23/1/2011
Kiswahili's Future Lies in Borrowing From English
2011-01-17 13:22:48.296 GMT
Nairobi, Jan 17, 2011 (The East African/All Africa Global
Media via COMTEX) -- When Kenya's Minister of Education Sam
Ongeri recently lamented the poor performance of primary school
pupils in national examinations of Kiswahili, and ordered an
investigation into the matter, it was reminiscent of an oft-
quoted saying in East Africa: that Kiswahili was born in
Zanzibar, grew up in Tanzania, fell sick in Kenya, died in
Uganda and was buried in Congo.
This saying, albeit light-heartedly, aptly captures the
evolution of the language as one moves north and west of the
East African coast, characterised by a shrinking of vocabulary,
adulteration by indigenous languages and a near-unforgivable
non-adherence to basic structure and noun classes - so much so,
that by the time one crosses into eastern DR Congo, or gets to
northern Uganda, and lately Southern Sudan, it hardly sounds
like Kiswahili at all.
The pertinent question at the moment is what is the future
of Kiswahili as a regional lingua franca as it buffers the
storms that plague the "correct" form of the language,
particularly in places where it has "fallen sick" to the
ravages of other languages, local slang and negative
perceptions; or where it has been admitted into "intensive
care," perhaps because the proper form has never been mastered
in the first place. What can we learn from other linguas franca
of history?
Despite the problems faced in mastery of Kiswahili, the
spread of the language in the region is undeniable: more and
more people are speaking Kiswahili in Uganda, Rwanda and
recently Southern Sudan.
Charles Omondi, an editor with the African Review, an
Online news site owned by the Nation Media Group and recently
in Southern Sudan to cover the historic referendum, writes that
Southern Sudan could soon be the next major frontier for the
expansion of the language widely spoken in East and Central
Africa.
"Having been in Juba," he writes, "I have been marvelling
at how widespread Kiswahili is in a land where English and
Arabic should be lingua franca. Whether in a hotel, in a shop
or on the streets, chances are that one in three people you
interact with is able to communicate in Kiswahili...coming at a
time when no official effort has been made by the government to
promote the language."
The rise and rise of Tanzanian Bongo flava music in the
region has undoubtedly contributed to the spread of Kiswahili,
particularly in Uganda, where it had long been considered the
language of soldiers, criminals and refugees.
The language's popularity surged after Ugandan artiste
Jose Chameleone recorded his biggest hits todate in Kiswahili -
Jamila and Mama Mia.
In Kenya, Sheng, the oft-maligned working language of
Kenya's youth that has its origin in Nairobi's Eastlands, is
often blamed for the poor mastery of Kiswahili among Kenyan
students.
It is also interesting to note how Kiswahili demarcates
sharp divisions in socio-economic status, and one can tell
which side of the divide a person falls in by the language
others use to address them.
Middle and upper middle class children in Kenya, for
example, are socialised to speak Kiswahili specifically to
domestic workers, drivers and gardeners included - the so-
called ordinary wananchi, and are less likely to speak the
language among themselves.
One key step in spreading Kiswahili was to create a
standard written language.
In June 1928, an interterritorial conference was held in
Mombasa, at which the Zanzibar dialect, Kiunguja, was chosen to
be the basis for standardising Kiswahili.
Today's standard Kiswahili, the version taught as a second
language in Kenya, is for practical purposes the Zanzibar
dialect, even though there are minor discrepancies between the
written standard and the Zanzibar vernacular.
The other dialects are Kimvita, spoken in Mombasa, Kiamu,
spoken in Lamu and Kingazija, spoken in the Comoros Islands.
The latter is restricted to the archipelago while the rest
of the dialects are widely spoken along the East African coast
from Kismayu in Somalia to northern Mozambique and parts of
Madagascar.
Currently, some 90 per cent of approximately 39 million
Tanzanians speak fluent Kiswahili, barring localised slang,
rich in vocabulary and idioms.
Kenya's population is comparable, and though the
prevalence of the language is lower, it is still widespread
enough to warrant the government recently to make it a national
language.
Most educated Kenyans can communicate fluently in
Kiswahili, since it is a compulsory subject from primary
school.
The five eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of
Congo are Kiswahili speaking, and it is starting to rival
Lingala as the most important national language of that
country.
In Uganda, the Baganda generally do not speak Kiswahili,
but it is in common use among the 25 million people elsewhere
in the country, and its teaching is currently being implemented
in schools nationwide in line with the vision of the East
African Community.
