This article was published on February 25, 2025 in The Citizen Newspaper, Tanzania.
Shimbo Pastory
Since the year 2000, the international mother language day has been celebrated internationally on February 21. The goal of this celebration is to advocate for protection of the treasures of mother languages, or tribal languages for the generations to come.
These languages need to be protected because they are knowledge banks of different cultures and civilizations. When they fade, they disappear with unimaginable wealth of history, creativity, knowledge and legacy of the people of that particular culture.
According to the United Nations, these mother languages are also crucial in attaining the set Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as they help to communicate culture, knowledge, and to keep peace, harmony and social integration.
It is beneficial to have more non-divisive linguistic diversity and multilingual societies. More languages also need to be empowered and adopted for education and formal usage to help bring the services closer to the hearts and lives of the people. It will also help in efficiency of the services being delivered.
As per UN General Assembly resolution A/RES/61/266, governments have a duty to have in place measures to protect all mother languages used by the people.
Globally the generational transition of mother languages is fading, and is particularly affected by the migration trends, career aspirations, and digital exposure of younger generations which make them conversant with international languages early.
In the same regard, most international languages are seen as superior and more important as compared to indigenous mother languages, which reduce the use of the latter.In the education field there is also a question of ease of learning when one is taught in their language.
When student are taught in a language different from theirs, they use a lot of mental strength to translate and transliterate before they can express or apply their thoughts.
While this can be unavoidable, given the broader and global visions, their languages should not be negated as bad or useless, and their capacity to lean should not be solely attached to their capacities in the new languages.
Children can be encouraged to learn foreign languages even without being told their mother languages are not good enough. This way they will keep their love towards their mother languages and will not feel shameful to use them.
The extinction is real. There are at the moment according to the United Nations over 1000 languages that have gone to complete extinction. According to Ethnologue cumulative research, a language dies ever 40 days. By the year 2022, over 3000 languages were considered endangered, which is about 40 percent of global languages.
Tanzania is also listed among countries with endangered languages. Endangered Languages Project report states that at least 2 languages have gone extinct in Tanzania, and there are at least 20 languages that are considered extremely endangered.
In his research on Tanzanian endangered languages published by the South African Journal of African Languages, Professor Karsten Legere highlights that priority should be given in research and documentation to the group of languages categorized as L1, which are Akie (Okiek), Asaax, Bungu/Wungu, Burunge, Gweno, Hadza, Ikizu, Isanzu, Kisi, Magoma, Mbugu (Ma’a), Mbugwe, Mbunga, Mwera (Nyasa), Ndonde, Ngasa (Ongamo), Pimbwe, Shashi, Sonjo (Temi), Vidunda, Wanda.
He also said in the research that all languages spoken in the coastal regions should be included in this priority list as well (Karsten Legère, Language Endangerment in Tanzania: Identifying and Maintaining Endangered Languages, 2012). This was 13 years ago and the research focused on languages with less than 20,000 speakers.
There are chances that many more languages have fallen to that focus group at the moment because of rural-urban migration and widespread use of Kiswahili and emergent use of English in the country beyond the educational circles.
On a global scale, another solution is to digitize the endangered languages. UNESCO, during the International Year of Indigenous languages in 2019, established a platform to help with digitizing languages. The IYIL2019 website has remained a treasure for tools and resources on how to digitally protect and promote languages.
When a language is digitized it can be easily accessed by people from all over the world, making it easy to research on it and propagate it. It is more difficult when a language is also completely geographically limited and without literature.
More local efforts are needed in this regard to have our local languages preserved. While as Tanzanians we consider Kiswahili to be more unifying, safeguarding tribal languages will not harm our unity.
Unity is not necessarily uniformity, we can have unity in diversity, which in turn will afford us an opportunity to learn from the treasures of different traditions and cultures in our country.
When we lose a language we lose not only communication, but also culture, wisdom, art, and the entire worldview of the people of that linguistic group. We also need to positively motivate our young people to love indigenous language and own them courageously and proudly.
Shimbo Pastory is an advocate for positive social transformation, and a student of Loyola School of Theology, Ateneo de Manila University, Manila, Philippines. Website: www.shimbopastory.com
