i have a question about this aspect of moses's response. he writes,
Most Africans outside the native Arabic-speaking zones can neither write fluently nor theorize in their native languages and do scholarly work in a European language. Therefore, to the extent that they have designs on being taken seriously and on ultimately influencing the academic/theoretical debates in the Global North, they have to be intelligible in both the basic linguistic sense of the writing being legible and sound and in the bigger sense of having a facility with the esoteric discursive gestures of particular disciplines and fields of analysis.
my question has to do with newspapers or presses publishing in african languages. surely they exist; i know swahili print pubs existed for perhaps 200 years? are there not others? as i said before, the popular media of film includes at times more in native languages than in foreign. nollywood has fluctuated actively between anglophone and yoruba, igbo, and hausophone films, and now i have read about the vertiginous rise of wolof tv series in senegal. if tv series appear in african media, in afr langs, surely the print pubs will follow?
a last quick reflection: american english differs a fair amount from british english, and indian english even more. eventually from one language many languages should devolve, just as happened with romance languages. or is that process held back by the dominance of global media in one dominant dialect?
ken
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
517 803-8839
harrow@msu.edu
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, November 1, 2020 10:54 AM
To: USAAfricaDialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Note on Theoretical Marginalization and Language
Sent: Sunday, November 1, 2020 10:54 AM
To: USAAfricaDialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Note on Theoretical Marginalization and Language
"I disagree with Farooq and Moses on the deterministic role they ascribe to the English language as the sole tool of industrialization given that that the participation of Ireland in the enslavement of Africans would be a better explanation of Irish industrialization than English language as the sole language of science for colonized people."
Biko,
I have not made even a suggestion, let alone an argument, about the English language being "the sole tool of industrialization" or even being a tool of industrialization. I have not read anything from Farooq to remotely suggest that either. My narrow argument has to do with the social cachet of English in our world, its paradigmatic role as a medium of global knowledge dissemination, theoretical and conceptual conversation, and scholarly communication. In a world of many languages, for good or ill, English has emerged lately as a global language of scholarly and socioeconomic transactions (other languages have more or less played a similar role throughout history). Thus, as a pragmatic, practical matter, a mastery of English, its idioms, as well as the specialized English language lexicons and communicative conventions of specialized academic fields is imperative if your goal is to enter and influence the most consequential global academic debates in an increasingly Anglophone world.
Most Africans outside the native Arabic-speaking zones can neither write fluently nor theorize in their native languages and do scholarly work in a European language. Therefore, to the extent that they have designs on being taken seriously and on ultimately influencing the academic/theoretical debates in the Global North, they have to be intelligible in both the basic linguistic sense of the writing being legible and sound and in the bigger sense of having a facility with the esoteric discursive gestures of particular disciplines and fields of analysis.
On Sun, Nov 1, 2020 at 8:53 AM 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:
--Ken is right that we need better copyeditors to support African scholars. The difficulty is that African publishers do not have the resources to hire good copyeditors and so authors are expected to deliver camera-ready copies. Prof Wariboko acknowledged in The Split Economy that there are good copyeditors in Africa and so whenever we have a choice, we should patronize them to help build capacity in the publishing industry.
However, no matter how perfect the grammar or thoughts, journal articles can still be rejected if the articles make no significant contribution to knowledge or are better suited to a different journal. Very few writers can claim that they have never received a rejection slip from editors and publishers. J.K. Randle keeps a heap of the rejections she got for Harry Porter and Elizabethan England used to laugh at Baba Shake for writing his plays in bad English and for being a serial plagiarist.
Being published is also no proof of perfection because there might still be errors to be fixed in future editions. Some of the top journals like Lancet have huge records of retraction of published articles due to errors, ethical concerns, safety, or fraud. The solution is to keep writing and to write more and more, the way that Falola does, in order to increase published productivity. The film makers and song writers have shown that even when the language of origination is an African language, translation services and subtitles will be there to attract a wider audience. Even if your work is not cited because you are an African originating a new paradigm, Ken this is still a problem as #CiteaSistah movement shows, keep writing because the work may grow on intellectual communities with time.
