Broken English: When Our Mother Tongues Take the Back Seat | Priscilla Takondwa Semphere

[steve sharra]

[Quite an achievement for a Malawian sophomore studying at a top US
university to get published on the Huffington Post. Apropos the
language-in-education policy debate. Steve]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/priscilla-takondwa-semphere/broken-english-mother-tongues_b_7698634.html

Rising sophomore at Smith College from Malawi passionate about storytelling.

Email

Broken English: When Our Mother Tongues Take the Back Seat

By Priscilla Takondwa Semphere

Posted: 07/01/2015 1:49 pm EDT Updated: 07/01/2015 1:59 pm EDT

Right before I came to America for university, my younger brother, a
stick of a teenager with a playful grin on his face, looked me in the
eye and told me with feigned conviction, "Priscilla, make sure you
come back with an American accent." I laughed it off and agreed,
jokingly, that for him, I would return with a more pronounced rolling
of my "R's." My brother is a pretty sensible boy, and when he made the
remark, I knew that an accent was the least of the things he wanted me
to return with (a new pair of sneakers was most likely higher on the
list).

As things would have it, the manner of my speech has been among the
most fascinating aspects of my identity since I arrived in January
2014. I have taken notice that although my accent is what it
is--clean-sounding English with its corners occasionally creased by my
mother tongue, Chichewa--it has become an identifier. In America, it
is the insignia at which eyebrows are raised and questions of my
nationality are surfaced. Each time this happens, I increasingly take
pride in the fact that my language has left its fingerprints on the
way that I enunciate. I have taken pride in the distinctness of my
speaking--in the fact that sometimes, R's and L's are mistaken for
one-another in my mind. However, this has not always been the case.

When I was in primary school, one of the biggest offenses anybody
could commit was speaking Chichewa, my mother tongue, on school
premises. Prefects, with their ears alert for the slightest mumble of
a word in vernacular and their chests puffed up with an air of
authority, eavesdropped conversations and policed unsuspecting
students. Once caught, perpetrators were left to the mercy of Mrs.
Mphamba, a stern woman with an unrelenting scowl on her face.

Punishment varied. Some days, a line of offenders knelt down outside
her classroom, arms elevated with pitifully apologetic looks on their
Chichewa-speaking faces. Other days, guilty pupils could be seen
hopping on one leg on the terrain behind her classroom, kicking up
clouds of dancing dust as they did. Most days, however, a long,
25-centimeter ruler met their buttocks, and their tear-streaked faces
shone to tell the story and serve as adamant warning to the rest of
the students as they walked out, sobs escaping their lips and hands
rubbing their throbbing behinds.

As I grow, I discover how deeply this history with my language has
affected the way I think. From an early age, I was conditioned to look
down on my mother tongue, and to deem it as "less than". I was taught
to laugh when I heard people speak "broken English". It was ingrained
in me to view one's ability to speak English and speak it impeccably
as synonymous with high intellect.

This mindset is one that I have not only noticed in myself as I seek
to navigate the world as a young Malawian and, indeed, as a young
African, and proudly embrace my identity--it is also one that I have
noticed in others. I have seen young people at home add a twang to the
way that they pronounce their words, change the spelling of their
native names, and mock those whose English has more obvious remnants
of their mother tongues than others, all in an effort to be more
consistent with Western manners of speech. I have seen children, with
an air of pride, declare that they cannot speak Chichewa. Like me,
they were conditioned to despise a part of who we are, and to be proud
to be dissociated with aspects of identity.

There is nothing wrong with sounding Western, but there is something
fundamentally problematic when it is born of disdain for one's own
linguistic discipline or tradition. I am learning to laud my identity
as a Malawian, and to take pride when my accent gives off that I am
from there. I am realizing the beauty of my existence, in the way that
my tongue enunciates English words, and in the swiftness of my own
language when I speak it. My existence, I have learned, is valid --
not because it mimics another, but because in itself, it matters and
contributes to the mosaic of diversity. I am learning to love my
language. To speak it with pride. I am learning to see value in my
culture and to know that it is quite frankly amazing to be African, a
shift in my mind that I believe matters for every African to go
through, given the history of our identities. My English is and
forever will be broken; how can't it be under the weight of a language
as aptly expressive as mine? And as for my brother, I look forward to
going home and saying a loud hello, with my English still heavily
doused in Chichewa.

