I do not believe that anyone should be forced to change their language In order to fit in according to someone else’s thinking. It is the right as a human being to decide if you want to learn or to convert to another language. Why should you have to change your language? Why not just simply add a new language? You don’t have to divorce your own language to please another man kind, cause I’m sure if they were being imposed they would feel angry and objective too about changing their language. Your language is very important to your culture as a people. It defines who you are and how your family is raised, fed, and educated. It is wrong to be punished and humiliated because of your language. No one has the right to take away your freedom of choice. Ngugi makes a good case for the obvious point: that the relation of Africans to those imposed languages is a very different one from that which the same Africans have to the native languages they speak at home. Speaking and writing in the language of the colonizers will naturally be different than in the language one speaks while at play or with one’s family. In addition, the language of the colonizer is often a truly foreign one: segments of society understand it badly, if at all, and so certain audiences can not be reached by works in these imposed languages.
In his essay “Decolonizing the Mind”, Ngugi wa Thiong’o talks about the impacts language has on people, especially to him who used to be a colonial child. He starts the essay by telling the story of his childhood. When he was little, Gikuyu, his mother tongue, was used in daily life until his country was invaded and the colonists tried to replace it with English. Ngugi emphasizes the importance of language to people as a mean of communication and as culture. The three main features of language as communication are as links between people, as spoken and as written and their features as culture are as history, as images and as words that represent a culture. He also states how dangerous it is to break the harmony between these aspects.
The Term Paper on Talking Your Culture: Diversity In Language And Culture
Every society has their own unique culture in which the lives of the people are patterned. Culture is responsible for shaping the identity of a society and the individuals who live in that society. People conform to distinguishable culture of their respective society by adhering to the norms, traditions, beliefs, and values that characterize a culture. Culture shapes people’s behavior and ...
“We therefore learnt to value words for the meanings and nuances. Language was not a mere string of words. It had a suggestive power well beyond the immediate and lexical meaning. Our appreciation of the suggestive magical power of language was reinforced by the games we played with words through riddles, proverbs, transposition of syllables, or through nonsensical but musically arranged words…the language of our evening teach-ins, and the language of our immediate and wider community, and the language of our work in the fields were one.
“And then I went to school, a colonial school, and this harmony was broken. The language of my education was no longer the language of my culture.”
-pg 11
Language itself is a major element which separates cultures ‘” on the surface the question of how cultures can exchange information when they lack a common communicative medium is apparent but the issue runs much deeper than a lack of understanding.
