What Can Be Done to Save This Language And Culture (fwd)

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What Can Be Done to Save This Language And Culture

The Nation  (Nairobi)
NEWS October 17, 2004
Posted to the web October 18, 2004
http://allafrica.com/stories/200410180333.html

By Gakuu Mathenge
Nairobi

The Kenya Government, if ever it looks at the plight facing the few
surviving Yaaku speakers in Mukogodo Forest of Laikipia, can borrow a
leaf from what South Africa did with the death of apartheid and
emergence of black majority rule. Khomani speakers are part of the San
ethnic group, who are indigenous to South Africa.

At one time spread over almost the whole of South Africa, in 1930 the
Khomani moved to the Central and Northern Kalahari Desert and adjacent
districts. However, in 1973, the last San communities were evicted from
the Kalahari Gemsbok Park, with their native tongue, Khomani, being
declared officially extinct.

In 1994, with the end of apartheid, and the installation of nationalist
Nelson Mandela as the first democratically elected President of what
came to be known as the Rainbow Nation, a new law was enacted in South
Africa to allow people to reclaim land they had lost on the basis of
race since 1913.

With the help of the South African San Institute the Khomani community
put in a claim against the National Park.

In 1999, the government awarded them 40,000 hectares of land outside the
park and another 25,000 hectares inside the park. At the end of the
1990s, the first known surviving Khomani speaker was identified. Since
then research has found around 20 additional speakers.

Approximately 1,500 adults are spread over an area of more than 1,000
square kilometres in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa. Most
Khomani nowadays speak fluently Khoekhoegowap (Nama) and or Afrikaans
as their primary language.

The use of the languages differs according to the context: Khomani is
used with other Khomani speakers, Nama with friends and children,
Afrikaans with adults and outsiders, sometimes with children, and for
church. Literacy is in Afrikaans. The San also live in Botswana and
Namibia. Unesco's Red Book on Extinct and Endangered Languages defines
dead languages as follows:

If there are only a few speakers but practically no children among them.
If it is possibly extinct but there is no reliable information of
remaining speakers. Nearly extinct, with some children speakers at
least in some parts of their range but decreasingly so.

Potentially endangered languages, with a large number of children
speakers but has no official or prestigious status. With less than a
dozen known speakers, all them aged. Yaaku is more than endangered.
Languages become extinct when native speakers, usually minority groups,
adopt languages spoken by the majority, either for survival or other
reasons.

In 1983, researchers put the number of Yaaku speakers at 50, in a
population of about 250. A recently formed self-help group, the Yaaku
Group, with offices in Dol Dol township, helps the forest dwellers
refine and market their honey on a commercial basis. It estimates their
number at 700 although there has been no official census.

Another endangered group is the Baka (pygmies) in Gabon, who live in the
forest in the area bordering Cameroun to the north. They are part of
the large group of Baka found in Southwest Cameroun and Northeast of
Congo Brazzaville. They migrated to Gabon in recent history.

The language of the Baka is Ubangian-based in contrast to other forest
people groups in Gabon the languages of which are Bantu-based.