The uniqueness of mother tongue as a marker of identity

Today, 21st February 2023 is International Mother Language Day. A day observed to promote awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity and to promote multilingualism (the ability to use several languages esp. with equal fluency). It is a broader initiative by the UN to promote the preservation and protection of all languages used by people of the world.

This day was born because a group of people in Bangladesh chose to fight to save their mother tongue from being endangered, moribund, and consequently becoming extinct. To sacrifice one’s life to save one’s mother tongue was a never-before-seen kind of event in history, hence UNESCO resolved that 21st February be proclaimed International Mother Language Day throughout the world to commemorate the martyrs who sacrificed their lives on this day in 1952.

Those martyrs, linguists, anthropologists, and those for whom a language is ancestral appreciate that languages are canisters of a garden variety of sound systems, words, and rules for stringing words together. Not only are languages vehicles for expressing our cultural identity but also repositories of the histories (and source of their future development) of people, their naming system, folklore, and myths. When a language dies, a wealth of culture, art, and knowledge disappears with it.

Culture as defined by the English anthropologist, Sir Edward Burnett Tylor, covers a very wide area of human life and behavior, and language is manifestly a part, probably the most important part, of it.

See it this way: if you should lose your language, your favorite folkloric and historical heroes and heroines—Yaa Asantewaa, Kweku Ananse, Tohazie, Asebu Amanfi, Togbe Agorkoli, and Ofarnyi Kweigya would be lost forever.

Can we afford to lose the “ludic” (playful) function of language—encountered in such phenomena as puns and riddles—and the range of functions seen in imaginative or symbolic contexts, such as poetry, drama, and religious expression? How about individuals such as orators, storytellers, preachers, griots, scribes, belletrists, and so forth whose skillful use of language enraptures their audiences and thus are sources of entertainment?

The remark made by Efua Sutherland, “exterminate Ananse and society will be ruined” is a profound one. If just by the death of Ananse society will be utterly annihilated, how much more the language in which he dwells?

A sure way of safeguarding a language is to teach it to infants and children to ensure its perpetuity. Mother tongue or native language is the language spoken by a child’s parents or by those with whom they are brought up from infancy. It is held that children learn the language of those who bring them up from infancy.

In most cases, these are the biological parents, especially the mother. Adopted infants, whatever the language of their actual parents, acquire the language of the adoptive parents. The ease of creativity in the use of the mother tongue makes it possible for producing sentences to suit the requirements of every situation.

In other words, with one’s mother tongue, one can skillfully manipulate the language better than any other second language.

Every language is unique, and this uniqueness gives people their identity. A classic example is that the Tuvans of Siberia essentially capture their idea of the world differently and in intriguing ways. They call snakes ‘ground fish’ suggesting that snakes are similar to fish just that they do not live in water.

To the Tuvans, a 14-year-old person is not described as 14 years old, as in English, but as fifteen. This expression, while may strike English speakers as strange, turns a number into a verb to refer to the next age the person will be.

The Metaphor of Shibboleth further offers insights into the identity that language offers. Since Biblical times, language tests have been used to ascertain the identity of people. The earliest known record of a language test is perhaps what is recorded in chapter 12 of the Book of Judges in which language was used to determine the background of the people who were asked to pronounce it.

In ancient Hebrew dialects, some groups pronounced shibboleth with an sh/ʃ/ sound, but speakers of related dialects pronounced it as s/s/. The test has been theorized as Shibboleth Test in recent times by (socio) linguists. Metaphorically, a shibboleth is akin to a linguistic password: a manner of speaking that is used by one set of people to identify another person as a member, or a non-member, of a group.

By replacing one’s language with another, one loses their identity. No matter how impeccably one speaks this language, one cannot attain the status of a native speaker. The corollary then is that you lose yours and you cannot either acquire the other language, with its culture, better.

You acquire a new status— “languageless”. This makes you look foreign in your own land and strange in a foreign land. If we replace our mother tongues with the English language—a vestige and residue left in the wake of colonialism—we risk killing ours and perpetuating English on a foreign land albeit superficially. No matter how near-native we speak, England will not recognize us as natives.

