around the skull of some dead animal all day.
http://www.globalpol...03/0821lang.htm
and this also from kenya: http://www.unesco.or...4/uk/doss12.htm
another one: http://www.mail-arch...m/msg00525.html
this is from ghana: Students can be punished for almost anything: being late to school, speaking their native language instead of English, or even wearing the wrong shoes. http://vocaro.com/tr...ools/index.html

google it and i'm sure you'll find plenty of such cases.

[thinfox]

Speaking English in Lesotho (Ho bua Senyesemane Lesotho)


As far as I can remember I've always spoken English. It is my second language that has now become my first. Sesotho has been dethroned and it doesn't look like there's anything it can do about it. I think that that is fundamentally wrong.

It is well and good to speak English, the business lingua franca of our times, or French, or Spanish, but up to a point. And as far as I'm concerned, that point does not go beyond burying one's own mother tongue. It does not include punishing school children when they communicate in their own mother tongue.

Yes, we were beaten up if we spoke Sesotho at school. The teacher or the principal would elect prefects, who went around with pen and paper writing down names of "wrong-doers." And those would duly get whipped, to the glee and mirth of the faultlessly English speaking clique.

I mean, holy +%#&, what the shite was that all about? You mean our teachers and parents and school system were happier when we spoke someone else's language better than our own? That's insane! I do not know how the system functions today but if our young country folk are still being terrorised in that fashion then the whole system needs to be chucked out the window and a new one designed.

The last thing we want is little Basotho-cum-Brits running around speaking in tongues and thinking that those tongues are better than their very own, and that those tongues give them some sort of edge over their other Basotho-cum-Basotho country folk who speak good Sesotho and poor English.

Don't get me wrong, I like English. It's a fun language. Through it I'm able to talk to millions (precisely what I'm trying to do at this very moment), but I like Sesotho more. (It's more fun and it sounds better and tones), and it is all mine! Nobody can say a word about how I pronounce it or don't pronounce it. And when I speak Sesotho, I feel whole and on a par with anybody else. I do think there are serious repercussions to forcing people to abandon their mother tongue or not to speak it as well as they should. Inferiority complex is one such repercussion. You're doing your darndest to speak someone else's language, but you'll always be a step or two behind in a meeting, at the restaurant during a heated discussion, at the job interview, and so on. And you know it. The crunch comes when you realise that you don't really master your mother tongue either.

Listen to anybody in Lesotho speak Sesotho and you'll soon realise that everybody is speaking a mixture of English and Sesotho and Afrikaans. I'm sure if ntate Moshoeshoe the First came back today he'd be stumped! He wouldn't know what the hell we were talking about.

http://lesotho.blogs...tho-ho-bua.html