Centre puts focus on country's neglected languages

[Ɔkyeame Kwame]

Centre puts focus on country's neglected languages

By: Wilson Dzebu

Limpopo’s MEC for Sports, Arts and Culture, Joe Maswanganyi, officially opened a R3 million three-year project of the Tshivenda Language Research and Development Centre at the University of Venda on Monday.

The centre is a project of the national Department of Arts and Culture in conjunction with the Limpopo Department of Sports and Culture and the University of Venda.

The objective is to put particular focus on the previously neglected languages, assigning them a central role in the implementation of the country’s multilingual policy. The centre will ensure promotion, reading and writing of Tshivenda and reach out to communities through literacy training, documenting of stories, folk tales, legends, and idioms and introduce basic language courses. The project also aims to effectively develop Tshivenda, one of the official indigenous languages, to ensure its public usage in such important fields as law, commerce, education, politics, science and technology.

The centre is the third in the Limpopo province, following the opening of two others for Xitsonga and Sepedi at Tivumbeni and the University of Limpopo respectively.

The language research and development centres are situated in the communities where the languages they promote are spoken. It is for this reason that the Tshivenda Language Research and Development Centre has been established at the University of Venda. The centre will build capacity for ensuring quality language services and will support language-related research and databases and liaise with other host institutions.

Maswanganyi applauded the University of Venda for resisting all the temptations to scale down African languages in the curriculum, as it had become the trend in institutions of higher learning. He said the report on the languages in higher education handed to the Education Minister expressed a view that a crisis was looming in the country, with regards to the preservation, maintenance and associated identity of our indigenous African languages.

“We hope you will make use of the available intellectual resources at your disposal to assist us in moving in the direction that seeks to address language challenges that continue to haunt us. This opening also takes place at a time when certain sections of society, including Africans this time, are reopening an old debate on the relevance of indigenous languages, particularly in the school system. Languages are developed in order for them to contribute to the socio-economic development of the society. The development of our languages should not be treated as secondary but as a priority. The research work and other associated activities that this centre will embark on should assist us in empowering humanity. The success of the research work will be largely determined by active participation of the community…”

Maswanganyi said everyone should be aware that the combined efforts of government, tertiary institutions and structures of civil society would bring about the desired goals of ensuring that languages become a tool for development to restore our language heritage and dignity.

The manager of the Tshivenda Language Research Centre, Prof Mbulaheni Musehane, says South Africa is faced with the responsibility of finding solutions for the economic upliftment of its people. He says one of the mechanisms government is using to address this challenge is the use of languages, which plays an important role in education and ensures access to vital services and information for personal development and cultural, artistic expression.

“In an effort to achieve this, government, through the Department of Arts and Culture, is in the process of establishing language resource and development centres throughout the country. This will ensure that the marginalized languages are also getting the recognition they deserve, since they were ignored for many years.”