Use that Mother Tongue or Die Tryin’
South Africa: Proper Use of Mother Tongue the Way Forward
South Africa has arguably the most progressive language policy on paper. This fact is acknowledged by most people who are familiar with the sociology and the politics of language.
In spite of this, however, if one reads only the Afrikaans press, one would have to conclude that this language policy is a total failure and that we are moving rapidly to a situation where the de facto sole official language is the “hated” Queen’s English. The reader would be surprised, therefore, to hear that some of us hold the unpalatable view that, because of what we call our “languish policy”, this country is in fact simply carrying out in practice a neo-apartheid language policy. For, in spite of the fact that Afrikaans is being driven out of many domains of social life and being replaced by English, it is still the most favoured official language next to English.
Why is language policy important? And why is it a bad idea that we should all be forced to operate in English only when we transact business or are involved in any public domain?
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