Farooq is also right that Gaelic, as a part of the heritage of Ireland, is not solely responsible for the industrialization of the country, but neither is land alone, capital alone, labor alone, nor policy alone. My claim is not that language is the sole factor responsible, I said that it is a contributory factor as part of their factors of production. Farooq thinks that the linguistic heritage of a people is 'immaterial' just because his friends told him so on one tourist trip he took to a country where the roads are paved with poetry. That hearsay would not stand any serious examination as evidence especially when he reported that road signs are everywhere in the language and Gaelic is taught in the schools while English is the language of instruction. George Herbert Shaw said it before, the Irish have produced better writers than the Engilsh. Soyinka, Achebe, Ngugi, Rodney, James, Nkrumah, Azikiwe, Armah, Nwapa, Brutus, Aidoo, Emecheta, Adichie, and Chinweizu, have written better English than many English writers but there is no reason why we should not develop scholarship in African languages too as part of our factors of production.
I disagree with Farooq and Moses on the deterministic role they ascribe to the English language as the sole tool of industrialization given that that the participation of Ireland in the enslavement of Africans would be a better explanation of Irish industrialization than English language as the sole language of science for colonized people. The English are known to have retarded the industrialization of Ireland with policies like the seizure of farmland for sheep farming, the navigation act, criminal law and transportation as punishment, and double taxation. The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Spain and Portugal all benefited from the enslavement and exploitation of Africans for hundreds of years and that helped them to industrialize while relying on their own indigenous languages. Anglophone Africans have been using English with little to show for it in science, technology and industrialization partly because we have not realized the wisdom that we must tap into our heritage in order to advance our cultures. Language is not the sole factor of production but it is not 'immaterial', it is only relatively neglected.
Biko
On Sunday, 1 November 2020, 05:43:27 GMT-5, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks, Biko.
I'm wary, though, of this idea of-
''You could have told the Nsukka School to go ahead and theorize in any language they are comfortable with and if they do so very well, translators will arrive to translate their work for the benefit of other communities of interpretation.''
How realistic is that assumption? How long will that take even if it does occur?
Even beyond the question of probability-how likely is it to happen- and temporality-how long will it take to occur, if at all- there is the question of immediacy, which Moses and Falola have pointed out.
Moses was addressing people who are building academic careers that imply immediate pecuniary values as well as immediate issues of appreciation beyond their national and even continental localities.
Moses responded in a pragmatic manner by suggesting approaches to achieving their goals.
He also suggested that this pragmatic orientation may be employed for goals beyond immediate needs, such as '' trying to play in the epistemologically dominant precincts of the North as insurgents on their own terms with the ultimate aim of critically changing the Western epistemic formation and globalizing African epistemologies.''
That goal also impacts on how scholarship is done outside the West, on account of the influence of Western scholarship on the rest of the world, being the globally dominant template.
If the Nsukka scholars do what you suggest, they are not likely to be published, even in Nigeria and Africa, with all the implications of that for their careers.
Is it not more realistic to think of both writing and publishing in indigenous languages as a publishing venture in partnership between publishers and scholars instead of leaving it to the academic alone, with all the attendant risks?
The publisher makes sure translators are available and ensures the publication and dissemination of both the original text and the translation.
Even then, the language of scholarship at Nsukka and Nigeria generally is English, not Igbo.
That means most people, even at Nsukka, will be reading the English translations rather than the Igbo text. Even Achebe describes himself as a better writer in English than in Igbo.
In your case, your central scholarly language is English.
You are thinking of expanding your writing in Igbo, not as a new scholar seeking recognition, but as an accomplished scholar who has achieved what Moses' Nsukka interlocutors are seeking, thereby placing your anticipated initiative in a very different context.
Yes, the decentring of African languages and their epistemic values has been part of the colonizing process, at both cultural and political levels, but is is realistic to simply try to return to the pre-colonial status quo?
How realistic is that?
thanks
toyin
--On Sun, 1 Nov 2020 at 04:01, 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:
--Moses, the Egyptian,
You could have told the Nsukka School to go ahead and theorize in any language they are comfortable with and if they d so very well, translators will arrive to translate their work for the benefit of other communities of interpretation.
If your view of Anglocentric theorizing was imposed on ancient Kemet, they may have failed to produce al those technical papyri that Europeans are still studying and translating today. They even have a discipline called Egyptology that specializes on studying written ancient African texts in the language of Africans.
Do you think that there might be a relationship between the loss of agency in indigenous African languages in addition to the loss of land, funding, labor and policy autonomy, and the arrested development of African cultures since the contact with invaders and enslavers? I do and I also believe that the recovery of language agency may be relatively feasible compared to the other factors of production.
