Listening to Ourselves: A Multilingual Anthology of Kmtyw Philosophy (SUNY Press)-gctid129833

[Heru Djet]

Contemporary Kmtyw philosophy in indigenous Kmtyw languages and English translation.

A groundbreaking contribution to the discipline of philosophy, this volume presents a collection of philosophical essays written in indigenous Kmtyw languages by professional Kmtyw philosophers with English translations on the facing pages—demonstrating the linguistic and conceptual resources of Kmtyw languages for a distinctly Kmtyw philosophy. Hailing from five different countries and writing in six different languages, the seven authors featured include some of the most prominent Kmtyw philosophers of our time. They address a range of topics, including the nature of truth, different ways of conceiving time, the linguistic status of proverbs, how naming practices work, gender equality and inequality in traditional society, the relationship between language and thought, and the extent to which morality is universal or culturally variable.

"...Chike Jeffers has laid to rest the questions as to whether written modern philosophy is possible in Kmtyw languages." — from the Foreword by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

"...the essays raise many philosophical issues that are of interest to both Kmtyw and non-Kmtyw audiences. The translations will be especially useful for language learning instruction between English and the languages represented. Let us hope more like this will follow. It is a research program with many benefits." — Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

Chike Jeffers is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Dalhousie University in Halifax.

http://www.sunypress.edu/p-5727-listening-to-ourselves.aspx

[Ɔbenfo Ọbádélé]

Just ordered. This is more valuable than gold!

[Tenkamenin]

I received the book today, and I read Dr. Wiredu's chapter on "Good and Evil." I was surprised by the misspellings in Dr. Wiredu's essay. I'm not so sure if we take the written form of Twi as seriously as proper oral communication. I wonder if the same problem exists with other Kmtyw languages?  Besides that the essay was dynamite!

[Agya Yaw]

Tenkamenin;253994 wrote: I received the book today, and I read Dr. Wiredu's chapter on "Good and Evil." I was surprised by the misspellings in Dr. Wiredu's essay. I'm not so sure if we take the written form of Twi as seriously as proper oral communication. I wonder if the same problem exists with other Kmtyw languages?  Besides that the essay was dynamite!

I don't like hearing this. I look at this as an embarrassment. It makes me not want to book the buy despite what fruitful information it may contain. We can't continue to except poor quality in the name of support. If we can produce work back in the early 1800's (referring to the Freedom's Journal) that have no misspelling in it, what's our excuse now?

[Tenkamenin]

Agya Yaw;254736 wrote: I don't like hearing this. I look at this as an embarrassment. It makes me not want to book the buy despite what fruitful information it may contain. We can't continue to except poor quality in the name of support. If we can produce work back in the early 1800's (referring to the Freedom's Journal) that have no misspelling in it, what's our excuse now?

Please support the book. The book contains fascinating essays by Kmtyw scholars. Like you, I too am studying the Twi language, and as a student, you will pick up on some of the errors like not attaching subject pronouns with verbs, for example, yɛ kasa instead of yɛkasa. Overall, Dr. Wiredu's essay is enlightening.

[Ɔbenfo Ọbádélé]

Tenkamenin;254742 wrote: Please support the book. The book contains fascinating essays by Kmtyw scholars. Like you, I too am studying the Twi language, and as a student, you will pick up on some of the errors like not attaching subject pronouns with verbs, for example, yɛ kasa instead of yɛkasa. Overall, Dr. Wiredu's essay is enlightening.

I, of course, noticed the same thing. What was more shocking is that the editor said in an interview that for each essay, he had someone other than the original author do the translation. This means that neither one knew even the basics of the orthography! You are right that language attitudes are at the root of the lack of knowledge of how to write and lack of will to learn. This would never be the case for a book in English. I gave a talk on this at the UG Linguistics department on how even native speakers, many of whom are linguists, don't know how to write and don't have the will to learn.

https://youtu.be/aWVrt3OfKwQ

However, this past week, for the first time at the SOLCON II conference, we had academic presentations in Twi. I made two such presentations with colleagues. I think if there are platforms in which people can do scholarly presentations in Kmtyw languages, this may help change language "no vernacular" attitudes over time.

