THE PROBLEM OF LANGUAGE IN AFRICA By Muammar Al Qadhafi (01.02.2005) I would like the intellectuals to solve the problem of language in Africa now, which is a serious, difficult and basic problem. We use two languages; an official language and popular language. The official language is that of colonialism; English, French and Portuguese, and the popular language is the unofficial language we speak, which comprises all the African dialects that amount to 800 to 1000 dialects. The official language we speak is written and has an alphabet, while the authentic, popular African language is not written. One of the dilemmas we are facing is that the popular African language, the language of the ancestors, is not written and lacks an alphabet. This is a problem that we have to solve, but not by using the Latin alphabet and incorporating it into the African language, for it will corrupt it, and must be ruled out as of now. All the non-Latin languages which have used the Latin alphabet have corrupted both it and the language, as the language was no longer capable and could not conform to that alphabet as we have seen in the Turkish language and some of the states that adopted the Latin alphabet, such as Russia and other countries. However, the Chinese, Japanese and Arabic characters fully conform to the meaning of the language. If we were to write Arabic using the Latin alphabet, the meaning would be utterly lost, which is why we must rule out the Latin alphabet completely. However, we must think of our mother-tongue, which is the responsibility of African intellectuals at home and abroad, in the Diaspora and in the motherland. On the one hand, how do we make African languages written languages, and how do we unite them on the other hand? We cannot speak eight hundred or a thousand languages? How can we teach them to our children? I believe that you should solve this problem by choosing three or four dominant languages to be taught in all African schools, and be mandatory, even for states themselves. This is what Africans want, and, in this way, no ruler or government can shirk this decision. Language is important, because we can only relate to our African religions, culture, heritage, arts, music and folklore through the languages of the ancestors. If we lose these languages, we lose our link with our past, our history and our roots. I hope you will be able to solve this dilemma. Naturally, there are proposals from some leaders who advocate the adoption of Swahili, Arabic, Hausa and Amharic, i.e. three or four languages, and making them mandatory in Africa, while continuing to teach the spoken languages, so that they can be spoken in the family and on the popular level. It is imperative that this dilemma be solved, and I hope that you will accord it your full attention, because otherwise we will lose our past and be suspended in the air without roots.
Posted on: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 06:25:03 +0000