Of longing and lunging for an edifying lingo

I have been intending to learn some “Luo” for some time now. After all, it is a language widely spoken around me, by many of my friends and, following recent family developments, by my close relatives in and around Kisumu.

Moreover, “Luo” is manifestly international. It has not only glamorously leapt from Kogelo, across the Atlantic and the Potomac River, into the heart of DC, but also remained an indigenous language in Uganda, Kenya, South Sudan and Northeastern Tanzania.

The language from “Ramogi” appears as Dholuo in Kenya, Kuku in Southern Sudan and as “Lwoo” in Uganda. But “Lwoo” is a generalisation. We speak it specifically as Acholi, Alur, Lango, Kumam and Dhopadhola.

Anyway, two things got me rethinking language lately. The first is the launch of a new education policy in Tanzania, which apparently stipulates that Kiswahili shall be the medium of instruction at all levels of education. The second is the recent celebration of International Mother Language Day, observed every February 21st, since 1999.

Regarding the Tanzanian pronouncements, it is a kind of déjà vu! What is being proposed now is almost exactly what had been proposed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. But it was later partially reversed, or “liberalised”, and English started quietly creeping back in.

English-Kiswahili ambiguity

Today, I find it difficult to understand what exactly is going on, despite the copious writings on the situation by scholars like my beloved sisters Martha Qorro and Saida Yahya Othman.

The impression I get is that our Tanzanian relatives are rather uneasy about the English-Kiswahili ambiguity in their school system.

Many Tanzanians decry the “falling standards” of English in the country, badly affecting Tanzanian competitiveness in the largely English-speaking East African job market. “Kasumba ya ukoloni (colonial hangover),” Mwalimu Nyerere would have answered. But “falling standards of English” is a phrase I keep hearing on the streets of Nairobi and Kampala!

Meanwhile, enterprising educationists are exploiting the snob-value of English. So-called “English medium” schools are at a premium all over the country. Tanzanian children are flocking to schools in Uganda — where “good English is spoken” — and school owners there are laughing all the way to the bank.

I will not laugh, because Tanzania’s language puzzles are symptomatic of the larger cultural dilemma of all our “globalising” post-colonial societies. How can we successfully cohere at home while effectively participating in the global village?

Anyway, I think that Tanzania is right, if it has resolutely opted for a Kiswahili teaching medium throughout its education systems. We need not lament the decades lost on flirting with English and its falling standards.

Still, English is not going away any time soon. What do we do about it? My gut feeling is that English should be taught as a foreign language in East Africa. This would, incidentally, improve its quality and the seriousness with which we teach it.

Pretending that English is a “second language” here is both unrealistic and educationally negative. The “Sheng”, “Engshee” and “Lug-English” that pass for second-language English in Nairobi, Kampala and elsewhere are, at best, pidgins that necessitate a lot of remedial work with our students before we can start teaching them English.

I agonise over the observation, made by education experts, that an “English-only” medium approach through school, is a recipe for poor performance among our learners.  After all, it has for a long time been the official position in Uganda, and a de facto one in Kenya, and it’s what I have built my teaching and writing career on.

When the experts add that no society ever fully developed by learning and studying in a foreign language, I am dumbstruck.

I am fully orate and literate in Luganda. But I am also thoroughly Anglophone and “Swahilophone”, and there is no way I can undo that and return to my “roots” in order to become fully developed.

This brings me to the International Mother Language Day. It was instituted by UNESCO, the United Nations Education, Science and Cultural Organization, to highlight a number of important points about language articulated in the final decades of the last century.

Among these, three stand out. The first is that a person’s mother tongue is a human right. Secondly, every language is a cultural treasury and an inalienable part of our intangible cultural heritage.

Thirdly, scientific research has established that learning ability is optimal when children are taught in their mother tongues.

Heavy stuff, as language matters always are. The problem is that language is a deeply emotional and subjective endowment, as calling it “mother tongue” suggests. Yet, in society, we are always required to make objective and rational decisions about it.

Whenever I am caught up in this maze, I refer to three key concepts that Wilfred Whiteley, my Anglo-Mswahili linguistics professor, taught me. The first is that, in discussing language, we should minimise value-loaded terminology, such as “mother” or “father” tongue. Languages should be objectively identified as first, second and third language, according to the order in which we acquire them.

Secondly, in a multilingual situation, the order of importance of the languages we use keeps shifting.

A speaker of Dholuo, Kiswahili and English as first, second and third languages, for example, may find himself or herself, using more English and Kiswahili than Dholuo, according to the environment in which he or she operates.

Thus English, one’s third language, may become one’s primary language, while Kiswahili becomes the secondary language while Dholuo, the first language, becomes tertiary, in terms of frequency and significance of use in one’s daily life!

Finally, all language policy decisions are processes, not happenings. Declaring, as Tanzania has done, that Kiswahili will be the sole medium of instruction, does not mean that every school and college will be doing it tomorrow. It is only a declaration of an intention that will, hopefully, be gradually implemented over the years and decades.

Even I, keen and eager as I am, will not become a proper Jaduong and start chatting with my relatives in Kisumu and Rabuor tomorrow or next week.                                                                                             

Prof Bukenya is one of the leading scholars of English and literature in East Africa