Robust debate on languages crucial

File picture: Adrian de Kock / African News Agency (ANA) Archives

File picture: Adrian de Kock / African News Agency (ANA) Archives

Published Oct 16, 2018

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Your correspondents Dr Mokapela (Cape Times, October 12) and Barbie Sandler (Cape Times, October 15) refer:

This matter of indigenous languages needs much debate, and we really ought to be able to reach a fairer outcome than we have at present.

I am fortunate, as I believe most Cape Times readers are, because I was born into an English-speaking family and the English language does not seem too complicated to me.

The vast majority of South Africans were not, and they do not identify with English at all.

I have spent the past 50 years working in the field of language development and literacy in many facets of South African life, and I can categorically say that English is a very complex and complicated language, and difficult for the average non-English speaker to master correctly.

Think of the vast English vocabulary, its spelling, the variations in tenses and strange usages, depending on whether the phrase originated in classical European or Germanic languages.

Of course, Afrikaans can be linked in here, but indigenous African languages are completely different, having their own linguistic systems.

Afrikaans is a very modern language, not yet even 100 years old.

African languages are much older I believe, but the written forms are more recent, having been tackled by missionaries with biblical zeal in the past recent centuries.

Our country has many official languages, but each province has only a few. In the Western Cape, we have English, Afrikaans and Xhosa. Some effort should be made to enable all citizens to be able to communicate in the three languages.

Township schools have a particularly weird system where children are taught in their mother-tongue until Grade 5, and then the school transfers to either English or Afrikaans.

Most parents seem to agree with Sandler in thinking that transferring to English would be more beneficial to their children.

So, from Grade 5, they are taught all school subjects in English, and tested in English as if it were their mother-tongue. This is a recipe for failure, and many of our learners under-achieve until many drop out of school.

They are not stupid, it is just too hard if they are not gifted in languages. Not many English people that I know could cope in such circumstances; they would all struggle to perform well in another language.

Please understand, I do not believe that English and Afrikaans should not be in the school curriculum.

They should be there as compulsory subjects, but not as medium of instruction. It is simply not fair, and does not take into account who these children are.

They are entitled, through our Constitution, to have their own indigenous languages developed properly and respected. They should all know how to communicate verbally in the languages of their region as well.

Mokapela mentioned the media for particular comment. TV channels, magazines and newspapers do nothing to assist our local people to feel proud of their languages. Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?

The languages are not developed because there seems to be no need, and there seems to be no need because the languages are not developed. The two strategies should go hand-in-hand supporting and strengthening each other, and not form a “vicious cycle” of nothingness, as suggested by Dr Mokapela.

It is time to open up sensible debate using all our strengths to the benefit of all our people. It would be good to start with languages.

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