Every year on February 21, the world observes International Mother Language Day, a Unesco initiative that highlights the importance of linguistic diversity and the preservation of indigenous languages.
This year marks 25 years since this important movement was first recognised and has been particularly successful in SA, there are a handful of languages that are in need of preservation. For many, the recognition and preservation of one’s mother language is an opportunity for one to openly celebrate one’s heritage and acknowledge that one’s language is equally as important as the other widely known SA languages.
This is the case for Asanda Katshwa, who is a child of deaf adults (coda) and claims sign language as her mother tongue. Katshwa works as a sign language interpreter and has firsthand experience into the needs of the deaf community and their fight to have sign language become more mainstream.
“The amendment of the constitution to make SA sign language (SASL) one of the official languages is testament to how our government values the principles of the bill of rights, in particular where it talks about the importance of protection and promotion of all our indigenous languages. Furthermore, it now means now the sign language community have a legal weapon they can use to enforce and encourage use of our languages also in public spaces without discomfort,” Katshwa said.
Katshwa believes that the first step to preserving sign language and ensuring a safer and more coherent environment for deaf people, is to ensure that more people receive sign language training and make it mandatory for teachers in schools to know sign language.
“It is important that people have open minds when you see deaf people communicating in sign language and make an effort to engage them, they are human too. The first thing that would make sense to me as a next step is to ensure that teachers in deaf schools have good sign language fluency.
“I’m not saying a qualification, because at this stage we have teachers with a qualifications in sign language or inclusive education but still do not know how to use sign language to educate deaf children,” Katshwa said.
Another language that is in need of preservation is indigenous languages of the Khoi San people. These languages are historical and form part of SA history.
Chief Joseph Kreeling of the Griqua Royal Council in the Eastern Cape says days like International Mother Language Day are important because it is an opportunity for languages to get attention.
“International Mother Language Day can collaborate with us by running programmes to create more awareness and interests for our ancient indigenous languages to survive and ultimately recognised by the government. That will at least add to the preservation, development and the survival of our ancient languages,” Kreeling said.
According to Kreeling, the council is doing work in schools around the Eastern Cape to incorporate the language into mainstream education.
“There should be engagement between the traditional leaders and the schools to teach our children the basic education about our important indigenous languages. There are plans in place to avail a period or two a day for our indigenous language teachers to come in voluntarily to teach the basics about the ancient languages.
“We can keep the ancient language alive by partnering with schools to incorporate our language into our schools. There is a great awakening and interest from the youth and the public.
“Our local youth acknowledged that they need their true identity and language in our local schools. A good start will be in the foundation phase of our primary schools.
“That will ensure the survival of our historical and ancient indigenous languages,” Kreeling said.