I am not against English with which I publish a lot but I also have plans to narrate, theorize and publish more in Igbo and allow translations back and forth.
Do you dream in English or do you dream in Idoma like Bongos Ikwue? Akpangelumo lumo akpagengelumo akpa eeeghi?
BikoOn Saturday, 31 October 2020, 22:36:25 GMT-4, Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com> wrote:
"I happen to believe that robust theorizing can be done in indigenous ;languages. I have done so in several academic papers and many others have done so excellently around the world."
Biko,
You can of course theorize in indigenous languages but you publish in English and your work will be engaged in English, so your theories enter the global academic marketplace via English. Therefore, if you neglect the imperative of good written English and the esoteric English language lexicon of your field, your theory will not travel or be published or engaged.
Like many Africans, I used to think in my native Idoma, until about 15 years ago when it became cumbersome for me to do so since I have to translate the thought into English, the medium I write in. I have nothing against folks thinking or theorizing in their mother tongues, but if their desire is for these theories to be read, understood, and accorded the attention it deserves by "discourse communities" that use English, these theories cannot be published in the mother tongue and if they are they cannot remain in that medium.
My interlocutors at UNN may or may not think in Igbo or Yoruba--not sure. No matter; they can theorize in those languages. However, since their primary complaint is that their theories are not being granted favorable reception, and since their expressed aspiration is to break into the consequential theoretical conversations of the Euro-American academy, they would be shooting themselves in the foot if they do not translate their thoughts and theories into English (or French or Portuguese as the case may be). Doing such translation work, or theorizing and thinking in English in the first order, requires a mastery of English as an expressive form and as a tool of writing into and disrupting the dominant epistemologies of the global North
--On Sat, Oct 31, 2020 at 8:30 PM 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:
--Big Ogo,
You done come again o. It is called Mother tongue and not Baba tongue. About turn, quick march; those children of my sister must be fluent in their mother tongue before they learn your yeye minority language that nobody understands even in Ilorin, you hear? Otherwise we go fine you one cow. But you try sha to teach them an African language.
I think that we are more in agreement on this thread than opposed. We are all writing in English here. But the way Moses posed correct English as an exclusive tool for theory construction deserves a response. I happen to believe that robust theorizing can be done in indigenous ;languages. I have done so in several academic papers and many others have done so excellently around the world.
Singapore and Hong Kong are among the exceptions to my LICE theorem but they are both mercantilist cities instead of being industrial in the real sense of the term. Yet, even Singapore is not monolingual in schooling and Hong Kong people are literate in Cantonese too. They emphasize competency in at least one other indigenous language. Ireland increased the pace of industrialization once they started rediscovering Gaelic. India just announced this year that instruction in indigenous languages will be enforced at all levels from this year. Their problem may be that hundreds of millions remain illiterate in any language. Chinese parents value English as a second language but they also understand the importance of fluency in indigenous Chinese languages.
In a Calaloo interview, Achebe tells the story of his workshop in Japan. One of the Japanese participants reported that his grandfather took all his university notes in English in the 1870s. His own father took half his university notes in English and half in Japanese. Then he went to university himself after WWII and took all his notes in Japanese. Is there a lesson there for Africa? I think so but you are welcome to disagree.
Biko
On Saturday, 31 October 2020, 20:51:16 GMT-4, Farooq A. Kperogi <farooqkperogi@gmail.com> wrote:
Oga Prof.
You're mixing up issues and veering off on tangents now, my esteemed ogo. I am myself an advocate for native languages. For instance, I don't speak English to my children here in the United States; I speak only my native Baatonu language with them. Moses knows this. He marvels at my kids seamlessly transition from my native Baatonu language to "accentless" American English.
Even your sister has been able to pick up the language from hearing me speak it with the kids. My kids are, in fact, more proficient in my native language than most Baatonu children who are growing up in urban centers like Ilorin. We found that out when we visited Nigeria 4 years ago.
This conversation isn't about the desirability of native languages--or the merit of multilingualism. I was specifically responding to this claim of yours: "No country has ever industrialized by relying on a language imposed by colonizers. Name [one]. That may be part of the reasons why Africa struggles with industrialization."
