This seems to be a perfect title for my first article after taking a break from my blog. It is something to do with me personally, something that I associate myself with. This is going to be the beginning of many articles to come that will in a way describe me as Loreen and a Malawian. The upcoming articles will be more to do with that. I will be portraying myself and Malawi to the world from my own perspective.
…the trigger…
Depending on circumstances, every summer I attempt to travel to Malawi together with my son. It is very important to both me and my husband for our little one to keep touch with my family – his Malawian (African) roots. Each time the summer holiday seasons approaches, my son gets excited and throws in more and more Chichewa words – my maternal (native) language - in his vocabulary. It is his way of demonstrating to me how much he is looking forward to visit the family back in Malawi and interact with them without having language as a barrier.
This other day, he was being naughty just like any other 10 year old would do and I reproached him in Chichewa “sindikupatsa” meaning I will not give you. To my amazement he responded in Chichewa too “undipatsa iweyo” meaning you will give me (of course he was not supposed to put the iweyo at the end). However, the fact that he responded in Chichewa melted my heart with joy. It made me realise how important Chichewa is to him as it is to me. It’s just part of us.
When I mentioned it to my brother he was happy and surprised because nowadays most Malawian young couples who are educated (mainly graduates with good jobs) do not speak the local language with their children. English has become the language of the day at home in these kind of families. As a result, we are ending up with more and more Malawian children who have been raised in Malawi and both their parents are Malawian not knowing a single word in any of the local languages. And yet my son who spends on average 3 weeks per year in Malawi knows more words in Chichewa than some of the children like in the scenario above and thus my brother’s astonishment.
It might sound impossible but if these children are going to private schools where they are only allowed to speak English and when they get home everyone speaks to them in English; there is little room for them to learn any local language. I am not here to judge how we should raise our children. Believe me as a parent myself I understand quite well the frustration when someone always shares advice on how my children specifically should be raised for them to be good kids. But I am afraid that if this new trend is left unchecked, it might lead to the loss of our local languages.
…loss of local language…
According to Haynes (2010) language loss can occur on two levels; where the entire language is not spoken at all and on a personal or familial level (like the case above). With a total adult literacy rate at 61.3% in the period 2008 – 2012 (UNICEF), it will take time for the local languages to be completely lost as it is those who are highly educated that have knowledge and use English often.
I believe that Malawi is still on the right track to reverse the loss of local languages. We have not yet reached the level of Nyanja – one of the local languages in Zambia. I remember almost eleven years ago when I used to live in Lusaka, I did not have a problem to communicate in Nyanja because it is similar to Chichewa and almost in each and every sentence there is an English word literally or converted in a way to Nyanja while keeping it’s English touch. And this is exactly what is currently happening in Malawi. We might not be putting English words in each and every sentence but we will all agree that in the urban areas, amongst educated people English words are thrown here and there during normal conversations. I am embarrassed to admit that I myself do that too, especially when texting. Somehow it is easier for me to write in English than in Chichewa. And that is a sign of loss of local language because we are more and more feeling comfortable to express ourselves in English than in our local languages. What a shame….
…language is part of a person’s identity…
Whether we like it or not, language is part of our identity. It helps in identifying who we are. It is true that as human beings we are all equal. Even with that realisation, people always attempt to find ways of understanding who they are. We sometimes identify ourselves by our place of origin, our profession, our taste in music, food or wine, etc. Language is just part of that identity search. Therefore losing our local language is the same us losing part of our identity.
I have been fortunate enough to live in various countries in Europe and learn some of their languages. This experience has helped me to appreciate more the power of language as an identity. Language helps you understand better the people you are communicating with. They have been words or phrases in Spanish or Serbian that I could not translate to English to have the same impact as in the original language they have been said. Some of you might have heard the saying that, you can’t get it because you are not from here. We might get the words, but we might not get the meaning because it is not just a word but it is also part of the identity/culture.
I consider Malawians as very polite people who will rarely swear at you. The worst thing that a Malawian can say to you is that you are stupid “wopusa iwe eti”. If I ever say something like that to anyone, it means that am very angry. On the other hand in Serbia they swear a lot, am now used to their swearing but when I first came here I was shocked and they were shocked too that I could not swear. Most swearing words in Malawi are of English origin for example: “fotseki” (for godsake), “shupiti” (stupid), etc.
We might not swear but we do say thank you “zikomo” a lot, maybe more than necessary, at least that’s what my little boy says. For everything we say thank you. To us zikomo is not only thank you as in its literal translation but depending on the situation and conversation it might imply agreement, satisfaction, end of conversation, a knock, etc like you have ciao in Italian which is used almost worldwide as both a hello and good bye. So to others, it might seem as if am saying thank you too much because they do not understand my language. I might be speaking English, but my first language is Chichewa.
All this demonstrates how languages are indeed part of our identity.
…way forward…
Unlike a few African languages like Swahili which are considered on a global scale as of interest to foreigners who would like to know more about Africa or do business in Africa, Chichewa and the rest of the Malawian local languages do not feature on that list. Most probably it is the geographical scale that Swahili covers that make it of interest to Westerners as I think that it might be the only African language spoken on a wider area in Africa – the whole of Eastern Africa speaks Swahili. Nevertheless, this should not force us to adopt English. We can continue to use English as an official language but we should try to use more of local languages in our vocabulary when we are not doing business. Let us not suppress our language, instead let us embrace it. Let us take a leaf from the Catalans who insists on using their language though it is spoken by just a few people in the world. I spent a couple of years in Barcelona and was surprised to see that Catalan was spoken more than Spanish.
…conclusion…
In my world, there is no language that is superior. Economically or socially, some languages might carry more weight than others but as human beings, on a moral scale, all languages are equal. I am not going to be ashamed for speaking Chichewa, a language that is spoken by a minority in this world. And I will not deny my children their right to know my birth language. Chichewa is part of me….
…let’s keep our local languages alive…
Zikomo