Follow Priscilla Takondwa Semphere on Twitter:www.twitter.com/AllPriscilla


--
Blog: http://mlauzi.blogspot.com/
Twitter: @stevesharra
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevesharra
Global Voices: http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/author/steve-sharra/
TEDxTalk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-otnO33fMhQ

[Limbani Nsapato]

Very good piece of writing. Reflective, like "Decolonizing the Mind"

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Bwalo la Aphunzitsi" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to bwalo-la-aphunz...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to bwalo-la-...@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/bwalo-la-aphunzitsi.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>


--
Limbani Eliya Nsapato,
Lusaka, Zambia.
Mobile: +260 9 77 511 250
Email: lnsa...@gmail.com

[Elisabeth Ritchie]

A lovely piece of writing. Thanks for sharing Steve. Similar punishments would have been experienced by an earlier generation of Scots when speaking their native Gaelic in school.

Elisabeth

[steve sharra]

Just to make sure I understand you correctly, Mzee: are you saying that English has always been the language of instruction from first grade, in Zimbabwe? Most people agree that Zimbabwe has always had the best education system in Africa. But it never occured to me to find out what Zim's language-in-education policy has been. At least didn't register on my radar.

Steve

On Fri, Jul 3, 2015 at 9:08 AM, cuthbertkachale <cuthber...@gmail.com> wrote:

Best policy since time immemorial,  right to long before independence. 

This has been the policy in Zimbabwe right from the colonial era. 

It is sad to note that even a preschool or kindergarten child  in Zimbabwe speaks much better English than an average secondary school student in Malawi. 

On a comparative note,  Malawi have moved a notch forward while at about the same point in time,  Tanzanians have moved backwards. 

We live in a global village where global communication,  as opposed to village communication, matters. 

Well done,  Malawi. 

Mzee.

[Winston Nelson Mwale-Official Email]

Steve-i grew up in Zimbabwe, and the ‎language of instruction right from the first grade is indeed English!

And I can proudly say my mastery of the Queen's language is a result of the fact!

Winston

Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone.

From: steve sharra Sent: Friday, 3 July 2015 10:29 AM To: Nyasanet; civs...@sdnp.org.mw; bwalo-la-...@googlegroups.com Reply To: bwalo-la-...@googlegroups.com Subject: [BwalolaAphunzitsi] Re: Broken English: When Our Mother Tongues Take the Back Seat | Priscilla Takondwa Semphere

--

[Nevis Hulme]

I very much enjoyed reading the article by Ms Semphere. The undermining of the speakers of minority languages of a country or of the speakers of native languages deemed inferior happens the world over. The case of Gaelic, as mentioned by Elisabeth Ritchie, has led to very few in Scotland speaking that language and are sadly monolingual in English with little real understanding of their cultural heritage. In Malawi, the obsession with English is perpetuated by an elite who finds advantage in promoting it and the increasing belief that it is necessary to be part of a global village, to borrow a phrase from another writer, when the vast majority of interactions occurs within a country. Developing a knowledge of another language is a benefit for the individual and society but it should not be a replacement of the mother-tongue. Parents ceased speaking Gaelic to their children in the belief that it was an inferior language that would hold their children back. Is this how native languages of Africa are seen?

 

Of accents in English, at last there is a wider acceptance in Britain of what were dubbed ‘regional accents’, i.e. those other than the dominant Southeast of England one. To this day, though, the vehemence of some from the Southeast, especially, against a northern accent is a reflection of their lack of acceptance of diversity. It is now fascinating to hear, even in remoter parts of the British Isles, English spoken with a wide variety of foreign accents, the mother-tongue bringing a little extra to one’s understanding of one’s mother-tongue. Some accents are more difficult to make out but these can just as well be a Southern English one for someone brought up in Northern Scotland as an African or Indian one. We only need listen a little more carefully to begin to understand.

 

In short, any language, spoken in any accent, should be valued.

 

Excuse my musings!