Thankfully, you have now admitted that your claim has no basis in evidence. The language of instruction at all levels of education in Singapore is English, and it is developed. The language of instruction at all levels of education in Ireland is English, and it is developed. The basic literacy level in Irish Gaelic in Ireland is below 20 percent. I visited Ireland in 2004 and observed the ubiquitousness of signs in Irish Gaeli even though most Irish people don't understand the language and have to rely on the English translation of their "native" language to get by.
India is also rapidly industrializing with English, not Hindi.
You asked for one example to dispute your claim. You got several. And you've admitted that your claim is rested on a very slender thread of empirical evidence. That does it for me.
It bears repeating that there is no intrinsic nexus between language and development or "industrialization." Any society can develop-- or stall-- in any language. Foreignness or nativity of language is entirely irrelevant to development or "industrialization."
In any case, Standard English, which powers the scholarship that drives development in the Anglophone West, isn't even native to anyone. It's learned, not acquired, although I concede that being a native English speaker (which isn't delimited by race) can give a headstart in the acquisition of Standard English. An educated Igbo man from Okija can have better proficiency and greater agency in Standard English than a modestly or barely educated man who was born and raised in Maine in the United States.
Plus, more than 80 percent of the vocabulary of science is foreign to English. Native English speakers also face hurdles learning Standard English and the English dialect that powers science, technology and even humanistic and social science scholarship.
Let's curb our linguistic nativist enthusiasm and not ascribe to language, native or foreign, a role it doesn't have in development. That's my whole point. I am not against anyone choosing to be educated in their native language.
Farooq
Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.School of Communication & MediaSocial Science BuildingRoom 5092 MD 2207402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University
Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.comTwitter: @farooqkperogiNigeria's Digital Diaspora: Citizen Media, Democracy, and Participation
"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will
--On Sat, Oct 31, 2020 at 5:42 PM 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:
--Farooq,
Fa-fa-fa foul. As a scholar, you must know that the claim in my LICE theory is grounded in observable evidence and so, it is not vulgar determinism. What I claim is that language is a neglected factor of production of equal importance with land, capital, labor, and public policy. The neglect of any factor of production will most likely cripple or slow development efforts. Therefore, I am not a lingo determinist, I indicated that there are other relevant factors and that language is one of them. LICE is neither vulgar nor deterministic, it only claims that language is important. You disagree? Why now?
The good news is that even if we have no control over the other factors of production, we can exercise relative agency and autonomy over our languages if we are well-educated in indigenous tongues.
You are right that Europe started developing by relying on the colonial language of Latin and later that of Napoleonic French but do you know what they call that period of their history? They call it the Dark Ages. Why? Na you sabi.Your claim that some individuals mastered foreign languages does not test the null hypothesis that there is no relationship between language agency and development at a national level, not the micro level of individualism.
Russia also used French as the official language until an African, Alexander Pushkin, defied the orthodoxy and started writing everything in Russian. They laughed at him but today he is known as the Father of Russian literature.
Lee Kwan Yew adopted the dual language policy to avoid ethnocentrism in Singapore. The Chinese majority could have imposed their language by law but that could lead to resentment from the Malay and the Hindi sections of the population. So every student is required to choose one indigenous language to master along with English. You think that Africans are smarter than those who promote literacy in their indigenous tongues? Africans are proud to call themselves Francophone, Anglophone, Lusophone, Arabicphone, anything but Afrophone?
Remember that the Africans who built the pyramids and obelisks, embalmed their dead for thjousands of years, sculpted the roped pot of Igbo Ukwu, the bronze horsemen of Benin, and Ori Olokun, and cured the fine leather of the Hausa that the Europeans craved as Moroccan leather, all relied on their indigenous tongues as factors of production. Today we import everything from chalks to tooth picks.
In the Caribbean where I lived for three years and wanted to kiss every inch of that land of giants, they speak English enough as a mother tongue after centuries of chopping off of the African tongues but they have also developed their original creole or patois as the language of creativity just like the less educated in Africa who continue to amaze us with their inventiveness.
You may be right that what made those Caribbean countries more attractive to African medical doctors and professors who migrated there in droves is the fact that they are all placed on the HDI table as medium or high human development countries mainly because they have attained almost 100% literacy among men and women whereas Africans hug the bottom of the tables due to mass illiteracy even in the mother tongues. To neglect the language of the people is the same as neglecting land, funding, labor, and pubic policy.
