I thought that as we close off yet another important month in the South African calendar, I should focus on the importance of preserving our cultures and languages. I was watching Morning Live very recently where they were talking about how important it is to cherish our cultures and most importantly, our languages. This is because it is believed that if we do not do so, in the next generation our languages will die a natural death. A sad reality!
In this column, I would like to focus more on my mother tongue, isiXhosa. I am inspired by different cultures that really do not compromise when it comes to their languages in particular. In fact, in these cultures they are protective, proud and jealous of their origins. I would like to single out a few that stood out for me: In China, their official dialect is Mandarin and then it’s the French people, in our country it is the Zulus and Afrikaners who just don’t compromise when it comes to their cultures or languages.
My birth language has always been important to me even in the way I raised my daughter. Even though I went to a previously Model C school during my high school years – I still kept my language intact. When my daughter was two years of age, she went to a Christian Nursery where the medium of instruction was English. I could tell that she really enjoyed learning that language that she was starting to speak it exclusively. Even though she could hear and understand me when I speak to her in Xhosa – she still answered in English. This didn’t sit well with me because as much as I wanted her to be fluent in English, I also wanted her to keep on being proud of her culture and language.
So, one day I told her that in no uncertain terms will she speak English at home. I felt like she had more than enough hours to speak English at Pre-School during the day. She was three going for four years and she knew that when she got home she had to strictly speak Xhosa. I wanted her to be fluent in English because it’s the language of instruction in most schools and the widely used business language across the globe. However, I drilled to her just how important her mother tongue was too. When my mom used to visit us in Jhb when I still worked there – we would do the ‘Lord’s Prayer’ together in Xhosa before going to bed. It would either be my mom or me leading in the prayer. One day, after several years my mom asked my daughter to lead us in the Lord’s Pray aka ‘Bawo Wethu Osemazulwini’ prayer.
She did it from beginning to end in Xhosa and as a parent, that was the proudest moment of my life. Being strict and forcing my daughter to learn her language led to her being able to do the most important thing – having the ability to pray in her own language. In one of my jobs in Jhb, I had a colleague whose parents were originally from Zimbabwe, but she was born and raised in South Africa. I was amazed by the fact that at about 25 years of age, she could only converse with us in English and had not learnt even one of the SA languages in all the time that she had been here. One day, she explained to me that at her house they strictly spoke Swahili. This is because her grandmother back in Zim spoke Swahili. She said to me that it was important for her to be able to converse with her grandmother in her mother tongue especially when they were visiting there.
She also said something profound: she said that she felt like if she didn’t know how to speak with her grandmother in Swahili, then she would have missed out on a lot of blessings from her. This is exactly another reason why it was important for my daughter to learn Xhosa as well. In my family, not everyone is educated so it was important for my daughter, especially when we have traditional events aka “Imicimbi” to be able to converse with everyone in the family. This was especially important when it comes to those who are older than us – so that she didn’t miss out on the blessings and the wisdom that they can share with her. With this, I would like to implore all of us to continue being proud of our languages and cultures because other people from other cultures are, and this is paying off in dividends.