We don’t have enough language teachers due to stigma – Bureau of Ghana Languages

The Bureau of Ghana Languages wants more attention to be paid to students who study local languages in schools.

According to the agency, language students in the universities mostly face stigmatization for reading languages they can speak even without studying them in the classroom, a development that has led to inadequately trained language teachers.

Director of the Bureau, William Boateng, told UniversNews most students who do not want to be tagged as cretin always opt-out of local language classes.

“We don’t have enough language teachers because of that stigma people attach to students studying local languages. Already people think I am an Ashanti so why should I go to school and study Asante in the University? That kind of stigma is not helping us and it has to be discarded at all cost; people place more premium on the languages of our colonial mothers more than that of our local languages,” he revealed.

Scoring the need to promote local languages, he added that “teaching a child in his or her language facilitates over 40% understanding. So it is better to teach children in their local languages to have better and full meaning.”

Mr. Boateng further noted they have recorded 20% decline in patronage of translation services, however, in order to augment the loss in patronage, his outfit is liaising with the Ministry of Information to reach Ghanaians with information about COVID-19 in 13 Ghanaian languages on various radio and TV platforms.

“We are now working close with the Minister of Information. They have several FM stations and TV stations throughout the nation and when there is any presidential address or any ministerial address, we go for the script and translate it into 13 different Ghanaian languages,” he said.