You seem to think that all that counts is pubic policy but I am convinced that the people have relative autonomy in the area of language. Big up our mothers for teaching us our Mother Tongues without any wages from the government. We are now among the leaders that we like to criticize from a distance. Nothing stops Farroq and Moses from showing leadership by writing at least one miserly paper in their mother tongues. Do not be afraid that just because today is Halloween, the white witches will cut out your tongues if you dare write anything in Birom, Tiv, Igbo, Yoruba, Nupe, Efik, Ijaw, Hausa or Fulfube. No shaking. Even pidgin no go hurt, wallahi. Eziokwu. You hear?:
The Irish suffered British colonization that resulted in a man-made famine resulting from their loss of control over all the factors of production, including language. Surely, they produced fine writers in English but they remained exploited until their successful restoration of independence. Today, Gaelic is a national language and road signs, writing and learning are officially promoted in Gaelic. Their industrialization has actually advanced faster in the 100 years of independence compared to the centuries of British rule under imposed Englishness. The Welsh are restoring teaching and learning for similar reasons. The Scots will probably do the same.
Ethiopia was an empire and so the imposition of Amharic on everyone would also stifle creativity. The imposition of Arabic would similarly slow down creativity in non-Arabic areas. North Korea, Vietnam, India, and Pakistan are developing countries but I am sure that many Africans envy their levels of advancement in science and technology for we hear that less wealthy Nigerians seek medical treatment over there.
Your defense of English as the sole lingua franca of the world is what you should call 'crude linguistic determinism' because it lacks significant empirical evidence. US universities require competence in any other modern language, by which they mean any other European language. As a linguist, have you ever recommended that African languages be taught on your campus since they remain modern languages too?
Walter Rodney recognized this problem in HEUA by observing that Bemba children in Zambia used to know the names of up to 60 different plants by age six until they were colonized and the colonial school started teaching them only the names of roses and daffodils that are not relevant to the slash and burn agriculture which required knowledge of the plants to decide which to cut and which to spare during farming.
Six thousand languages shared among seven billion people is not even one apiece. Yes, let us develop learning in the 2000 languages in Africa. The world will be a very oppressive place if all other languages are bulldozed to make room for imperial English. The Tower of Babel forbade such monolingualism. Let those who are comfortable writing in the colonial languages carry on but those who are literate in indigenous languages should not be shamed or deterred by the fear of lack of recognition from the Queen of England. There will be translations into dozens of other languages.
Ngugi is right that we need to decolonize our minds by showing some more respect to the tongues of our mothers. It will not hurt your productivity if you can arrange for some of your books to be translated into African languages. You are right that what is said is more important than the tongue used but why should Africans who fist developed human language and passed it on to al of humanity, according to Chomsky, allow our own modern languages to die in return for more recognition to be shown to our Eurocentric scholars? The world forbids such lingocide.
Biko
On Saturday, 31 October 2020, 15:13:16 GMT-4, Farooq A. Kperogi <farooqkperogi@gmail.com> wrote:
Oga Biko,
You are engaging in what book people dey call vulgar linguistic determinism. The idea that societies develop only when their citizens are educated in their native languages is anchored on the unscientific notion that the human brain is inescapably wired to think transformative thoughts only in the language of its natal environment. Both the history and sociology of human civilization have shown this to be entirely false.
Ethiopians (and Eritreans) weren't colonized like the rest of Africa (except for the brief Italian occupation of the region), have educated their people mostly in Amharic, which is native to the region but which isn't everyone's native language, but I won't call them "developed."
You lived considerably in the Caribbean. Black people there speak English as a native language even though they are Africans. Would you regard them as speaking a "colonizer's" language? Many educated Africans think more clearly in the colonial languages with which they are educated than in their own native languages. Do you consider them handicapped--and, perhaps, worthless-- because their thoughts and scientific contributions aren't in their native languages?
In other words, is the output less important than the language of the output? If education in native languages is the only guarantee of development, are you suggesting that for the world to develop we must have more than 6,000 education systems in the world since there are more than 6,000 living languages in the world?
Or do you consider a language "native" just because it's native to a country even if non-native speakers in the country have to learn it like they learn a colonial language? If yes, why should an Ogoni woman learn Ijaw and deploy it as her language of instruction at school? What advantage would the Ijaw-educated Ogoni woman have over a Kanuri man who was educated in a colonizer's language?
You singled out Singapore as an exception even though you had claimed definitively that no country on earth has ever developed using a foreign language. Well, Singapore isn't an exception. I also mentioned Ireland, but you seem to have ignored it.
