[lg policy] French is out of fashion in Rwanda: English replaced French as the official language of instruction in schools in 2008

[Dave Sayers]

The following might be of interest on the topic of language shift in Rwanda:

Joseph Gafaranga
Medium request: Talking language shift into being
Language in Society (2010), 39:241-270

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?aid=7449104

Dave


--
Dr. Dave Sayers
Honorary Research Fellow
School of the Environment and Society
Swansea University
d.sayers at swansea.ac.uk
http://swansea.academia.edu/DaveSayers



On 19:59, Don Osborn wrote:
> A whole article about language in Rwanda and not a mention of Kinyarwanda?
>
>    
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: lgpolicy-list-bounces at groups.sas.upenn.edu [mailto:lgpolicy-list-
>> bounces at groups.sas.upenn.edu] On Behalf Of Harold Schiffman
>> Sent: Friday, April 23, 2010 4:46 PM
>> To: lp
>> Subject: [lg policy] French is out of fashion in Rwanda: English
>> replaced French as the official language of instruction in schools in
>> 2008
>>
>> French is out of fashion in Rwanda: English replaced French as the
>> official language of instruction in schools in 2008
>>
>> by Kaj Hasselriis on Thursday, April 22, 2010
>>
>> Reuters/ Getty
>>
>> When Governor General Michaëlle Jean visits Rwanda next week she might
>> have to bite her tongue about the country’s new language policy. After
>> a century of close ties to France and Belgium, the East African nation
>> is phasing out français and embracing English. “English is becoming
>> more and more dominant in the world,” says Arnaud Nkusi, anchor of
>> Rwanda’s state-owned TV news. “It’s all about business. You have to
>> move with the rest of the world.”
>>
>> Jean’s trip will mark the first state visit to Rwanda from a
>> Commonwealth country since it joined that 54-state organization late
>> last year. But cozying up to Britain and its former colonies is only
>> the latest chapter in Rwanda’s move to English. Many say it all
>> started with the Rwandan genocide of 1994, when members of the
>> country’s Hutu ethnic group killed up to 800,000 Tutsis and moderate
>> Hutus. The country blames France for helping arm the instigators, and
>> then not doing enough to stop the carnage.
>>
>> In the wake of the genocide, Rwanda’s main donor became the United
>> States. Meanwhile, thousands of exiles returned to their homeland from
>> Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda—neighbouring English-speaking countries
>> where many Rwandans picked up the language. Then, in 2006, a French
>> judge dropped a bombshell. He accused Rwandan President Paul Kagame, a
>> Tutsi, of helping start the genocide because of his alleged complicity
>> in the rocket attack of April 6, 1994, that killed Rwanda’s Hutu
>> president Juvenal Habyarimana—the spark for the massacre. Furious,
>> Kagame shut down the French Embassy, kicked out the ambassador,
>> ordered Radio France Internationale off the air in Rwanda, and closed
>> the local French cultural centre. Two years later, in 2008, Kagame
>> announced that English—which became one of Rwanda’s official languages
>> in 1994—would replace French as the official language of instruction
>> in the country’s schools. In the wake of that momentous step,
>> thousands of Rwandan schoolteachers were fired because they couldn’t
>> teach the new language.
>>
>> According to Nkusi, there has been very little public resistance to
>> the government’s pro-English campaign. Kagame has a firm grip on power
>> and Rwandans are not known as protesters. In fact, most citizens are
>> reluctant to give their opinions even in private. But during an
>> interview with a group of Rwandan teacher-trainers, some of them open
>> up. “French flows in my veins,” says Ladislas Nkundabanyanga. “My
>> father taught me French and my friends all speak French.” Nowadays,
>> though, he knows kindergarten students who don’t understand the word
>> “bonjour.” As a result, he’s convinced the French language in Rwanda
>> is doomed. Nkundabanyanga’s colleague, Beatrice Namango, agrees. The
>> new policy, she says, is “like telling me to keep quiet. It’s stopping
>> me from talking.”
>>
>> The teacher-trainers’ boss is a Canadian named Mark Thiessen, from
>> Williams Lake, B.C. He likens the slow demise of French in Rwanda to
>> the death of Aboriginal languages in Canada. “Slowly, French in Rwanda
>> will disappear,” Thiessen says. “It might take one or two generations,
>> but it will.”
>>
>> Nkusi says he’s partial to French, too, but he sees the language
>> change as an economic necessity. “French is the language of the
>> heart,” he says, “but English is the language of work.” And Rwandans
>> are working hard to show they’re competitive in an emerging African
>> market. Every building in the country looks like it just got a fresh
>> coat of paint, and the GDP is growing by an average of five per cent a
>> year. “The country’s wealth is not in the soil, it’s in the minds of
>> its citizens,” says Nkusi. “The leadership is smart enough to know
>> that and develop an information technology sector like India’s.”
>>
>> Nkusi also parrots a popular line of Kagame’s. “Rwanda isn’t becoming
>> unilingual,” he says, “it’s simply making room for new languages.”
>> Rwanda’s capital only has one private French school left, but a
>> Chinese school just opened up, too. Besides, Nkusi adds, Rwanda is now
>> a member of both the Commonwealth and la Francophonie, the
>> organization of French states—like Canada. Michaëlle Jean might like
>> to highlight that, too.
>>
>> http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/04/22/french-is-out-of-fashion-in-rwanda/
>>
>>
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