Has it ever occurred to you that the fact that we've got different complexions and communicate totally different languages is a testament to God’s love and appreciation of diversity? It is wonderful that there are an estimated 6000 languages spoken world wide, but what’s alarming is that forty% of these languages face the specter of extinction unless every thing is finished to protect and preserve them.
For that matter, UNESCO ought to at all times be lauded and applauded for coming up with the Worldwide Mom Language Day which has been observed annually since 2000 to promote multilingualism and shield all mother languages worldwide.
One East African language?
Here in Uganda, it’s a shame that some faculties still punish college students who're caught speaking their mom tongues. It's because such faculties insist on English language being the language of expression. What they neglect is that although English is acknowledged because the official national language, it may possibly by no means take the place of the mom tongue particularly in a multi-ethnic nation the place over forty (40) indigenous languages are spoken.
At a time like this when the trumpet of the East African Federation is sounding, it is higher to ditch English and make Luganda and Swahili the national and East African official languages respectively for the reason that two languages are fashionable and would push for the reason for the East Africa integration as well as give us regional id.
Need for a national language policy
Otherwise a language coverage needs to be passed by the national assembly whereby local languages develop into the medium of instruction as was the case back then, at the least up to upper major colleges. For creative artists, the higher language to put in writing in and usually categorical themselves in is their mom tongue. That's the reason musicians like Paulo Kafeero, Elly Wamala and the Afrigo Band are legendary because of the mastery of their first language—Luganda by which they sung about things that their listeners may relate to.
In response to UNESCO, "Languages are the most highly effective instruments of preserving and creating our tangible and intangible heritage. All strikes to advertise the dissemination of mom tongues will serve not only to encourage linguistic diversity and multilingual education but in addition to develop fuller consciousness of linguistic and cultural traditions throughout the world and to encourage solidarity based mostly on understanding, tolerance and dialogue."
Let us therefore continue to promote our mom tongues by writing in them, talking them, and translating our popular books into local languages. Thus we need more African legal language translators, African Monetary translations, African conference interpreters and translation companies from Somalia to Ghana translation services to maintain the dream of African languages alive.
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