Globalisation threatens world's indigenous languages - 32% of them African (fwd)

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Globalisation threatens world's indigenous languages - 32% of them
African

By Terry Leonard
http://www.capetimes.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=332&fArticleId=2403377

Maputo: Along a boulevard lined with flowering acacias, young people in
designer clothes and high-heels chatter on the sidewalk struggling to
be heard over the driving Latin rhythms spilling from a nightclub.

Maputo's vibrant nightlife lets people forget it is the capital of one
of the world's poorest countries. Here you can eat Italian, dance like
a Brazilian and flirt in Portuguese.

One thing that's in ever shorter supply and perhaps in even less demand:
Mozambique's own indigenous languages - the storehouse for the
accumulated knowledge of generations.

"Sons no longer speak the language of their fathers... our culture is
dying," laments Paulo Chihale, director of a project that seeks to
train Mozambican youths in traditional crafts.

While Mozambique has 23 native languages, the only official one is
Portuguese - a hand-me-down tongue from colonial times that at once
unifies a linguistically diverse country and undermines the African
traditions that help make it unique.

The United Nations estimates half of the world's estimated 6 000
languages will disappear in less than a century. Roughly a third of
those are spoken in Africa and about 200 already have less than 500
speakers.

A recent UN Conference on Trade and Development report on protecting
traditional knowledge argues that beyond a devastating impact on
culture, the death of a language wipes out centuries of know-how in
preserving ecosystems - leading to grave consequences for biodiversity.

Villagers in Indonesia's Kayan Mentarang national park, for example,
have for centuries practised a system of forest management called Tanah
Ulen or "Forbidden land".

On a rotating basis, elders declare parcels of the forest protected,
prohibiting hunting and gathering.

In Maputo, Chihale looks up from his cluttered desk at MozArte, a UN-
and government-funded project that seeks to teach youths to earn a
living through traditional crafts.

"Our culture has a rich oral tradition, oral history, stories told from
one generation to another. But it is an oral literature our kids will
never hear," said Chihale.

Already, 96% of the languages spoken on Earth are spoken by just 4% of
the population. Experts estimate half the people in the world now use
in their daily life one of the eight most widespread languages:
Chinese, English, Hindi, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Portuguese and
French.

Experts say 234 African languages have already disappeared and that 32%
of the endangered languages on Earth are African.

Mozambican linguist Rafael Shambela says that the pressures from
globalisation are often too great to resist. To conserve native
languages and culture, he argues, societies must ascribe to them an
inherent value.

On a small campus along a dirt road south of Maputo, Shambela has joined
a government effort to write textbooks and curriculums that will allow
public school students to learn in 16 of the country's 23 languages.

"A language is a culture," said Shambela, who works for Mozambique's
National Institute for the Development of Education. "It contains the
history of a people and all the knowledge they have passed down for
generations."

It took 12 years for Mozambicans to kick out Portuguese colonialists.
But at independence in 1975, they kept the language because it was the
only one known well enough by everyone to unify the country.

The trade-off: the rites and rhythms of traditional life have been
eroded. "From dating to mourning, the rules are becoming less clear,"
said Shambela.

Examples from other nations bode badly for Mozambique's efforts to
preserve its languages.

India has 25 official languages and South Africa 11. Despite government
conservation programmes, language in those countries is rapidly become
homogenised, said Meenal Shrivastava, a professor and expert on
globalisation at Wits University in Johannesburg. - Sapa-AP

Published on the web by Cape Times on February 9, 2005.
© Cape Times 2005. All rights reserved.