Litnet

Jonathan Jansen is right about African languages being poorly taught at schools – and right about the fact that learning in your mother tongue does not guarantee success. But does he think that inefficient teachers are suddenly going to make a huge difference to their pupils when they teach in broken English? I visited a rural school in the Eastern Cape some years ago and heard a teacher in a dilapidated hut make her children chant, in English, the learning outcomes for that particular subject. The little boy who had bunked school to farm with his mother was learning more.

It is the teachers that are the problem, not the language.

But now I have a confession to make. I think the language is also tricky. African languages, particularly in urban areas, are undergoing rapid changes as a result of language contact, code-switching and code-mixing. Some of my students have told me that they don’t know what their mother tongues are: “Eish, a bit of Xhosa here, a bit of Zulu, also Tswana from my auntie, then some Swati from my neighbour – seriyas, siyamiksa (we mix).”

These new language varieties are creative and funky, stylish and cool, but they are not helpful if you want access to a good education and a well-paid job. That’s because no one, apart from advertisers (and linguists lustful for leery, ludic language), really valorises them. I have had access to the National Assessments in African languages and can tell that the children do not understand the pure language varieties (with their obsolete words and cumbersome phraseology) and therefore perform poorly. It is not what they speak at home, or in the streets, or even what they hear their teachers chatter in on the taxis. Jansen has a point.

But then we have to go back to the research – enough has been done to prove that mother-tongue education does make a difference to a child’s cognitive development. If you are English-speaking, can you imagine learning maths in Zulu if you have never heard a word of Zulu before? We cannot ignore this research, but we need to think creatively about what exactly “mother-tongue language” is and how to implement it correctly to include non-standard varieties that our pupils will understand and delight in.

And if we do start teaching in the medium of English right from the first year of a child’s schooling, let it be in a humble manner that acknowledges the beauty and richness of the child’s mother tongue and includes that in the syllabus. And let the mother tongue then be taught in a way that accepts variety and change and encourages the child to see language, not just English, as a precious resource.

Jansen rightly criticises the English culture as being “cold, erect, frowning, distant, judgmental, cynical, didactic and formal”, but I can tell you something: African language purists can be just as “didactic and formal”. Their insistence that “That is just not good Xhosa!”, for example, when the word i-eropleyini is used instead of inqwelo-ntaka (wagon-bird) conjures up an idea of Shakespeare telling us that the English we use is “just not English, forsooth!”.

As a mother-tongue English speaker I, too, am lonely in the English culture, which is why I opted to learn African languages and immerse myself in them daily. I delight in their warmth, generosity, creativity, hilarity and hugely different way of seeing the world. They don’t make you rich, though – only in your soul.

We need to look hard and critically at how African languages are taught – both as first and as second languages – to understand why everyone is limping towards English, like a woman towards an abusive husband. Because of economics. Because of power. Because of status. Because there is no choice.

Also read Jacques du Preez's take on Jonathan Jansen's speech: Wanneer rassevooroordeel met taalregte verwar word.

Also read Russell Kaschula's response to Jonathan Jansen's Percy Baneshik Memorial Lecture.

Also read African languages in the print media.