We enjoy the guests of Kweku Ananse better than the adventures of Robin Hood—even though both share similar cunning qualities—because we can relate with him. We are familiar with the cultural milieu in which Ananse lives and devices his artful stratagems. In fact, he lives with us while Robin Hood dwells far away in the Forests of Nottingham.

But do I mean we should not learn the English language? No! First things first. Teach your children your tongue and they will use this as the basis for learning other languages including English since advocates of bilingual education even argue that it speeds learning in all subjects.

Even without English, almost every Ghanaian is at least bilingual—someone who is able to speak two languages—because most Ghanaian children grow up in multilingual settings, suggesting that bilingualism is actually a more common human condition than monolingualism—the ability to use only one language.

Certainly, children who acquire two languages do so at the same rate as children who acquire one language. There seems to be no theoretical limit to the number of languages a young child is capable of acquiring. This is why multilingualism is favored over monolingualism.

As a believer of bilingualism/multilingualism, methinks the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1–9) offers an explanation for linguistic diversity. It is therefore not wrong for people to become bilingual/multilingual. Indeed, there are known historical figures who were multilingual—Jesus Christ and Mahatma Gandhi.

Being bilingual is a mark of solidarity, and that explains why they related well with people of varied linguistic persuasions in their time. One way of celebrating our linguistic diversity is through marriage. Former President Mahama’s marriage to Madam Lordina and President Akufo-Addo’s marriage to Madam Rebecca are instances that are apropos to this discussion.

Intertribal marriages have made children and couples bilingual. It is even more aesthetic to discover that when a Brong man marries a Nzema woman they produce children who are Bronze!

The first constitution of Ghana (1957) accepted English as a de facto official language when stipulating that members of parliament had to be proficient in spoken and written English (article 24). In the latest constitution (1992) one notices a move away from this implicit endorsement of English to a mere acceptance of its expediency.

English is no longer mentioned, and indigenous languages, reference to which was conspicuously absent in the 1957 constitution, are now given prominence: Article 39, for example, states that “The State shall foster the development of Ghanaian languages and pride in Ghanaian culture”.

This reflects the general feeling among Ghanaians that English is a borrowed, foreign language and a residue of colonialism. Because of this, there has been an ongoing debate on the question of the official language since the earliest days of independence.

Akan is the most popular but by no means an undisputed alternative to English, which has the advantage of ethnic neutrality and being an important link to the international community.

However, as it stands, a deliberate attempt to make an indigenous language an official one will come with its own attendant problems. It may strangle others and as well pose a national security problem. Quite frankly, an idea of a national language is inimical to national cohesion.

There is a lot we can learn from what happened in Pakistan when Urdu was declared to be the sole national language of Pakistan while Bengali or Bengal was relegated to the background. This policy was greeted with a number of protests which resulted in the deaths of people, with hundreds of others injured.

In my candid opinion, we should let sleeping dogs lie. Originally, Ephraim Amu’s ‘Yen ara disease ni’—the unofficial national anthem of Ghana—was composed in Ewe. However, translation into Akan has obliterated any shred of memory associated with it.

For me, I believe that the original tongue was the best medium to have conveyed the emotion, lyric, and spirit of the anthem since there is something that is lost in translation, however negligible. What is more, the seeming superiority the Twi enjoys simply makes us forget that the anthem’s original tongue was Ewe.

At the moment, Pepesa, a language spoken by the people of Dompim, Simpa, Tebrebe, and their environs in the Tarkwa Municipality, is endangered. The so-called educated natives of the language and the younger generation feel reluctant to speak it under the flimsy pretext that one looks countrified and unsophisticated when the language is spoken.

As a student of sociolinguistics, I cannot be an indifferent spectator to the death of such a language because “resurrecting” a language is an arduous task. The Hebrew language is the only language that has been brought back to life when there was no known speaker. Again, Maori—a language spoken in New Zealand—witnessed some revitalization efforts at a cost.

In our climes, we do not have the wherewithal, that is the desire, will, material and financial resources, and governmental support to carry out revitalization programs. We simply cannot afford to let a language die by just not speaking it. Native speakers of an endangered language like Pepesa must make justifiable demands for reforms.

They must be willing to use the language. They must roll out strategies to protect their language and start grassroots movements. Efforts ought to be made to transmit the language to the younger generations.