Is tech killing indigenous African languages?

September 13, 2017, Wits University

Is tech killing indigenous African languages? Prof. Leketi Makalela, Director of the Hub for Multilingual Education and Literacies in the Division of Languages, Literacies and Literatures in the Wits School of Education talks back.

In South Africa, English continues as the lingua franca, despite government policies that protect and promote vernacular languages.

There have been warnings about the death of these languages. However, indigenous languages are far from extinct says Professor Leketi Makalela.

"Where government has failed, technology is bringing hope to the people," says Makalela. "African languages were probably going to die, were it not for technology, social media and popular culture. Technology is going to take African languages forward and these languages are going to evolve to fit into the digital age and any future world shift."

Ironically, this change is one of the major criticisms levelled against technology, and especially social media, where variations of spelling abound, and where the platforms are also implicated for contributing to the decline in literacy and writing standards.

"People are concerned about change and this has been an ongoing major debate in human language development. The great divide is about whether the change results in decay or progress. A conservative will say it is decay because there is nostalgia for the past and everything is being disorganised by modernity. This has to do with aging as well – the older you are, the more you want to keep things the same," says Makalela, who is also the editor-in-chief of the Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies Journal and Chairperson of Umalusi Council's Qualifications Standards Committee.

To put things into perspective, Makalela says the primary question that needs to be asked in such debates is: "What is the purpose of language?"

One of the significant, laudable changes brought about by social media is that they break down linguistic barriers. Makalela believes we should celebrate that communication technology is contributing to the decolonisation of languages.

"The Balkanisation of African states in 1884 in Berlin was attached to the languages. The Bantustan policy of apartheid architect H.F. Verwoerd was based on supposed linguistic differences," says Makalela. "African languages were separated intentionally, not because they were or are different, but because the strategy was to divide and conquer. Technology has now made it easy for linguistic groups to realise how similar they are than they were previously told."

Communities such as #BlackTwitter, mother-tongue appreciation groups on Facebook and blogs where young creatives share works in their languages and culture are defying institutions and moving languages into the 21st Century. Local television programmes are also playing their part in promoting multilingualism with many creative works moving between three and more languages, recreating and reinforcing the South African linguistic reality.

"We cannot talk about economic development and social cohesion without taking into account the issues of language because languages are central to social cohesion. You can't expect a Zulu and a Tswana person to socially cohere if there is no crossover of language," he adds. "One of the barriers that must be removed to drive this growth is for linguistic groups to be open to the influence of non-mother tongue speakers," explains Makalela.

"There seems to be a sacredness and unwillingness to allow others to learn African languages, which often makes it closed to outsiders. If we really want our languages to flourish, we have to open the doors to non-mother tongue speakers so that there is nothing like KZN isiZulu vs Gauteng isiZulu (which is seen as weak isiZulu). In fact, it's a time to redefine what we call standards.

English became a dominant language because it opened its doors to non-mother tongue users. The type of English used today is heavily multi-lingual with 80% of the words in the language not original English. In addition, 80% of users are not traditional mother tongue speakers. English thrives and lives on donations from other languages."

Another area where Makalela would like to see transformation is the use of technology in the classroom to promote multilingualism. "While technology is often seen as eroding African values, accelerating moral degeneration and the loss of ubuntu, practice is suggesting that it is having an opposite effect on languages. Let us focus on creating shared meaning and understanding through opening up our languages and using technology to contribute towards fostering social cohesion in our diverse society."

Is tech killing indigenous African languages?

September 13, 2017, Wits University

Is tech killing indigenous African languages? Prof. Leketi Makalela, head of Languages, Literacies and Literatures in the Wits School of Education talks back.

