Of my first language and the fear of doing broadcast in vernacular

The rich variety of our home languages is a veritable pleasure and treasure. But the treasure comes with its complications, especially in everyday practice.

The most unfortunate complication, as Mzee Ole Kaparo and everyone of goodwill realises, is the use of these languages to lacerate our national identity. We jocularly call it “short-waving”, but it easily degenerates into short-changing our unity.

It is not the fault of the languages, but of those people who misuse them in the wrong contexts.

Since history and the prudent policies of our predecessors have blessed us with a unifying national language, we should always use it in all mixed ethnic situations.

But my reflections today are prompted by a different complication of multilingualism, especially my own personal experiences. Multilingualism can be viewed in different ways. It may imply the existence and use of several languages in one society. It also refers to the use of several different languages by one person in his or her day-to-day life and work experiences.

It is this latter face of multilingualism that is giving me cause (or is it pause) for thought. I am a notorious polyglot, that is, a habitual user of many different languages. In fact, when people ask me these day how many languages I speak, I tend to answer, truthfully, “I don’t know.”

Since languages are both my work and my hobby, I am always trying to acquire new ones. I am also constantly obliged to switch languages as I move from one community and situation to another, as dictated by my professional, social and other requirements.

It is richly rewarding when and if you can handle the switches correctly, but it can also be a tough challenge, and even an embarrassment, if you are not quite sure how to go about it.  

By the time you read this, for example, I will probably be in a radio studio in Kampala, doing a live broadcast. I have been vociferating about one thing or another on airwaves since 1962. So, you would expect me to be pretty comfortable with such an exercise.

I am, however, unusually nervous and jittery about this prospective programme from the royal studios of the Central Broadcasting Service (CBS) in Mengo, the seat of the Buganda Kingdom. But my nerves have nothing to do with His Majesty, Kabaka Ronald Muwenda Mutebi, whom I am not even likely to meet on my visit.

What is scaring me about my broadcast is that it is going to be in Luganda, the language of the station, and my first language, or mother tongue. You would have logically thought that that would give me confidence and make me feel at home. But alas, that is far from the reality.

I am sure I would be a lot more confident and carefree if the programme were to be in English, my “second” language, or Kiswahili, my “third”.

Now, that is where the surprise should be, but it is not quite as simple as that. Even my putting English second and Kiswahili third in the order of my linguistic acquisitions is a bit of an oversimplification, as the quote marks above suggest.

As it happens, long before I started formal school and the learning of English, I had to acquire a functional proficiency in Latin, my church’s official language of prayer in those days. So, you could say that my second language was actually Latin. In any case, my formal training in Luganda, English and Latin ran side by side throughout my schooldays.

Moreover, while I was acquiring Kiswahili the “natural” way by being immersed in the Dar es Salaam society, I was being systematically and intensively taught French, my official language of choice on the undergraduate language and linguistics course. French could, thus, compete with Kiswahili as my “third” language, in view of the methods by which it was imparted.

Anyway, even if we accept the simple line-up of Luganda, English and Kiswahili as my first, second and third languages, my nervousness about doing a Luganda public broadcast would be defensible. I have not used the language in public discourse, and certainly not in broadcasting, since my Uganda Television (UTV) news-reading days in the 1960s, of which I told you last week.

Moreover, since I have not lived continuously in the country since the latter 1970s, you realise how much my proficiency in the language might have been affected. I am thus a classic case study of what my teacher, the Swahilist Wilfred Whiteley, lucidly describes as the difference between order of acquisition and prevalence of usage.

Whiteley explains that, as we move through various environments, the order in which we use our languages changes. Luganda or Luo may be your first language, the one you first learnt. But if you are a university lecturer and you live in a city like Nairobi, you will inevitably find yourself doing your daily living and working primarily in English, and secondarily in Kiswahili, the language of the open spaces of the city.

Luganda or Luo, your first language, will be assigned to third position of frequency of use, mostly limited to your home situation or to small circles of fellow home-language speakers. I should hasten to add that, if your marriage is “trans-ethnic”, like mine and those of many of my friends, the status of the first language in the home is drastically affected. In short, English may become your primary language, Kiswahili your secondary one and the home language a tertiary option.

It should also be obvious that you become more fluent and proficient in the languages that you most frequently use. The less used ones, the tertiary and other options, might get rusty and hesitant. Some might even disappear from your linguistic equipment.

I just hope my Luganda will not let me down in the studio. I will not give you the website details of the CBS, as I do not want you to hear me “slanging” and “shrubbing” in my mother tongue.

Prof Bukenya is one of the leading scholars of English and Literature in East Africa. [email protected]