The Intricacies of Language – why we shouldn’t speak foreign languages at home with our children

This is the first part of a two-part article on the educated Ghanaian’s use of English at home with their children, instead of their mother tongue. This first part takes a very cursory look at the significance of language, while the second looks at why it is important to develop our local mother tongues and speak them at home with our children, instead of turning English into the children’s mother-tongue or first language.



LANGUAGE IS A MUSEUM

Language is more than just a means by which humans communicate with each other; it is really a repository of human experiences – a veritable walking museum of culture and history and of all aspects of human existence. The language of a people records their religion or beliefs, an example of which is how the Romans used to swear by Jupiter, head of all the gods, hence the expression “by Jove.”

Language records the food a people eat: The Asante expression “wo sum bordeε a, na w’asum kwadu” literally translates as when you prop up the plantain, (so that head of plantain it has borne will mature, rather than drop down and break off), you need to prop up the banana also. Since fufu, (made from plantain and cassava and pounded together) is the main food of the Asantes and banana can be used to substitute for plantain, the expression means that one has to have a “Plan B” ready so that he is not found wanting when his main source/Plan A runs out. The English love to drink tea, thus something being “just one’s cup of tea” means that it is something that person desires or prefers. Language can describe how the food is prepared or eaten. The nursery rhyme, “peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old” is from an era when the left-over soup for the day’s meals would not be thrown away and the ingredients for the day’s soup would be thrown into the pot of day old soup the next day and cooked. This would go on every day until all the soup in the pot was eaten. Language can also describe what their food looks like, such as to describe two people as being “as alike as peas.”

The language of a people can tell you about an important historical event in the lives of the community or tribe. For example, in June 1815, the English defeated Napoleon Bonaparte at the battle of Waterloo. Napoleon had initially expected this battle to be an easy one, but the arrival of the Prussian forces to reinforce the Anglo-Saxon army, led by the Duke of Wellington led to his defeat. Hence the expression, “to meet your Waterloo” which means to come to a final disaster, that every strong man has his day of defeat.

In French, the expression “saoul comme un Polonais,” which means as drunk as a polish man takes its roots from the November 1808 defeat of Somo-Sierra in Spain, in which a small band of Polish soldiers (150 men) defeated this city which was guarded by 8000 with 20 cannons, thus increasing Napoleon Bonaparte’s empire. The French generals, jealous of the Polish unit’s contribution to their victory sought to belittle them by telling Napoleon that the Polish soldiers were drunk, Napoleon retorted that in the future, the French soldiers, then , had better learn to be drunk like the Polish, hence the introduction of that originally pejorative expression, into the French language.

The Ghanaian expression that someone “does not know what is happening in Dodowa Forest) to mean that the person does not know what is happening behind-the scenes. This is a record of the battle of Dodowa, also known as the Battle of Katamanso, in which the Ga-Dangmes and their Akyem and British allies defeated the Asante army in a battle fought in the Dodowa Forest, which is home to the Ga-Dangmes, but foreign soil to the Asantes. For the first time, the British used Congreve rockets, but the bullets the Shai people shot into the trees made such a commotion that the Asante army, already severely decimated by the rockets was frightened and fled back to Kumasi.

Instances of where language can record cultural practices abound. One of such is the expression to not ‘throw away the baby with the bathwater,” an admonition not to throw away something good because it presents difficulties or obstacles came from the practice in England where the people bathed only once in a year, at the beginning of spring. The whole village would bath in the communal baths, starting with the old men and other men, then the women, the children and then babies and young children. Often, the water would be so dirty by the time it got to the turn of the babies that if one did not hold on to the baby and let it slip into the bath, there was a huge possibility that the baby would drown because it would be almost impossible to see it below the surface of the dirty water. Yuck!

Language can record prejudices or indicate which peoples were neighbours and how they regarded each other. For example, when someone slips out of an event without saying goodbye to the host, or takes a leave of absence without permission, the English call it to “take a French leave”, while the French call it to “take an English leave!” Not only does this show that these two groups of people were in contact with each other, but it also indicates a mutual disdain for each other. Incidentally, the Spanish also call it “taking a French leave,” while the Italians call it “taking an English leave.”

Language can indicate the location of a people or their main occupation: If one uses the Ga expression “Korle nya nshona” to refer to another, it means literally that the Korle(Lagoon) is flowing into the sea, but really means that that person speaks Ga very fluently. First of all, the Korle Lagoon is found only in Accra, in the Greater Accra region. This idiom, thus shows that the people who speak this language live around the Korle Lagoon and the sea. If they live near the sea, then they must be sea-faring folk and thus fishing would be their main economic activity.

When you take all these things into consideration, it really is clear that a language is way more than just a means of communicating with others. I shall take a look at the reasons why I think Ghanaians shouldn’t speak English at home with their children in my next post.


Endnotes
Retrieved on 04/04/12 from http://www.napoleon.org/en/fun_stuff/dico/archives.asp
Retrieved on 04/04/12 from http://lespolonais.forumpro.fr/t2022-saoul-comme-un-polonais-retablissons-la-verite
Retrieved on 04/04/12 from http://www.onwar.com/aced/data/alpha/asante1824.htm