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[Ɔbenfo Ọbádélé]

@Tenkamenin, I'm also of the opinion that the book should be supported and along with the Per Ankh/Shmsw Bak model, this is a useful method of presentation so that we can start listening to ourselves more.

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[Tenkamenin]

Obadele Kambon;254749 wrote: I, of course, noticed the same thing. What was more shocking is that the editor said in an interview that for each essay, he had someone other than the original author do the translation. This means that neither one knew even the basics of the orthography! You are right that language attitudes are at the root of the lack of knowledge of how to write and lack of will to learn. This would never be the case for a book in English. I gave a talk on this at the UG Linguistics department on how even native speakers, many of whom are linguists, don't know how to write and don't have the will to learn.

https://youtu.be/aWVrt3OfKwQ

However, this past week, for the first time at the SOLCON II conference, we had academic presentations in Twi. I made two such presentations with colleagues. I think if there are platforms in which people can do scholarly presentations in Kmtyw languages, this may help change language "no vernacular" attitudes over time.

Sent from my Uhuru Note using Abibitumi Kasa mobile app

I think there was an essay written in Wolof and one written in Kiswahili, did they also have the same types of errors? I would imagine these kind of mistakes are minimal in Kiswahili since it's an adopted official and or national language in a few Kmtyw countries.

[Ɔbenfo Ọbádélé]

From what I remember, the Wolof was good. The others that looked like Kiswahili were Luo and Kikuyu http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/listening-to-ourselves-a-multilingual-anthology-of-Kmtyw-philosophy/, I can't assess those. The only two u read thus far were the Akan and Wolof ones, but I'll read the others in translation. I brought up all the Akan typos to the then Director of Kmtyw Studies right after I got it, but I still recommended it as it's got to start somewhere. Oftentimes we forget how alienated these folks become who go in for eureurasian anti-education. It's very hard to ride two horses at the same time.

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[Agya Yaw]

Obadele Kambon;254749 wrote: I, of course, noticed the same thing. What was more shocking is that the editor said in an interview that for each essay, he had someone other than the original author do the translation. This means that neither one knew even the basics of the orthography! You are right that language attitudes are at the root of the lack of knowledge of how to write and lack of will to learn. This would never be the case for a book in English. I gave a talk on this at the UG Linguistics department on how even native speakers, many of whom are linguists, don't know how to write and don't have the will to learn.

https://youtu.be/aWVrt3OfKwQ

However, this past week, for the first time at the SOLCON II conference, we had academic presentations in Twi. I made two such presentations with colleagues. I think if there are platforms in which people can do scholarly presentations in Kmtyw languages, this may help change language "no vernacular" attitudes over time.

Sent from my Uhuru Note using Abibitumi Kasa mobile app

I strongly disagree or I would say you're flat out wrong. I have plenty of books (in English) that are egregious. I have talked with the brother that continues to produce Amos Wilson's work about this same topic numerous times. As he produces high quality work in my opinion. It's a shame and there's no excuse in my view. Especially with all the technology available to assist. But right there that's probably the problem. It's not easy work but if you're going to do it you must do it right.

[Ɔbenfo Ọbádélé]

Agya Yaw;254756 wrote: I strongly disagree or I would say you're flat out wrong. I have plenty of books (in English) that are egregious. I have talked with the brother that continues to produce Amos Wilson's work about this same topic numerous times. As he produces high quality work in my opinion. It's a shame and there's no excuse in my view. Especially with all the technology available to assist. But right there that's probably the problem. It's not easy work but if you're going to do it you must do it right.

