Language death: Conceptions and misconceptions

Mekacha, Rugatiri D.K.

doi:10.1016/0378-2166(94)90048-5

Cited by 5 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…In 1995 Kiswahili was spoken as either first language or second language by almost 95% of the population and in 2004 the National Kiswahili Council (BAKITA 1 ) estimated that 99% of Tanzanians spoke Kiswahili (Batibo, 1995). Various studies (Mekacha, 1994;Rubanza, 1996) have indicated that most children acquire Kiswahili simultaneously with their respective ethnic community languages. They stress that children who join primary education conversant with one of the ethnic community languages find it easier to learn Kiswahili due to the similarities obtaining in Bantu languages, the language understood by most children.…”

Section: English Vs Kiswahili In Tanzaniamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As indicated in the research by international and African scholars (UNICEF, 1999;UNESCO, 1953;Skutnabb-Kangas and Toukamaa, 1997;Rubanza, 2002;Qorro, 2005;Young, 2009;Marwa, 2014;Sario et al, 2014;Bachore, 2014;Bikongoro, 2015) children learn better in a language they understand, not a foreign language. The majority of school-age children in Tanzania go to school with a good knowledge of Kiswahili (Mekacha, 1994;Rubanza, 1996).…”

Section: Suitable Medium Of Instructionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Prospects of Kiswahili as a Medium of Instruction in the Tanzanian Education and Training Policy

Tibategeza

Plessis

2018

JLE

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Based on the research findings, Tanzania has been cognisant of the fact that students can learn better in a language they understand. The government has been issuing policies with the intent to make Kiswahili a medium of instruction at all levels of education but without implementation. The study was conducted using documentary review, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions to examine government generated documents, namely the Cultural Policy of 1997, Education and Training Policy of 1995 and 2014 on the use of Kiswahili as medium of instruction (MoI). The focus was to examine the government generated documents on the intent to use Kiswahili as a medium of instruction and the implementation of this decision, to analyse stakeholders’ views on the appropriate medium of instruction, and to give a critical analysis as to why the proposal to make Kiswahili MoI in the Education and Training Policy could face some challenges in implementation. Previous policies, reports, the perceptions and views of education stakeholders were analysed. The findings indicate that there have been some initiatives to make Kiswahili a medium of instruction at all levels of education but such initiatives have been crippled by lack of a political will and misconceptions by some stakeholders who question the possibility for the learners to use Kiswahili as the MoI and still learn English, the language Tanzania needs for wider communication. The article concludes that although the proposed policy is suitable in Tanzania and actually long overdue, we are sceptical of its implementation. This is based on the previous state of affairs in which the government did not implement the proposed switch to Kiswahili as indicated in the reviewed policies and government pronouncements.

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Section: English Vs Kiswahili In Tanzaniamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Suitable Medium Of Instructionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Prospects of Kiswahili as a Medium of Instruction in the Tanzanian Education and Training Policy

Tibategeza

Plessis

2018

JLE

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“…Although the statistical results were baffling, the depth to which literacy and education had penetrated was difficult to estimate. As Mekacha (1994) argues, it certainly did not result in the Swahilization of peripheral groups. Swahili became an additional language, superimposed on a repertoire that remained otherwise intact.…”

Section: Radical National Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

State Ideology and Language in Tanzania

Blommaert¹

2014

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date is relevant: I was in Tanzania when Julius Nyerere stepped down voluntarily as President of Tanzania and handed the State House over to his successor, Ali Hassan Mwinyi. The new President promptly signed an agreement with the International Monetary Fund, thus terminating two decades of Ujamaa in his country and turning Tanzania into a free-market economy and, eventually, a nominal multiparty democracy. Nominal, because in both cases the post-1985 period showed continuity rather than discontinuity. While Tanzania became for a while a Bonanza for foreign investors, the social and economic structure of the country did not change much; and in politics, the ruling party of Nyerere's one-party state, the Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM), provided the supreme leadership of the country until the day of writing: Mwinyi was succeeded by Mkapa and then by Kikwete -all of them CCM.The book I wrote in 1999 was driven by a desire to document what I considered and still consider to be a curious but telling case of language planning. What happened in Tanzania since Independence, and certainly since the introduction of a formal model of Ujamaa in 1967, was an outstanding case of linguistic hegemony. It is a well-weathered sociolinguistic fact that Tanzania is exceptional in Africa because of the nationwide predominance of one language, Swahili. This fortuitous situation emerged because of reasons to be explained in this book, the most important of which was Ujamaa politics. Swahili became absorbed into the nation building drive caused by Ujamaa, and its emblematic role as the language that incorporated and articulated Independence and, later, the socialist revolution, pushed Swahili into the most remote parts of the country and made itto varying degrees of skill and fluency -part of almost every Tanzanian's repertoire. The story of Swahili is a story of an overwhelming political-ideological success.What is less well known in sociolinguistic circles is that this success was in actual fact not recognized in Tanzania itself. As I will describe in the chapters of this book, the overwhelming success of Swahili as a language of the nation-state was quite systematically accompanied by an elaborate culture of complaints, in which linguists, intellectuals and politicians alike presented the case for Swahili as a failure and a headache. As soon as I set foot in Tanzania and expressed an interest in the predicament of Swahili, I was deeply exposed to this discourse of failure, expressed by people whose language repertoires in the meantime displayed the deep and lasting traces of the success of Swahili.This curious paradox led me to investigate the phenomenon, and pretty soon I realized that the contradiction was a language-ideological effect. While the facts on the ground pointed towards massive success, the particular ideological imagination in which Swahili was captured -it ought to be the language of the socialist revolution -made assessments of success subject to impossible demands: the spread of a uniform language should have contributed...

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“…The consequential social pressures, as both immigrants and hosts strive to cope with a society built on assimilationist policies, with a strong sense of identity and a language with both high status (functionally polyvalent) and high prestige (ideologically superior: cf Mekacha, 1994), can be intense, particularly for those whose languages are of low status and low prestige: rules for citizenship and nationality bear as hard on those who would retain their own separate identity and yet wish to participate in the French State, as the Revolution and nineteenth century educational practice did on the regions.…”

Section: The Economic Imperativementioning

confidence: 99%

Immigration and language policy in France

1994

Journal of Intercultural Studies

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Language death: Conceptions and misconceptions

Cited by 5 publications

References 10 publications

The Prospects of Kiswahili as a Medium of Instruction in the Tanzanian Education and Training Policy

The Prospects of Kiswahili as a Medium of Instruction in the Tanzanian Education and Training Policy

State Ideology and Language in Tanzania

Immigration and language policy in France

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