South Africa’s top linguists are to wrestle with the practicalities of 11 official languages at a conference in Midrand this weekend. Marion Edmunds reports
FORMER Robben Islander Dr Neville Alexander has to unravel one of the tightest knots tied by the politicians of the post-apartheid order. At a crucial conference on Saturday, Alexander and the 40 members of his Language Plan Task Group (Langtag) will report on ways to raise all 11 official languages to equal standing.
The results of Langtag’s endeavours could pave the way for a national language plan.
The African National Congress hailed as a political breakthrough earlier this year the clause in the new constitution which makes all 11 official languages equal. However, it is no secret that — whatever the philosophy — in practice some are more “equal” than others. Afrikaans enjoys a greater currency than other languages in the public service and the countryside. English is fast dominating as the language of the workplace, commerce and decision-making, leaving indigenous languages in the dust. Even Cabinet has its meetings in English; certainly Pedi and Venda never get a word in.
What is to be done to raise the status of the other languages to meet constitutional requirements? How will the state communicate with the people in all 11 languages, as it has promised? How many South Africans understand President Nelson Mandela’s speeches these days?
More than 700 delegates will wrestle with these and related questions in Midrand tomorrow when Alexander and Langtag report back on their six months’ research and discussions since receiving their brief from the Arts and Culture Ministry.
The central and controversial question is whether South Africa should have a government-funded national language plan, and if so, what impact on public communication and expression it should have.
Alexander and his team have isolated the problems that stand in the way of developing indigenous languages to a level where they can be used as languages of commerce and power. He says the biggest challenge here is to get black people to bring their languages out of their homes and churches and into the workplace:
“The question is whether African languages are capable of service as instruments of modernisation in the technological and scientific fields and in education … We think that they should be. A lot of people think it is enough to speak their language at home only and that is an idea we must really knock on the head as far as I am concerned,” Alexander said this week.
In preparation for a concerted language awareness campaign to be launched at the conference, Alexander suggests practical solutions to aid the development of indigenous languages, especially in situations where vocabulary is lacking.
One is to draw up a glossary of technical terms which can be shared by all indigenous languages, to fill in the gaps where English comes to dominate at the workplace.
Another practical step is to group languages sharing features, and produce, for example, government documents in Xhosa, with a short Zulu glossary for those words which are different in the two languages.
Alexander, personally, supports the practice of harmonising indigenous languages into main streams, thereby reducing 11 to six: an Nguni cluster, a Sotho cluster, Venda, Tsonga, English and Afrikaans. But, Alexander knows that this raises problems for some mother-tongue speakers, especially those who feel their language could be marginalised.
“There is a very strong lobby emerging around so- called marginalised languages” — specifically Tshivenda, Xitsonga, isiNdebele and siSwati.
“Any attempt to regionalise those languages will find quite a bit of resistance … My personal view is that one will have to appeal to people to be reasonable.”
Pleas for reason will probably be made frequently during the next months of debate, because language decisions rouse passion, both political and personal, as well as questions of cultural identity. Further, politicians are quick to use language questions to mobilise political and ethnic support.
South Africa has the example of Afrikaans, which was built up by National Party governments and civic bodies for political reasons and then foisted on a multilingual nation, leading to enormous bitterness in all communities.
Reflecting on the past, Alexander is fairly confident that Afrikaners will eventually accept that their language is now only one of 11.
“We need to appeal to the Afrikaans leadership to see Afrikaans as one of the most powerful languages of a number in Africa rather than as a competitor against English, a world language … Once they accept that, they would have made the epistomological break with the Afrikaans past … I think the new generation is accepting this.”
It’s likely the conference will agree to a national language plan because the need for a uniform policy is great; a coherence in the ways languages are used in government, education and the public broadcaster will go some way towards helping all South Africans to understand what is going on in the often confusing new South Africa.
Should Langtag’s final proposals be accepted by the government, it is likely that the Pan African South African Language Board will oversee the implementation of that plan for the next few years. And while the task is daunting — given ethnic sensitivities towards language, and a shrinking government purse — Alexander is upbeat in his conference statements.
“The historical and constitutional context in which we are setting out to draft a national language plan is the most favourable for any nation in the second half of the 20th century. South Africa is in the midst of a rapid and deep-going transition … For a few more precious years, the country will resemble nothing so much as one vast social laboratory …”
Eight subcommittees will report to the Langtag conference tomorrow, each dealing with a different complexity or problem to be tackled. They will report on:
l Literacy
l Language as an economic resource
l Language in the public service
l Language in education
l Heritage languages and special language systems (such as sign language)
l The development of South African languages
l Equitable and widespread language services
l Language equity
Deadline for submissions for Langtag’s final report is July 7, more than a week after the conference. The report will go to Minister of Arts and Culture Ben Ngubane at the end of July.