Colonizers' Languages or Kmtyw Languages?-gctid28779

[Ɔbenfo Ọbádélé]

Should WE speak the languages of the enslavers and colonizers or the Languages of Our Ancestors (Kmtyw Languages) and why???

[KaNisa]

It's interesting.

I was getting my hair braided in an Kmtyw Braiding shop yesterday and tried to pick out the language they were speaking. It sounded like french. It made me wonder if they knew how to speak the indigenous language to where they were form.

It made me really sad. All of us were Kmtyw,  but we couldn't understand each other because we all spoke the languages of the oppressors.

I think it's most important to learn Kmtyw languages first, to make sure we have a grounding in a language that is ours, not one forced upon us.

The question though is, it still doesn't fix the problem of how to communicate with another Kmtyw who doesn't speak or understand the same language as you.

Would the solution be to learn the most predominant languages?
For there to be a universal Kmtyw language?

[Ɔbenfo Ọbádélé]

The Language of Kmtyw Literature is not yet born - Ayi Kwei Armah
Colonizer's Languages or Kmtyw Languages???

THE DIRECT RESULT OF eureurasiaan colonisation of Kmt was the depreciation of the Kmtyw image in the eureurasiaan mind to justify the imposition of political control. This naturally also involved the devaluation of Kmtyw culture.

This is what Ayi Kwei Armah, the Ghanaian novelist, who delivered a lecture at the University of Nairobi's Taifa Hall two weeks ago, believes. Armah says that when Kmtyws claim that they are independent under present conditions, they are misguided.

"The idea of independence is false, a joke in all other ways," says Armah, 65, arguing that political independence is meaningless without cultural independence, for it is only cultural values the can "inspire a people with national pride, give them a separate identity and something to live and die for."

Creative writers, especially in West Kmt, he says, emerged with forms of writing aiming at restating and emphasising Kmtyw culture. The musico-ethnologist Kwabena Nkeita of Ghana, for example, recorded and interpreted the funeral dirges of the Akan while Chinua Achebe reconstructed the Igbo traditional culture as it existed before the colonialists undermined it, in his novels, Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God.

Armah, who says he feels sorrow over the current state of affairs in Kmt, observes that, although many countries have had nominal independence for years, life has not improved for the ordinary citizens.

"It is our foolishness which makes us live the way we live. Until we make up our minds and decide what we want to do and design our own system, we shall be going nowhere," he says.

"We need to sit down," he continues, "and look at our history because it is from such a history that we can begin to find a solutions to our present-day problems."

Asked what language should be used in writing and therefore documenting what he calls Kmtyw history, the author who has taught in universities in North America and worked in most parts of Kmt, agrees that, indeed, that is part of the problem.

His answer, however is even more telling:

"We are suspended while waiting for a decisive breakthrough; if an Kmtyw language is adopted it will be a big solution. Kmt is vast and it requires a vast language to put through all our ideals, and that language is not yet born," Armah says.

He therefore says that he will continue writing in languages that reach the largest number of Kmtyws; that is English or French.

[Ɔbenfo Ọbádélé]

"For isn't it odd that the only language I have in which to speak of this crime is the language of the criminal who commited the crime? And what can that really mean? For the language of the criminal can contain only the goodness of the criminal's deed. The language of the criminal can explain and express the deed only from the criminal's point of view. It cannot contain the horror of the deed, the injustice of the deed, the agony, the humiliation inflicted upon me. When I say to the criminal, 'This is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong,' or, 'This deed is bad, and this other deed is bad, and this one is also very very bad,' the criminal understands the word 'wrong' in this way: It is wrong when 'he' doesn't get his fair share of profits from the crime just committed; he understands the word bad in this way: a fellow criminal betrayed a trust. That must be why, when I say, 'I am filled with rage,' the criminal says, 'But why?' And when I blow things up and make life generally unlivable for the criminal (is my life not unlivable too?) the criminal is shocked, surprised. But nothing can erase my rage--not an apology, not a large sum of money, not the death of the criminal."