Western Europe, too, used Latin for education for a long time even though most West Europeans didn't speak Latin natively. I didn't hurt their development one bit. The Muslim world used Arabic for education for centuries even though only a fraction of Muslims speak Arabic natively. Most of the Muslim scholars who made enduring contributions to science, medicine, mathematics, etc. were educated in Arabic even though they were not Arabs and didn't speak Arabic natively.
Language of education has no bearing on development.
Here's a portion of the column you said you don't have the time to read:
Nations that developed using foreign languagesIt's a well-worn cliché among dewy-eyed linguistic nationalists that indigenous language instruction is the only key to national development. There are several iterations of this sentiment.
For instance, in a 2016 edited book titled Studies in Nigerian Linguistics, Philip Anagbogu and Gideon Omachonu contributed a chapter in which they claim that, "No nation has ever made appreciable progress in development as well as science and technology education relying on a foreign language(s)."
One Professor Birgit Brock-Utne, a Norwegian who taught and lived in Tanzania for a long time, also claimed that, "No country has ever developed on the basis of a foreign language." But these essentialist claims have no basis in linguistic or historical evidence.
Evidence from linguistic research (and, I might add, common sense) shows that no one is infrangibly wired to cogitate rarefied thoughts only in their native language. Societies don't develop because they use their primordial languages for education, nor do they stagnate because they deploy a foreign language for education. That's vulgar linguistic determinism. Development isn't solely a function of language of instruction at schools; it's a consequence of a multiplicity of factors.
There are 6,909 living languages in the world. The linguistic deterministic thesis of development that holds that societies can only develop if they use their indigenous languages for instruction at schools would suggest that speakers of all the 6,909 living languages in the world should have their separate instructional policies based on their languages. What a babel that would be!
History is littered with examples of countries that developed on the basis of a foreign language.Let's start with Europe. Scholarship in Latin, that is, Classical Latin, is the foundation of the development of Western Europe. Latin wasn't native to vast swathes of people in Europe. It was an exclusive elite language, a reason all other European languages at the time were called "vernacular languages." Latin was the language of education in Europe (including in North Africa where it was studied in schools until the Roman Empire waned) until about the second half of the 18th century.
European development wasn't stalled because people learned and used Latin for scholarship; on the contrary, scholarship in Latin is the foundation for Western Europe's development. It isn't because there is something intrinsically superior or magical about Latin; it's simply because, for historical reasons, it was the vault of knowledge at the time—the way English is today.
In the Muslim world, particularly from the 8th century to the 13th century, during the so-called Golden Age of Islam when science, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, economic development, etc. grew and flowered luxuriantly, the language of scholarship was Arabic, but several of the key personages associated with this golden age spoke Arabic as a second language.
For example, Muhammad Ibn Musa al-Kwarizmi, the father of algorithm, spoke Farsi as his first language, but his language of education was Arabic. That didn't stop him from making profound contributions to knowledge and to development. Note that Farsi (Persian) and Arabic are not only mutually unintelligible languages, they also belong to two different language families. Persian is an Indo-European language (in common with English!) while Arabic is an Afro-Asiatic language (in common with Hausa!)
Ibn Sina, through whose efforts the West recovered Aristotle and whose work in medical science is foundational, was also a Persian who learned and wrote in Arabic. Arabic was a second language to him. I can go on, but the point I want to make is that several of the central figures in Islam's golden age weren't native Arabic speakers. In fact, most people in the Muslim Ummah at the time weren't Arabs. But Arabic was the language of education. It was the epistemic storehouse of the time, and the fact of Arabic's foreignness didn't cause it to halt the development of the societies in which it was used.
For modern examples of countries that developed using a foreign language, Singapore is one. Although most Singaporeans are ethnically Chinese, they use English as the language of instruction at all levels of education in their country. Singapore, not long ago, transitioned from "third world to first," to borrow from the title of late Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew's book. Use of English as the language of education hasn't stalled Singapore's development.
Ireland is another example. For long, it was Europe's fastest growing economy because of its advances in information and communication technology. Ireland's language of instruction at all levels of education is English even though English isn't "native" to the country. The country's "native" tongue is Gaelic, which is mutually unintelligible with English. Like Nigeria and Singapore, Ireland was colonized by England.