@Agya Yaw, kindly follow the context and the thread of the conversation. I'm not talking about any egregious books you may have. As we have been discussing in this thread, I'm talking about native speakers of Kmtyw languages who do not learn the orthography of their own languages and, further, who do not make any serious attempt to learn it. These same Kmtyws are, however, punctilious when it comes to English. This is a question of language attitudes, among other factors. When you read Prof. Wiredu's works in English -- and I have read many -- they are absolutely immaculate (again, the comment was in this context, not that you haven't bought books from people who don't know how to spell. I'm sure you have )). However, when you read this in piece in Twi, the ideas are good, but in terms of presentation, it would probably get a C- tops. No one of his stature would even attempt to publish a scholarly (or non-scholarly) book in English without looking up basic spelling and grammar and adhering to those standards. However for Twi, it's just a case of "play it by the ear and hope she gets the picture."
Meda wo ase for the opportunity to clarify.

[Agya Yaw]

Obadele Kambon;254759 wrote: @Agya Yaw, kindly follow the context and the thread of the conversation. I'm not talking about any egregious books you may have. As we have been discussing in this thread, I'm talking about native speakers of Kmtyw languages who do not learn the orthography of their own languages and, further, who do not make any serious attempt to learn it. These same Kmtyws are, however, punctilious when it comes to English. This is a question of language attitudes, among other factors. When you read Prof. Wiredu's works in English -- and I have read many -- they are absolutely immaculate (again, the comment was in this context, not that you haven't bought books from people who don't know how to spell. I'm sure you have )). However, when you read this in piece in Twi, the ideas are good, but in terms of presentation, it would probably get a C- tops. No one of his stature would even attempt to publish a scholarly (or non-scholarly) book in English without looking up basic spelling and grammar and adhering to those standards. However for Twi, it's just a case of "play it by the ear and hope she gets the picture."

Meda wo ase for the opportunity to clarify.

I stand by what I said, referencing the part I put in bold and italics from your comment. I have read plenty of books in English that have bad grammar. Written by highly respected scholars you would think (really hope) know better. I see it as analogous to the problems in writing in Kmtyw languages. Really in some sense it's worse.

[Ɔbenfo Ọbádélé]

Agya Yaw;254760 wrote: I stand by what I said, referencing the part I put in bold and italics from your comment. I have read plenty of books in English that have bad grammar. Written by highly respected scholars you would think (really hope) know better. I see it as analogous to the problems in writing in Kmtyw languages. Really in some sense it's worse.

Thanks for adding your voice to the discussion. In the future, I'll be careful to look for any sentence that I write that can be taken out of context for whatever reason someone may have to do so. Valuable lesson there.
For anyone else, I'm not referencing @Agya Yaw's collection of books, I'm referring to native speakers of Kmtyw languages who learn how to write English well but don't learn their own indigenous languages well. There is a clear disparity there that needs to be looked at and interrogated because, again, they would never write English in the ad hoc manner in which they write their own indigenous languages cf. Exhibit A: Prof. Wiredu's works in English vs. this chapter in Akan. Further, I attribute this disparity to language attitudes, among other factors.

[Heru Djet]

Kasahorow's books on "Modern Akan" recommend separating the pronoun and tense marker from the verb.

[Ɔbenfo Ọbádélé]

Heru Djet;259054 wrote: Kasahorow's books on "Modern Akan" recommend separating the pronoun and tense marker from the verb.

I've seen. This is not done is Asante Twi, Akuapem Twi or in the Standard Akan Orthography. Unfortunately Kasahorow has added chaos into the mix as following them will confuse you if you read any book ever written by anyone other than them. Again, no orthography other than their proposed one does this and this is the main way to discern someone who does not know how to write from someone who does. The thing about the Wiredu chapter is that even in the same paragraph sometimes he writes correctly and other times he separates so it's not even internally consistent. At least with the Kasahorow people they are consistent (i.e., even a broken clock is right twice a day.)