Language CPR
Yazi, I didn’t know that isiXhosa existed on the web until, well, fairly recently. This got me to thinking that ‘minority languages’ do have a toe in after all. Until I looked at the bigger picture, as it turns out isiXhosa is rather marginalised, being just one of the eleven (1/11) official languages in SA, eish mara mama!
Now in your readily available mental picture of the globe, stand back and ‘bigger picture’ that number, in terms of how prevalent it would be south of the Tropic of Capricorn (1/about 200), you remember the Tropic of Capricorn right? Last seen in a primary school Geography textbook. I’m digressing…
Extend the mental picture even further to the likelihood of isiXhosa’s presence in the content… in the world, and you get (1/5000). Because in case you weren’t keeping up, that’s how many languages are spoken in the world. And if your belief in aliens was rife you would need to consider the questionable standing of isiXhosa in the universe, to infinity – and beyond!
Upon completion of the above exercise you begin to see that the marginalisation of isiXhosa on the web is appropriately reflective of its lack of prominence in the world. Though it’s important to keep in mind that the same could be said about Friesian in the Netherlands, Ainus in Japan, and a list of other languages my tongue finds unpronounceable.
In my last post, Y’all gon’ learn Chinese… y’all gon’ speak Chinese, I mentioned Rhodes University’s successful initiative to translate the institution’s Webmail service to isiXhosa. This set me upon a quest to find more websites of my vernacular…’twas indeed a mammoth task. Though I did come across an interesting blogger for East London’s Daily Dispatch, Bongani Siqoko with his blog Epozini (In my house).
Admittedly I did find it rather curious that although the content was in isiXhosa, the instructions themselves (‘search’, ‘archives’, ‘about’) remained in English. Mara why?
Surely, by virtue of the blog being in isiXhosa the people who are likely to flock to it would be those comfortable with the language. Those who would not need the navigation tools translated. And if the point was to maintain the site’s ‘consistency’, this could still be achieved with ’search’ in isiXhosa – could it not? I may be making mountains out of molehills so I’ll let this one go.
When searching for Afrikaans websites I came across one with links to other Afrikaans websites. It lists travel sites, food and drink, and other types of nicknacks these like-minded folk may find interesting.
Yet when conducting the same with ‘isiXhosa’ as the search phrase, all I got were articles with the word ’isiXhosa’ in them… not quite what I had in mind. Proving that these, among other minority languages the world over still have a long way to go before being regarded in the same reputed calibre as Portuguese, Hindi and of course the usual suspects - Mandarin, and English etc.
So power to languages that are fighting the good fight, unwilling to be buried alive with the majority’s shovels.
Mark Griffith, site administrator for the website dedicated to boosting awareness of the world’s languages says:
We English-speakers hardly notice English – it’s like air for us. But every other language is also an atmosphere for an entire cultural world, and each of these worlds has people whose home it is. Each language encapsulates a unique way of talking and thinking about life.
It is the responsibility of mother tongue speakers to reclaim their indigenous language atmospheres. Hence this vlog on Vernaculer in Performance Art, the artists presented here are doing their bit to converve their mother tongues.
