Wanted: Inquiry into what ails language teaching

On social problems, Kenya is long on wajuaji but alarmingly short on those who conduct any study before they open their mouths.

Every time our children perform poorly in language examinations, every “intellectual” readily names Sheng as the demon.

No, I will not deny this allegation because even I have not studied the problem scientifically.

But that is precisely why I cannot just accept the claim either. I will take it seriously only when I have read a cogent public statement detailing the conditions in which the findings were reached. Is Sheng the culprit in the plummeting standard of English in this country? Why is it impossible to know both Sheng and good English simultaneously?

Since my mind is always open to new knowledge, I promise to swallow your statement as soon as I have seen the facts and figures – as soon as you convince me that Sheng is intrinsically so powerful that, in its presence, even a language superpower like English must cower and give way.

But I know that although English is rapidly becoming the universal communication medium, its quality — both written and spoken — is taking a nosedive even in England, North America and Down Under. The question is: Why? Is it that those societies have their own Shengs or does Kenya’s Sheng have a kind of tendril by which it extends destructively overseas?

Here, at home, somebody must show me that Sheng is what is to blame for the sagging fortunes even of Giriama, Kalenjin, Kikuyu, Kiswahili, Luhya, Somali, etc. How can Sheng (an urban phenomenon) be the reason that, deep in bucolic South Nyanza, our children are getting more and more inept even in Dholuo?

But I know one thing. My knowledge of Dholuo helped — rather than hindered — my acquisition of other languages. For its part, English put me in excellent stead, especially concerning vocabulary, to imbibe German. Though French is remoter from both, the three belong to the great Indo-European family and this helped me a great deal to find my way in Geneva’s Palais des Nations.

The logic of the attack on Sheng seems to be that it has no recognisable grammar. But “recognisable” to whom? Does it worry the Chinese that most outsiders do not “recognise” Han grammar? Language is important only to its speakers. If Sheng speakers understand one another perfectly in the pursuit of a common cause, how — except from pathetic ignorance of how language functions — can you claim that Sheng has no grammar?

Grammar is nothing but whatever the speakers of a language conventionally agree on. All the daughters of Latin — including French, Italian, Portuguese, Rumanian and Spanish — began as Shengs in the European backwaters of Rome’s sprawling empire. Some Latin purists must have complained against the Latin Sheng of Iberia — the vernacular of Pontius Pilate.

But this did not prevent that Sheng from developing into a world language called Spanish which — while still true to its Indo-European and Romance roots — nevertheless, enjoys its own grammar. Quebec’s linguistic bigots and whoever wrote Parlez-Vous Franglais? (a book attacking the speed at which America’s folk English has invaded French) have no idea that French was once nothing but a Latin Sheng.

In basic structure, all languages are the same. As Jacob Bronowsky says (in The Ascent Of Man), if he had not known Polish from childhood, he would never have learned English. Likewise, without Dholuo, I could never have learned Kiswahili. The upshot is that a language (even Sheng) cannot hinder — but, on the contrary, can only help — you to learn another.

Do not, then, fob off your educational failings to our youth in their linguistic inventiveness. Say NO to what are but useless commonsensical opinions on Sheng. Instead, prevail on Prof Jacob Kaimenyi to discover the truth by conducting a proper inquiry into what is ailing language teaching in Kenya.

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