In addition, several universities in Asia and Europe are now switching to English as their language of instruction. They aren't stupid.
On the other hand, North Koreans, Vietnamese, Pakistanis, Mongolians, etc., use their native languages as their countries' official languages and as the languages of instruction at all levels of education. That hasn't guaranteed their development. So it is simplistic to assert that simply being educated in a native language is all that is needed to be developed, and that use of a foreign language forecloses development.
As I pointed out earlier, although evidence suggests that mother-tongue instruction enhances learning, no human being is intrinsically and inexorably wired to conceptualize high-minded thoughts in just one language, or only in the language of the culture they grew up in. Nigeria isn't stuck in prolonged infancy because English is its official language; it is because it has had no purposeful, forward-looking, transaction-oriented leadership since independence.
Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.School of Communication & MediaSocial Science BuildingRoom 5092 MD 2207402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University
Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.comTwitter: @farooqkperogiNigeria's Digital Diaspora: Citizen Media, Democracy, and Participation
"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will
--On Sat, Oct 31, 2020 at 11:30 AM 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:
--Bro Farooq,
I go read your dogo nturenchi later but I agree with you that every rule has exceptions. Singapore has a dual language policy that emphasizes English in addition to one other national language as a requirement for every student. India only started implementing indigenous languages of instruction this year perhaps to catch up with China. Afghans are often more fluent in Urdu than in Pashwa as a result of large-scale refugee problems. On the exceptional case of Pakistan which remains a poor country toying with nuclear weapons, here is an author who has studied it in detail in indirect support of my lice theory: Pakistan ruined by language myth
On Saturday, 31 October 2020, 04:33:10 GMT-4, Farooq A. Kperogi <farooqkperogi@gmail.com> wrote:
"No country has ever industrialized by relying on a language imposed by colonizers. Name ne. That may be part of the reasons why Africa struggles with industrialization."--Biko Agozino
That's demonstrably inaccurate. I confronted this misconception in many previous columns such as my April 9, 2017 column titled, "English, Indigenous Language Instruction and National Development" and my April 23, 2017 column titled "English in Nigeria: India Not an Exemplary Model."
Singapore, Ireland, etc. have developed with a colonial language and Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc. are still developing even though they deploy indigenous languages for instructions at all levels of education. India's development isn't powered by Hindi; it is powered by English. Read the articles.
Farooq
Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.School of Communication & MediaSocial Science BuildingRoom 5092 MD 2207402 Bartow Avenue
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"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will
--On Fri, Oct 30, 2020 at 10:27 PM 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:
--'Which is why I have no sympathy for the pseudo-Afrocentric nonsense that English (or other European languages) is not our mother tongue so proficiency, fluency, and mastery are not important.'
Only a pseudo-Afrocentric scholar would say that rigorous theorizing in English is not important. Almost all Afrocentric writers develop their thoughts in English, French, Portuguese or Espanol. There is no existing Afrocenrtic theorist who is rejected by Eurocentric scholars because he/she writes bad English. Name one.
By coincidence, I also Zoomed with the UNN Faculty of Social Science during their Virtual International Conference on Crucial Issues in African Development and the Sustainable Development Goals on Wednesday 10/28/20. My guest lecture on Linguistic Industrial Complex Economy (LICE) offered a head-scratching theory of industrialization based on the empirical observation that almost all countries that have industrialized did so by relying on their indigenous languages. No country has ever industrialized by relying on a language imposed by colonizers. Name ne. That may be part of the reasons why Africa struggles with industrialization.
Moses may be right that English is the dominant language in world commerce today and the top universities in the world rankings are English language universities. Yet, Japan, Russia, Germany, France, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, NorwaY, China, and Korea remain competitive because they realized that language is a neglected factor of production as important as land, labor, and capital. Correct grammar is important even when we write in indigenous languages but to abandon our mother tongues would be to abandon a vital source of creativity in the arts but also in the sciences. Ngugi is right.
Fea Kuti broke through when he abandoned Oyibo grammatical songs and embraced Naija pidgin. Ebenezer Obey, King Sunnu Ade, Osita Osadebe, Oriental Brothers, Oliver de Coque, Mike Ejeagha, Rex Lawson, Bob Marley, Makeba, Bright Chimezie, Mighty Sparrow, gospel singers, Hip Hop and Calypso artists, to mention but a few, all developed new musical genres by abandoning Queen's English. Those of us who were trained to be signifying monkeys mimicking Englishness have managed to develop or innovate zero musical styles and very few theories for some reason.
