What’s in a language?

10 Jan, 2020 - 00:01 0 Views

eBusiness Weekly

Clifford Shambare

Language is a very powerful tool in man’s affairs. It can be expressed in a number of forms, the most obvious of which is the voice, sometimes referred to as the tongue. In everyday language, one refers to the “mother tongue” — as the language they were first trained to speak by their mothers when they were infants.

And talking of mothers, one finds this category of people having a very influential position in the development of mankind. This is because they spend the most time with the baby, teaching it how to do everything that will be essential in its development in life, from suckling to eating and drinking, to talking, to crawling, to walking — you name it. I think with time, of all these functions, talking eventually supersedes them all.

There are several reasons why this is so, the most critical of which is communication. Through communication, we are able to inform others of what we think about any issue and also how we feel physically and mentally.

Personally, I have always admired people who can speak languages other than their mother tongue. Apart from being employed as translators at conferences and other gatherings, they are much better able to survive in situations where the majority of the people happen to be not those speaking their mother tongue.

That said, the language in which one is most confident in using is the mother tongue. This is largely because there is much less effort in expressing oneself and very little if any, ambiguity when one is either talking or listening to it.

Now, this situation has wide implications, starting from the household, to the community, to the national, to regional, right up to the international level. This is especially so at important gatherings. This latter stage is where those whose languages are spoken the widest, begin to possess immeasurable influence over other peoples.

I do not want to say the reasons are obvious here since very few things are obvious in life, but I am sure you get the gist of what I am driving at. In this case, consider those nations that have driven human development over the centuries, and their mother tongues. Here I have in mind — Greek — the language spoken by the Greeks whose culture and arts have, and still do, influence human development in education, psychology, philosophy, law, politics, and so forth.

Here we have thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, Eratosthenes and others. Then we have mathematicians like Pythagoras and physicists like Archimedes and others.

On the other hand, we have the Romans who were not as artistic and refined as the Greeks, and who adopted quite a good deal from the former, but whose influence spread much wider than the Greeks. Those people spoke Latin, the language we find being used in Europe and North Africa for the whole duration of that empire and even beyond, until now in areas such as science and law.

Here we have what are referred to as the romance languages—that is Portuguese, French, Italian and Spanish having been developed from Latin. Then there is English, a language that has borrowed a no mean amount of Latin since it was first developed from the mid 5th to the 7th centuries. In this respect, how many of us are aware that most of the terms we use in our everyday life today originated from Latin, these being words like amorous, video, audio, summit, mountain, alimentary, nostro, among quite a few others?

When it comes to business matters, I personally have experienced quite a few surprises in my life so far. For example, when we were at high school, we often derided people doing the arts saying they were going to study “Bachelor of Anything” (meaning Bachelor of Arts) when they got to university.

Little did we know that science itself, has always been regarded as part of the arts. (If in doubt of this fact, consult the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on the subject). And quite a few of us were also not aware that at old English universities such as Oxford and Cambridge, even people who graduate in the sciences are awarded BA degrees. For example, my organic chemistry teacher had an MA from Oxford — a situation that first puzzled me when I first learned of his qualifications, among those of other teachers at that institution.

When at business school as late as 1991, I was still making some rude discoveries after realising that the most influential people in business were from the soft sciences and not from the hard sciences like engineering, who were often not a part of the top echelons of the most prominent companies on the international scene.

This situation also explained why in my MBL course, there were many professionals from fields other than social sciences, who got quite interested in learning the subject of human resource(s) management.

And even more recently, while I was reading “Oppenheimer and Son”, I discovered that Ernest Oppenheimer, the founder of the De Beers and Anglo-American empires had only a primary school education while his son Harry and his grandson Nicholas, had studied philosophy, psychology and economics — the PPEs as they were referred to then — at Oxford.

At that very moment it began to dawn on me that by studying these subjects, these men were being groomed for the most influential place in the business world — that is, the board room where organisational visions/goals and consequent strategies, are formulated and drawn for implementation elsewhere — starting from the factory floor to the negotiation and other business forums and conferences at the national and international levels.

When it comes to the criticality of negotiations in business, do you still recall what I said about the subject in one article in this very paper?

