IN IGNORANCE THEY CALL IT ‘VERNACULAR’

Sunday February 28, 2010
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Ghana, last Sunday joined the rest of the world to commemorate International Mother Tongue Day.

The day was instituted by the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1999 in recognition of the value of mother tongue as an instrument for transmitting culture for the socio-economic development of the individual.

The event which has been celebrated worldwide since the year 2000, is also aimed at creating and promoting awareness of the preservation of the mother tongue and provides the opportunity for the recognition of linguistic diversity and importance of multilingual education.

In the opinion of the Times, the event is worth celebrating in view of the importance of local languages in the socio-economic development of a nation. However, we regret the low key given to the celebration.

History has taught us that our forefathers used the mother tongue which is the indigenous language in so many ways to train their children before the advent of formal education.
Unfortunately, in Ghana, too much attention has been focused on the so-called lingua franca, English language, to the detriment of the mother tongue.

Our rich Ghanaian languages have been relegated to the background while “Queen’s English” has become supreme.

Even in some Ghanaian homes, many parents prefer to communicate with their children in English instead of the mother tongue.

Also in most of our schools, especially, the private preparatory schools, it has become a taboo for the children to communicate in their mother tongue.

To make matters worse, some schools have even posted on their notice boards that “speaking of vernacular is prohibited in the school compound”.

Children who mistakenly speak in their mother tongue are punished.

The obsession with English gets even more absurd when traditional rulers, the custodians of the culture, address their people in English.

The Education Reform programme recommends that the child’s first home language be used as a medium of instruction at the kindergarten and the first three years at the basic level.

This shows the government’s realization of the importance of the local language as an effective tool of communication at the basic level.

The Ghana Education Service must be empowered to train more teachers in the use of our indigenous local languages so that they will in turn train the children in these dialects.

In ancient times, the Greeks and Romans thought that the languages of the other people of the world sounded savage –sounded like “berber”. Out of this came the word, “barbarians”.

Let no-one ever repeat the mistake of a few years ago when government attempted to legislate the use of English as the medium of instruction for children in the first three years in school.

Fortunately, people who know better resisted the move.

We have had cause to cite the Nigerian example in a previous opinion piece in this paper. It will bear repeating, as a reminder to people who think that speaking the native language is the cause of examination failures in school. It is not true.

In Nigeria, researchers found that children who were taught in their native language in the first three years in school performed better in all subjects, including English Language and science than children in schools where the medium of instruction was English.

Let this obsession with foreign language be a thing of the past. The native language is a beautiful one.

Once upon a time those bitten by the English language bug used to call it “Vernacular”! Apparently the craze has not ceased, and some examples are cited of some so-called “international schools” above.


O, Africa! We look down on and denigrate everything of ours. It is true that there are aspects of our culture that need to be looked at once again, in terms of their relevance in today’s world; but the language in which the individual communicates is the engine of his being, like breathing.

Having succeeded in making the mother tongue a medium of instruction, the next step is to ensure its growth. A language that does not grow dies – like Latin.

The only way a language grows is by constant use in written form, that is, the literature.

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