The usage of Kiswahili in other countries is commonly
overstated, being common only in market towns, among returning
refugees, or near the borders of Kenya and Tanzania.
Even so, Kiswahili speakers may number some 120 to 150
million people.
Notably, some contemporary non-Swahili ethnic groups speak
Kiswahili more often than their mother tongues, and many choose
to raise their children with Kiswahili as their first language,
leading to the possibility that several smaller East African
languages will fade as Kiswahili transitions from being a
regional lingua franca to a regional first language.
The term lingua franca comes from a language that was
actually called Lingua Franca.
The original Lingua Franca was a mixed language composed
mostly of Italian with a broad vocabulary drawn from Turkish,
French, Spanish, Greek and Arabic.
It was in use throughout the eastern Mediterranean as the
language of commerce and diplomacy in and around the
Renaissance era.
At that time, Italian speakers dominated seaborne commerce
in port cities of the Ottoman Empire. Franca was the Italian
word for Frankish, therefore it was the language of the
"Franks": the term used to describe all Europeans at the time.
In Europe, various languages rose and fell in prominence
as linguas franca - Greek during the times of the Hellenistic
civilisation, which was followed by Latin during the Roman
Empire.
In the medi
eval era, German was used throughout the Holy
Roman Empire.
From the 16th to the 19th century, French was the language
of business, trade and diplomacy in Europe, and was regarded as
the language of the elite - a person could not be considered
properly educated if he or she was not conversant with French.
With the spread of the British Empire in the late 1800s
into the 20th century, English soon became the most important
global language, a scenario that persists today: English,
undoubtedly, is today's language of science, technology,
business, commerce and entertainment.
Linguas franca rise and fall on the basis of their ability
to absorb foreign influences, and this is why English has
continued to outpace French, for example, in global relevance.
English easily absorbs foreign words without much fuss -
many words in the language are borrowed from European languages
such as Latin, German and Spanish; even Hindi (shampoo,
monsoon), Japanese (karaoke, tsunami) and Kiswahili itself
(safari, mamba).
French, on the other hand, is much more insular than
English - the Academie Francaise, the official authority on the
language, has raised the flag on the adulteration of French by
English words in particular; to remedy this, it has come up
with arguably clumsy French words in the spirit of preserving
the purity of the language: eblabla to replace chat, for
example.
Still, and to the dismay of les francais, French has
continued to lose ground in terms of number of speakers and
global relevance - more and more Francophone countries are
adopting English on a wider scale: Rwanda is a case in point.
Outside influence
To maintain its relevance and life span, therefore,
Kiswahili should borrow a leaf from English and be less jittery
about the influence of local slang and adulterations such as
Sheng.
Infusions of foreign words are the essence of any lingua
franca, and this increases the language's usefulness in many
diverse social settings.
The language can evolve and yet still retain its purity
for academic and linguistic purposes, and have a standardised
version that is widely known but largely ignored in day-to-day
communication. Just like English.
Kiswahili in East Africa has always been linked to trade,
and one does not need an extensive vocabulary or flowing idioms
to trade.
Starting about 1800, the rulers of Zanzibar organised
trading expeditions into the interior of the mainland, up to
the Great Lakes region.
They soon established permanent trade routes and Kiswahili-
speaking merchants settled in stops along the new trade routes.
After Germany seized Tanganyika for a colony in 1886, it
took notice of the wide, albeit shallow, dissemination of
Kiswahili, and soon designated Kiswahili as a colony-wide
official administrative language.
Textbook or examination Kiswahili, and much less the
purest Zanzibari form of the language, is not the version that
has regional relevance today -- it is street Kiswahili, spoken
in East Africa's commercial centres, that used in the arts such
as music, and that spoken in the various refugee camps spread
across the region that binds the region together.
The essence of a lingua franca is its ability to survive a
stripping down of vocabulary, and its receptiveness to external
influences.
For a language to survive the times, it must be adaptable.
Preserving the "right" Kiswahili, is without a doubt
commendable.
However, if Kiswahili scholars become defensive and
insular in protecting the purity of the language, then it risks
going the way of French - a "fossilised language," according to
Frederic Martel, French writer and journalist, "which is
uncool, associated in the global mind with an aristocratic
elite and defended by ageing bureaucrats terrified of
linguistic evolution."
by Christine Mungai
Copyright The East African. Distributed by AllAfrica Global
Media (allAfrica.com).
Sunday, January 23, 2011
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