Discussions on the status of African languages portray a dim view. For centuries, African languages have been under threat as one conqueror after another has imposed their preferred language on various nations on the continent. Subsequently, African languages have low status in our institutions and continue to be marginalised in all spheres of power, including government quarters.
In South Africa, English continues as the lingua franca, despite government policies that protect and promote vernacular languages.
There have been warnings about the death of these languages. However, indigenous languages are far from extinct says Professor Leketi Makalela, Head of Languages, Literacies and Literatures in the Wits School of Education.
"Where government has failed, technology is bringing hope to the people," says Makalela. "African languages were probably going to die, were it not for technology, social media and popular culture. Technology is going to take African languages forward and these languages are going to evolve to fit into the digital age and any future world shift."
Ironically, this change is one of the major criticisms levelled against technology, and especially social media, where variations of spelling abound, and where the platforms are also implicated for contributing to the decline in literacy and writing standards.
"People are concerned about change and this has been an ongoing major debate in human language development. The great divide is about whether the change results in decay or progress. A conservative will say it is decay because there is nostalgia for the past and everything is being disorganised by modernity. This has to do with aging as well – the older you are, the more you want to keep things the same," says Makalela, who is also the editor-in-chief of the Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies Journal and Chairperson of Umalusi Council's Qualifications Standards Committee.
To put things into perspective, Makalela says the primary question that needs to be asked in such debates is: "What is the purpose of language?"

"We need to question what language is and why we have language as human beings before we look at the structure (syntax and spelling). People obsess about the aesthetics of the language and yet language is here for meaning-making. The 'net speak' and contraction of words are a natural evolution of language and a reflection of the time. The structure of language keeps changing because people are changing."
One of the significant, laudable changes brought about by social media is that they break down linguistic barriers. Makalela believes we should celebrate that communication technology is contributing to the decolonisation of languages.
"The Balkanisation of African states in 1884 in Berlin was attached to the languages. The Bantustan policy of apartheid architect H.F. Verwoerd was based on supposed linguistic differences," says Makalela. "African languages were separated intentionally, not because they were or are different, but because the strategy was to divide and conquer. Technology has now made it easy for linguistic groups to realise how similar they are than they were previously told."
Communities such as #BlackTwitter, mother-tongue appreciation groups on Facebook and blogs where young creatives share works in their languages and culture are defying institutions and moving languages into the 21st Century. Local television programmes are also playing their part in promoting multilingualism with many creative works moving between three and more languages, recreating and reinforcing the South African linguistic reality.
"We cannot talk about economic development and social cohesion without taking into account the issues of language because languages are central to social cohesion. You can't expect a Zulu and a Tswana person to socially cohere if there is no crossover of language," he adds. "One of the barriers that must be removed to drive this growth is for linguistic groups to be open to the influence of non-mother tongue speakers," explains Makalela.
"There seems to be a sacredness and unwillingness to allow others to learn African languages, which often makes it closed to outsiders. If we really want our languages to flourish, we have to open the doors to non-mother tongue speakers so that there is nothing like KZN isiZulu vs Gauteng isiZulu (which is seen as weak isiZulu). In fact, it's a time to redefine what we call standards.
English became a dominant language because it opened its doors to non-mother tongue users. The type of English used today is heavily multi-lingual with 80% of the words in the language not original English. In addition, 80% of users are not traditional mother tongue speakers. English thrives and lives on donations from other languages."
Another area where Makalela would like to see transformation is the use of technology in the classroom to promote multilingualism. "While technology is often seen as eroding African values, accelerating moral degeneration and the loss of ubuntu, practice is suggesting that it is having an opposite effect on languages. Let us focus on creating shared meaning and understanding through opening up our languages and using technology to contribute towards fostering social cohesion in our diverse society."

Imagining a thriving multilingual world

Fourth International Conference on Language and Literacy Education

Whereas it has exponentially become impossible to ignore the prevalence of many languages and their co-existence as a key phenomenon in the world of increased mobility within and between nation states, very few scholars have imagined a true official status of multilingualism both in the future and outside of the monolingual frame of thinking. The Hub for Multilingual Education and Literacies (HUMEL) is a thought leader that hosts annual conferences to highlight the importance of multilingual education and the value of multilingualism in the 21^st Century. In line with the Hub’s strategic concentration on two pillars of education: epistemic and ontological access, the annual conferences question the validity of language boundaries and global North conceptual frames such as ‘mother tongue’, ‘first language’ and ‘second languages’, ‘interlanguage’ and places multilingualism and its discursive resources at the centre of contemporary classroom practices. In what is described as ‘disruption of the orthodoxy’ in education systems, the Hub’s conferences have always agitated for increased epistemic access and affirmation of identity positions of multilingual learners (the majority in the world), without which education becomes imitative and marginalizing. Prompting delegates to think forward about an ideal multilingual world, the theme for the fourth international conference was “Imagining a thriving multilingual world” featuring subthemes that include:

