[lg policy] Liberia: Let’s Use Kolokwa As National Language

Mon Mar 27 15:35:38 UTC 2017

 Liberia: Let’s Use Kolokwa As National Language

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Every real nation has a national language. Such a language gives citizens a
sense of identity and cohesion.

Like a thread woven back and forth in different directions, it ties the
nation tightly together, giving it strength.

Liberia stands naked before the world as a would-be nation without a
national language. It lacks a clear and thoughtful language policy.

This gives the country a brittle fragility that was made worse by decades
of war. Like a street-corner drunk, the country is left staggering between
three poles: First, there are a multitude of indigenous languages, none of
which is spoken by 50 percent or more of Liberians.

Second, there is standard English, which is touted as the official language
but used effectively by very few.

Third, there is Kolokwa or Liberian English, a lingua franca that is the
most widely spoken. It employs words derived from many languages, including
English, but using a non-English grammar.

Despite Kolokwa's national scope, it has never received the serious
consideration it deserves from policy makers or scholars. Why? Liberian
English violates some of their pursuit of "purity," it threatens their
power, and it rankles their emotions.

Some Liberian intellectuals reject Kolokwa precisely because it is a pidgin
or creole language, born out of the melding of many into one.

These ethnic fundamentalists feel overwhelmed by the inexorable expansion
of this "bastard" tongue.

They sit pining for a linguistic purity that never existed, while offering
no solution to the nation's current language conundrum.

Meanwhile, nationalists in other societies long ago embraced local lingua
francas as national tongues, including Swahili in East Africa, patois in
Jamaica and Krio in neighboring "Salone."

The first Liberian political party that tackles this issue in its platform
is likely to win an outpouring of support from Kolokwa speakers.

Although rarely stated in public, a more visceral reason why many educated
Liberians reject Liberian English stems from its association with urban
slum dwellers.

For the over one million poor people pushed into Monrovia by the war,
Kolokwa functions as a "mother tongue," or their principal, if not only,
medium of regular communication.

This is in contrast to rural villagers, who can retreat into an ethnic
language when not in the marketplace, and educated Liberians, who use
Standard English at home.

Acknowledging the close association between one's primary language and
class status, some uneducated slum dwellers now refer to themselves as
"Kolokwadians."

Viewed objectively, Kolokwa is the one true national language. It is spoken
in all large towns across the country, so it is national in scope.

It is national also given its spicy blending of terms from various other
languages.

More important still, it is the only medium through which people of various
regions and classes are able to communicate with each other.

The Liberian government's treatment of Kolokwa today is like a well-to-do
parent who refuses to legitimize a child born out of wedlock. Neither the
child's existence nor its strong resemblance to the father can be erased
simply by withholding legal recognition.

Withholding recognition from Kolokwa does nothing to strengthen the
official status of Standard English. Instead, it leads Liberians to treat
Standard English and Kolokwa as the same language or as points along a
continuum, when the two are distinct languages.

In the absence of a language policy, what prevails in Liberia is a state of
linguistic anarchy: On the one hand, Kolokwa-speakers are hired to teach
Standard English in schools. On the other hand, literacy skills are
unavailable in Liberian English, the majority language.

A sensible language policy would enshrine Liberian English as the national
language. Along with such recognition, resources need to be allocated for
studying the language, codifying it, and developing a standard way of
writing it.

This should be followed by a literacy campaign aimed at teaching adult
speakers how to write it. Kolokwa could be elevated without in anyway
demeaning Standard English. English could retain its status as the official
language for classroom instruction, as well as government record-keeping
and international articulation.

Teaching adults how to write a language they speak is cheaper, faster and
more efficient than trying to teach them to write a language they don't
speak, like Standard English.

Having the grammar and vocabulary of Kolokwa codified will also make it
infinitely easier to teach Standard English.

Classroom language teachers would be able to lead students systematically
from their known language (Kolokwa) to the unknown one (Standard English).

That can be achieved by highlighting differences between Kolokwa and
Standard English, thus, making learning easier and clearer. The payoffs
would be many and powerful. Literate adults will be able to record their
financial transactions and creative ideas.

They also will immediately gain the ability to communicate with relatives,
friends and business contacts across the country. This would release
tremendous human synergies that currently remain dormant, pent-up and
untapped. In addition, being able to write transforms people's lives in
ways that are powerful yet hard to measure.

For example, adults who are literate in Kolokwa will be less inclined to
dismiss "book people" and education as useless.

By experiencing the power of literacy themselves, they will gain a deeper
respect for literacy in standard English and the power it holds to unlock
for their children even more doors beyond the boundaries of Liberia. If
Liberia continues without a language policy, it will be because wise and
prudent people have chosen to do nothing. Instead of decrying the failure
of politicians to solve national problems, it is past time for creative
thinkers to promote sensible policies without running for office.

Together, let us reclaim Liberia for our children and their children's
children. Among those empowered with Kolokwa literacy skills are Liberia's
many equivalents of Amos Tutuola (Nigerian pidgin novelist) or Bob Marley
(Jamaican patois songwriter).
*C. Patrick Burrowes, Ph. D.* is the author of Between the Kola Forest and
the Salty Sea: A History of the Liberian People Before 1800.

http://www.frontpageafricaonline.com/index.php/op-ed/3718-liberia-let-s-use-kolokwa-as-national-language

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