After giving a talk at Rutgers University, New Jersey today (07 November, 2011), it fully occured to me that indigenous African languages have had a long history of subjugation that even the cosmetic policy reforms of multilingualism do little to advance their cause unless more radical, politically-willed steps are put in place. Many people often think that languages should be developed first in order to be used, but I tend to believe that not using them is in fact a cause for their under-development. The first step towards development is to use them... and they can borrow words and concepts from English through normal processes of langauge contact and evolution in the same way that developed langauges like English did and still do today....the inkhorn words derived from French and classical languages like Latin before it was developed in the middle ages are best examples to show that no language is instrinsically developed.
Instead of systematic language planning expected of policy makers, we saw language "happening" in a series of lingusitic "wars", indigenous African languages had to survive against exogenous languages (which have over time become African too) and agents. The history reads as thus: Dutchification (1652), Anglicization (1875), Missionary lingusitic disinvention (1800), Dutch-English reunion (1910), the rise of Afrikaans in 1925, Afrikanerization (1948); Soweto Student uprising (1976) and Democratisation (1994). All of these historical epochs did very little to turn the fortunes for African langauges as languages of prestige in all domains of life. It is almost 15 years since multilingualism was proclaimed as a norm (1996), but many children are still caught up in the sink or swim subtractive bilingualism default policy (learning through one's home langage for the first 3 years and then making a swift transition to learning through English) that was first introduced by the missionaries in the 1800. This policy that cuts across many Anglophone African countries has been insensitive to the "threshold" levels and levels of readiness of the kids...that learners have to LEARN in a language they do not understand is still incomprehesible to me...defies the logic of education, which is to acquire knowledge and use it for personal and social advancement.
It is important to recall that the missionaries' goal was to quickly christianize the natives through their home languages and thus 3 years was deemed necessary for biblical studies. They knew that comprehesion was not possible in an exogenous language and thus home language or so called mother tongue was the logical option to spread the word of God. When the mission was accomplished, the colonizing agents wanted to transfer their culture through their languages by replacing African cultural and linguistic reality with their own. Equally, they knew that the best way was to cultivate this before children passed their critical age--puberty--- to master a behaviour and start thinking in the colonial language as early as grade 4. This is the story of a sink or swim policy cutting across many African countries to date. Ironically, change has been claimed when in fact things remained the same as far as enliteration of African children in schools despite the odd reality that they are underachieving in schools. Cognitive underdevelopment, literacy development failures, semi-lingualism, skills shortage, unemployment, and general dependence on the government by a large section of the population are some of the harsh consequences of failed language policy of a developing nation.
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