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Is the HIV/AIDS scourge continues
ndigenous languages in southern
Africa face extinction if urgent and
serious efforts are not made to develop
them and raise their status.
A report, tabled recently at an international
conference in Kenya, warned
that thousands of indigenous languages
in the world might disappear in the
next century. The conference was sponsored
by the United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP).
Languages are arbitrary oral symbols
by which a social group interacts,
communicates and self-expresses. It
enshrines the culture, customs and
secrets of the people.
The report estimates that up to 90
percent of the world’s languages could
die this century, with the valuable knowledge,
culture and customs embedded in
them gone forever.
The traditional knowledge at threat
includes secrets of how to manage habitats
and the land in environmentally
sustainable ways passed down by word
of mouth over many generations.
Studies carried out estimate that there
are 5,000 to 7,000 spoken languages in
the world, of which 4,000 to 5,000 are classified
as minority languages.
More than 2,500 of these are in immediate
danger of extinction and many
more are already losing their natural link,
32 percent of these being African.
While 234 have already suffered this
fate among which are the Khoi-San languages that were spoken in southern
Africa in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa
and Zimbabwe.
In addition to the Khoi-San languages,
Chikunda and Dema in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Zambia are also in danger
of extinction.
Globalization has been singled out
as the major catalyst in their disappearance.
The process of turning the world
into a village is promoting the use of
English, French, Portuguese, Spanish
and other European languages at the expense
of indigenous languages.
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Languages are arbitrary oral symbols by which a social group interacts
“Nature’s secrets, locked away in the
different indigenous languages may be
lost forever as a result of growing globalization,”
says the report.
European languages are not new to
Africa as they are the languages of the former colonial masters.
They have been
used widely as languages
for social mobility
and economic
interaction, while
they are spoken by
less than 20 percent
of the indigenous
population.
In addition to the
colonial reason, African
states have opted
to retain the use
of these languages
as a unifying force
among their diverse
language groups.
However, another
alternative
has emerged in east Africa
where Swahili is the lingua franca drawing
roots from a number of other languages,
and is now the seventh most
spoken language in the world.
While the disappearance of the languages
is imminent, language experts
have called for regional governments to
put in place policies
that ensure the development
and constant use of minority
languages.
“For a language to survive it must be
used for a wide range of functions otherwise
it begins to wither and die. Thus,
where we have allowed higher
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status
functions to be limited to English, French
and Portuguese only, other languages
then begin to wither and die,” said Nkosana
Sibuyi, Senior Communications
Officer of the Pan South African Language
Board.
Most African countries are multilingual
with many minority languages and
dialects spoken — the DRC has more
than 200 languages, Tanzania 120, Angola
63, Mozambique 25 while Botswana and Zimbabwe have about 20 languages
each. However, most of the
southern African countries have not put
in place deliberate policies that promote
and elevate minority languages to protect
them from their imminent extinction.
South Africa is one SADC country
that adopted in 1996 a multilingual policy,
that elevated nine African languages
to official languages namely Ndebele,
Xhosa, Zulu, Sesotho, Sesotho sa Leboa,
Sesotho Siswati, Seswana, Xitsonga
and Tshivenda.
Other countries have through their
education acts attempted to elevate indigenous
languages to a status recog-nizable
for their development.
Zimbabwe adopted an education
policy that stipulates that the first three
years of education should use
indigenous languages as a medium of
instruction while English is being
introduced to the student. Seven
languages — Shona, Ndebele, Kalanga,
Tonga, Venda, Shangani and Nambya
enjoy this status.
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