FROM:
Mika Chipana | CONTRIBUTING WRITER
TO: Native languages, invisible hierarchies and linguistic pride SUBJECT: Re: The prodigal tongue: Making the return to my native languages
Growing up in South Africa, an invisible language hierarchy almost cost me the ability to communicate in my native languages.
STAFF PHOTO BY RYAN WALKER
“Himina, Xhangani girl. I am a Xitsonga girl.” I used to proudly repeat this phrase to anyone who asked. Knowing and speaking Xitsonga, a South African language, is a part of who I am. The first language I learned to speak as a child was Xitsonga. My father’s language was my predominant tongue until I went to preschool, when my mother began teaching me Southern Sotho. I grew up fluent in both. Preschool also introduced me to Afrikaans, a language from South Africa’s colonial history that followed me throughout my school career. However, English, the fourth and final language I learned, was the ultimate eraser of my native tongues. During the apartheid era, Black people were forced out of cities and into Bantustans, or homelands, spread across the country. From these homelands grew a tree of many different cultures — and languages. Xitsonga and Northern Sotho were spoken in the north, while the Nguni tribes that spoke Zulu and Xhosa were spread in the eastern parts of the country. The rich cultural landscape is what makes Africa a unique continent. When a language is lost, the culture can disappear with it. Preserving language, however, carries on the customs, traditions and rituals of that culture. Language is the bridge that connects me to my father’s tribe and my mother tongue. Black language is a celebration of my birthright as an individual; it remains untainted by colonialism and modernism. It is a reminder of my childhood, my grandmothers and the villages that they raised me in. Hearing the familiar sounds of Xitsonga takes me to my grandmother’s four-room house in Malamulele, a small village in northern South Africa, where I could eat freshly picked mangos on hot sunny days and bathe outside in a plastic tub while neighbors wandered by. Our white teachers would condemn anyone who spoke their native language in primary school, whether on the playground or inside the classroom. Anyone who struggled to adapt to this rule would be forced to sit by the teacher’s feet
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during recess. Not speaking fluent English was enough to deem a child slow, even if they understood and spoke four other languages. “Ja Baas, Nee Baas.” “Yes Boss, No Boss.” In apartheid South Africa, Black people who worked as domestic workers or under any Afrikaner were expected to know and speak the Afrikaans language. To this day, it is not rare to find older Black people who are fluent in Afrikaans but barely know English, similar to residents of former European colonies in Africa who still speak French or Belgian. It seemed to me that language was organized in some sort of hierarchical system. Books in the bookstore were never in my native language, only in English or Afrikaans. In high school I was never given the choice to study a native South African language, only English or Afrikaans. English was prioritized, while the languages of our heritage were not tolerated in formal spaces. It was unacceptable if someone did not speak English but somehow all right if they couldn’t communicate with their own Zulu grandmother. I was unaware of it then, but as my teachers reprimanded us for speaking our home languages, they forced us into this invisible hierarchy. Soon enough, I could not speak any language other than English. Black music and culture became something I was no longer a part of, even as my family continued to speak to me in our native languages. My school life affected my home life, and when I couldn’t find the balance between speaking English at school and Northern Sotho at home, it made sense to only speak English. As my friends played Diketo, a popular game among Black girls that involves throwing and catching stones, and chatted animatedly in their mother tongue, I remained unwilling to speak anything but English, so much so that I was labeled a coconut — brown on the outside, white on the inside. Blackness was something I hid and strayed away from in all forms, including music and dance, to fit into what was deemed the norm. Somehow I’d become convinced that English was good and intelligent while anything else was not. As the years passed, words that should have come to me easily — like eggs, knife and fork in Xitsonga — disappeared from my vocabulary, and the languages I had once spoken so fluently were now foreign to my tongue. The way one’s tongue moves when speaking is different according to the specific language. Venda requires one to roll their tongue, while Nguni languages such as Zulu and Xhosa require a clicking tongue. However, English does not require such gymnastics of the tongue, and a lack of use allows the muscle memory to fade. It was on my first high school camping trip that I realized that the language hierarchy was not a figment of my imagination. I had boxed myself into only speaking English instead of leaning into being multilingual. Although teachers only enforced speaking English at school, I had allowed that to overshadow the fact that at home, I had the liberty to speak the languages of my mother and father. I chose to be influenced by those who could only speak one language, English, rather than my family, who could speak multiple languages.