Translanguaging and multilanguaging
Reading and writing literacies
Multilingual assessments
Multilingual materials
Alternative and critical pedagogies for multilingual education
Language policy, planning and management in education
Multiliteracies

Taken together, these themes pointed at the danger of monolingual bias as an invention of the Enlightenment period and colonial consequences of suppressing local languages in favour of the exogenous languages, which are still regarded as the only means for guaranteeing civilization or success. These themes were debated through 60 presentations from delegates representing 20 countries and more than 40 postgraduate students coming from the Southern African Development Community countries. In addition to the regular delegates to conferences, the uniqueness of this conference is that it also brought representative primary schools and members of the South African Literacy Teachers Association- a body that was founded by the HUMEL into one space of dialogue and sharing. Five teachers from primary schools presented lessons that demonstrated innovative applications of multilingual instruction in their classrooms. The conference also celebrated the first school in the world that recognized translanguaging as its official policy, Doornspruit Primary School, in Limpopo Province. The point was made during the gala-dinner that translanguaging is a legitimate policy option for schools as entrenched in the Language in Education Policy of 1997 and that many schools and officials have read this policy document with monolingual lenses of additive bilingualism and subtractive medium of learning and teaching. That is, one language at a time and sequential introduction of languages, which are all indicators of monolingual orientation. More schools were encouraged to follow Doornspruit Primary School as a prime example of multilingual education imagined and to seek support of HUMEL’s advocacy and community engagement programmes.

The second highlight for the conference is the intellectual rigor that showed the global South taking more strides to own theories of multilingualism that both critique monolingual and epistemic biases often transferred from theories developed from the global North geopolitical context. It is envisaged that engaging with these new theories will lead to public awareness and policy reforms that are based on multilingualism as a norm to be cultivated rather than a problem to be solved. It was noted that this direction begins with valorizing the cultural competence and constructs from the global South as the premise for theory development. In this connection, translanguaging and multilanguaging, among others, are global South relevant while at the same time having a universal appeal.

The keynote speakers from Kenya, Mauritius and the USA delivered on point and relevant considerations for multilingual education imagined for the 21^st Century and extended opportunities for collaborative projects that raise awareness on the value of multilingualism in the first quarter of the 21^st C. Professor Martin Nyoroge from Kenya, Dr Pascal Nadal from Mauritius and Professor Maria Coady from University of Florida, USA presented on the need for paradigmatic shift towards complex plurality of contemporary classrooms and gave specific examples from their own contexts to make a case for multilingual education. The conference proceedings will be published into a book volume by Vernom Press: Imagining a thriving multilingual world: Language, education and society in the 21^st Century (2018), which will be disseminated globally to encourage more transformation in orthodox classrooms that still hold on to the ancient belief that using more than one language creates mental confusion.

Overall, the conference allowed academics, teachers, and the communities to engage in dialogues that were specific enough to bring about deep reflections and uptake from the delegates. Yet it was also general enough to cater for different interest groups that included primary schools. Departing from routines of other conferences between academics, the Hub’s view is that connections between universities and communities is a key transformative process in knowledge dissemination in a country that has historically created an “Ivory Tower curtain” that shielded university academics from the communities they should serve. This conference was a prime example to illustrate that an imagined multilingual world is inclusive, transformative and community-based. In brief, this conference succeeded in having the delegates to tell the multilingual story of the future.

Prof Leketi Makalela

Tuesday, November 6, 2018

Is tech killing African languages?

Is tech killing indigenous African languages?

September 13, 2017, Wits University

Translanguaging: First school in the world adopts it as its official policy