And going back to the influence of language at the international level, one finds that he whose language has been adopted widely by other people, wields considerable power in political, military and business matters. In this respect, consider that the English speaking countries, including the USA, possess considerable power in every sphere of life today.

The power language imparts to its speaker — especially if it is their mother tongue — manifests itself in quite a few curious and fascinating ways. In this case consider a country such as Zimbabwe where everyone is always struggling to speak English in circumstances where the English man is not even in sight!

In some cases I have been quite amused while at the same time saddened, by situations where a mother or even father, is struggling to speak English to an infant even in circumstances where one can clearly see that the “teacher” him/herself  is not even proficient in that language!

And Zimbabwe is one country where this practice has been taken to its extremes and as a result, people try to ape the English speakers, in the process, not being very good at it either. In that case, they speak in a stilted manner — “kunoza” as it is often derogatorily referred to! In most such circumstances, it is not surprising to find the speaker concentrating on accent rather than the content and purpose of the conversation itself. Under such circumstances, it would not be difficult to predict the outcome of such a situation where the imitator is often the underdog in the deal under discussion, and the loser at the same time.

You see, when you speak in a foreign tongue, you are also subconsciously being influenced by the owner of that language in every sense. In my yet to be published book; “From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe: Unravelling the economic gridlock”, there is a chapter titled, “The Influence of White soft power on the black Zimbabwean”. This soft power is one of the major reasons why the former Rhodesians still have considerable influence in this economy today.

By concentrating too much on the teaching and speaking of the English language, Zimbabweans are inadvertently drifting away from their cultures and languages, in the process losing their identity. This situation in turn, has serious implications in other spheres of their lives.

In that case, there is a consequent loss of self confidence that invariably results in the loss of one’s wealth to the one with the said soft power. Personally, I am witnessing this process developing slowly but surely, especially among the youth of our country, today. Here, it goes without saying, the implications of such a development! On the other hand, if and when we consider the relationship between the Americans and the Chinese, particularly on the economic front, we find a very interesting case of battles fought through the language/negotiation phenomenon, particularly in negotiating forums.

On the one hand, so far, the English speaking nations — led by the Americans — have always felt no need to learn Mandarin, the main language of the Chinese.

However, they are now realising that this was a big mistake. As a result, they are now going to great lengths to learn the language.

In the “Economist” issue of July 27, 2012, there is an article titled; “Learning Mandarin whatever it takes”. In this article, there is an example of two cases, one in which, “A California lawyer took a year’s leave of absence from work and moved ‘the whole clan’ to Chendu for the sole purpose of immersion in the language”.

And the term “immersion” here is an indication of the extent to which the lawyer wants his children to learn the language.

This situation in itself, is an indication of the high stakes involved in the whole business of the relationship between these two economic giants!

The other case involved an American family that moved to Singapore in 2007, again, “( . . . ) So the kids could grow up speaking Mandarin.”

On the other hand, the Chinese are now taking advantage of this weakness of the Americans by talking in their mother tongue, usually right in the middle of major negotiations.

Zeroing in on Zimbabwe, if one thinks deeply about this matter, they will realise that the Mugabe administration, among its many achievements, despite the flak it is getting from those of us with short memories — during its time, made huge strides in empowering the speakers of those many languages and/ or dialects that have often been relegated to the periphery of the country’s power centre(s).

Of these languages, the speakers of Kalanga — the main dialect of the Rozvi Empire – Tshangani, Tonga, Ndau, Venda, Suthu/Jahunda, and others — can now express themselves in their mother tongue through the mainstream media.

And even though most of us are not conscious of this very important fact, this is a situation that has imparted considerable self esteem to the speakers of these languages. This situation speaks to the need for going back to the promotion of our local languages and culture without necessarily ignoring the teaching of foreign languages (English included). To that end, some have suggested the teaching of the arts, mathematics and science in the local languages, starting with Shona and Ndebele.

But as can be expected, this suggestion has received much resistance — and even ridicule — from certain quarters in our country—not the least of which are indigenous people.

To me, this kind of mentality is paradoxically, quite primitive to say the least!

Clifford Shambare is an agriculturist cum economist and is reachable on 0774960937

 

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