The question is, what are the new musical theories developed by African universities that Europeans have failed to accept? African scholars are versed in the descriptive tradition of empiricism but fail in advancing original theories in most cases. That was why I answered a question from the audience during my Zoom by encouraging thescholars to take up the challenge of developing their own original theories in order to be noticed internationally because the leading lights in every discipline are theorists. I encouraged them to establish a journal of Nigerian Languages where original research in any discipline written in indigenous languages would be published and I asked them to endow a prize for the best dissertation in any discipline written entirely in indigenous languages. This is something that we can do without waiting for the government.
The idea that Africans do not write well is a racist idea that goes back to Hegel in his Philosophy of History. He did not say that others do not write, he only claimed that Europeans write better history. Derrida pointed this out in Of Grammatology by stating that even according to Hegel, every culture writes, in the general sense of grammatology as the use of signs to represent speech. To claim that Africans do not write well when we write in our indigenous languages while discussing musical theory about work that is written predominantly in African indigenous languages is an attempt at conceptual colonization or epistemicide. Africans practically invented writing. Na lie?
Even if your grammar spills verbs the way that Amos Tutuola and Chief Zebrudaya did, even if your subjects did not agree with your verbs, Martin Luther King Jr said that you can still serve your community. Mazrui was dead wrong when he identified himself and his children as Afro Saxons and said that a bad idea expressed in good English was better than a good idea expressed in bad English. Na lie o.
Biko
On Friday, 30 October 2020, 18:35:29 GMT-4, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
Moses:
Do they really say that "so proficiency, fluency, and mastery are not important?"
Or
That we should use our mother tongues at the primary level, at the very list, and promote African languages? Ngugi recently won the prize in Swahili, and his recent novel is written in English.
Which is why I have no sympathy for the pseudo-Afrocentric nonsense that English (or other European languages) is not our mother tongue so proficiency, fluency, and mastery are not important.
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Friday, October 30, 2020 at 5:28 PM
To: USAAfricaDialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Note on Theoretical Marginalization and Language
One of the questions put to me during the session is how the marginalized theoretical and scholarly perspectives of Nigeria/Africa can receive serious reception and respect in a global (read Western-dominated) academic culture that devalues Global South thinkers and thinking by default and values Euro-American ones also by default.
There are several strategies, some of which I shared with the group, but one aspect of the answer that I didn't get to cover adequately is that of language. In my experience the cheapest, easiest excuse that the Western academy uses to exclude and disenfranchise African scholars and their perspectives is to say that their writing is poor—that they can't write.
There are of course all kinds of racist and othering underpinnings to this tactic, but sometimes the excuse is based on an actually existing writing deficit. And I would argue, following our late friend, Pius Adesanmi, that to be taken seriously and be reckoned with in the Western academy, we have to write back to Western theorists as insurgents bypassing and crashing the gates and gatekeepers but we have to do so in a language that is intelligible to the gatekeepers, in their own academic lexicon. That way, you take that go-to alibi off the table and compel them to examine and engage with your work on its merit.
You can have, as Africa-based scholars often do, radical, iconoclastic, novel, and revisionist perspectives, theories, and approaches, but if you do not deprive your Western interlocutors of the poor writing excuse, they'll always use it to exclude you.
That is why I emphasize linguistic mastery and writing excellence, and lament the decline of writing in Nigerian universities. If the writing is bad no one is going to grasp or have the patience to comprehend the radically new theory and argument you're advancing. And this contention applies to all disciplines, including the hard sciences.
Which is why I have no sympathy for the pseudo-Afrocentric nonsense that English (or other European languages) is not our mother tongue so proficiency, fluency, and mastery are not important. Whether we like it or not, English is the scholarly Lingua Franca of the world we live in and your access to global scholarly conversations and intellectual capital is directly proportional to your written and oral fluency in it. Ask the South Asian scholars of the subaltern collective how they broke through and forced their theories on the Western academy after going through a similar complaining phase as us.
More importantly, if we're asking for a hearing at the theoretical table, it is not compromise or self-betrayal to adopt the prevailing paradigmatic linguistic medium. After all, we're the ones seeking to alter the global epistemological dynamic, force a reckoning with African and Africa-derived theories, and teach Western scholars our ways of knowing and seeing the world.
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