Cape Town | Tuesday
WHILE there had been a significant strengthening of English and a mild growth in the use of Xhosa, a mild to strong decline had been noted in the use of Afrikaans in the Western Cape provincial government.
This is one of the observations in an executive summary of the Western Cape Provincial Language Audit to gauge the performance of the provincial government in meeting its language needs and requirements among its staff, stakeholders and the general public.
The study, the first of its kind in the country, was undertaken by MarkData (Pty) Ltd and commissioned by the Western Cape Language Committee (WCLC).
The report said the strengthening of English pertained to it being perceived as a bridge-builder between the three official provincial languages.
”This is most marked in formal aspects of communication like written communication, and in communication between divisions and departments and tiers of government,” the report said.
Afrikaans tended to be strong in oral communication in the immediate working environment and in contact with the general public and business, as more than 50% percent of the staff was Afrikaans speaking.
The report said interviewees indicated that despite the strength of Afrikaans, the language had weakened and was still ”weakening rapidly” in the keynote areas of communication.
The audit followed the Western Cape provincial government’s acceptance of Afrikaans, English and Xhosa as the official languages of the province.
The aim of the legislation and policy is that the three languages should enjoy equality of use in its administration and among the staff, in all interaction with the general public and in its linkages and communication with stakeholders such as agencies, organisations and individual clients.
The study was conducted in the form of in-depth interviews with more than 50 senior managers, more than 1 000 randomly selected interviews with officials in different departments on different seniority levels, a focused survey of 862 members of the public throughout the province and focused interviews with 284 stakeholders.
Most Afrikaans speakers did not react negatively to the ”soft, steady erosion” of their language in public use because of their fluency in English.
However, 20% of Xhosa speakers in public and 25% of Xhosa speakers in the provincial government were frustrated by the marginalisation of their language and felt disadvantaged by the current dominance of the alternative languages.
The study found that among Afrikaans and English speakers the need seemed to be to understand Xhosa rather than to speak or to write it.
”Perhaps Xhosa, and to a lesser extent Afrikaans, are perceived to be languages that are good to understand but not so necessary to speak. This is unfortunate because it may help to perpetuate the enhancing of one language, namely English, as a dominant medium of communication,” the report said.
The effective discrimination against Xhosa, and to a lesser extent Afrikaans, was cushioned in that there was some clustering or concentration of home languages in the pattern of staff deployment and even in the patterns of use of service. This made it possible for home languages to be used in less formal communication.
The study reported that it was remarkable in this complex situation of multilingualism that very few people spontaneously mentioned language problems in their general dealings. – Sapa