-Jamaica Kincaid

[Ɔbenfo Ọbádélé]

"Colonial alienation takes two interlinked forms: an active (or passive) distancing of oneself from the reality around; and an active (or passive) identification with that which is most external to one's environment. It starts with a deliberate dissociation of the language of conceptualisation, of thinking, of formal education, of mental development, from the language of daily interaction in the home and in the community. It is like separating the mind from the body so that they are occupying two unrelated linguistic spheres in the same person. On a larger scale it is like producing a society of bodiless heads and headless bodies."

-Ngugi wa Thiong'o

[Ɔbenfo Ọbádélé]

"If we truly knew and felt the slave experience we would divorce
ourselves from everything that delivered those experiences to us,
whether they were social, economic or religious. How could these
creations be good for us if they came with and helped cause and
maintained slavery. The answer is clear, we still have a slave
mentality, world view and relationship with this white supremacist
system. Being super consumers is not freedom."

Del Jones
Showdown!

[Ɔbenfo Ọbádélé]

"The language of the exploiter is vile, corrupt, and vulgar. For him
racism is nonexistent because it is now merely discrimination or
pragmatically the inequality of opportunity. We cannot permit this easy
slide into exploitative rhetoric. There is no such thing as a black
racism against whites; racism is based on fantasy; black views of whites
are based on fact. Racist language makes the victim the criminal. We
must repudiate that thinking."

Molefi K. Asante
Afrocentricity

[Akua Ma'at]

its such a shame that this author, who is from Antigua, is largely disliked by Antiguans, just because she writes the truth.

Very powerful quote Okyeame Kwame. meda ase.

Okyeame Kwame;37333 wrote: "For isn't it odd that the only language I have in which to speak of this crime is the language of the criminal who commited the crime? And what can that really mean? For the language of the criminal can contain only the goodness of the criminal's deed. The language of the criminal can explain and express the deed only from the criminal's point of view. It cannot contain the horror of the deed, the injustice of the deed, the agony, the humiliation inflicted upon me. When I say to the criminal, 'This is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong,' or, 'This deed is bad, and this other deed is bad, and this one is also very very bad,' the criminal understands the word 'wrong' in this way: It is wrong when 'he' doesn't get his fair share of profits from the crime just committed; he understands the word bad in this way: a fellow criminal betrayed a trust. That must be why, when I say, 'I am filled with rage,' the criminal says, 'But why?' And when I blow things up and make life generally unlivable for the criminal (is my life not unlivable too?) the criminal is shocked, surprised. But nothing can erase my rage--not an apology, not a large sum of money, not the death of the criminal."

-Jamaica Kincaid

[Ɔbenfo Ọbádélé]

Aisha;37767 wrote: its such a shame that this author, who is from Antigua, is largely disliked by Antiguans, just because she writes the truth.

Very powerful quote Okyeame Kwame. meda ase.

Ampa! Isn't that sad?

YEnni aseda o!

[jthig]

Language is extremely important as a vehicle for communication but without anything of substance to say, what does it matter. I grew around many Spanish speaking individuals and while on the surface it would seem important to learn Spanish for that reason, it would not have benefited any liberation efforts. Our family is attempting to learn a combination of both languages of colonizers and that of Kmtyw origin, but with a serious plan of using the chosen languages to aid in our principles.

[Ɔbenfo Ọbádélé]

This is a very good point. Correct content plus our languages is of the utmost priority. Thus Abibitumi Kasa!

jthig;87168 wrote: Language is extremely important as a vehicle for communication but without anything of substance to say, what does it matter. I grew around many Spanish speaking individuals and while on the surface it would seem important to learn Spanish for that reason, it would not have benefited any liberation efforts. Our family is attempting to learn a combination of both languages of colonizers and that of Kmtyw origin, but with a serious plan of using the chosen languages to aid in our principles.

[Ayevbosa]

You are 100% correct.

[Lyonezz CANDI, MSW]

I think the only reason we need to know the colonizers language  is to utilize as a tool. :soldiert: