By: Lubnah
Abdulhalim
LANGUAGE DEVASTATIONS
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| Photo Courtesy: 15minutenews.com |
Language is one
of the most important aspects of life and without it, communication would have
been impossible. With every generation, new vocabularies arose and a different
language that they alone could understand. The youth always preferred a way to
communicate amongst themselves that the elders wouldn’t get to ever know what
they talked about. Maybe that is why, ‘lugha za mitaani’ never seized to grow.
Just when the older generations caught up with the youth, they would purposely
change into newly formed vocabularies. We had the ‘sheng’ that really
threatened the official languages in school whereby students started applying
it in their compositions and insha and even made it their commonly used
language. Sheng really affected what could be called ‘pure English’ or
‘Kiswahili fasihi’.
Yet still,
generations never seized to come up with new forms of language. Another one was
the reversed way of talking whereby words are read backwards. Anita became
‘Atina’ and Amina became ‘Anima’ and much more of that. Apart from that, there
are those who added the‘t’ and ‘r’ syllables in every word they said. ‘Wataka
nini’ was said as ‘waratarakara niriniri?’ or ‘wewe njoo hapa’ became ‘werewere
njoro harapara’. I remember how my classmates at high school would talk like
that and so fast and it would practically take me some minutes before ever
understanding what they were talking about. So when they laughed, I would be
among the last ones to laugh when the joke was already stale; since I was slow
in understanding their language.
With all that
still, the most interesting way of talking was the direct translation one. It
is very amazing how people quickly got to find shortcuts for themselves in
language. I remember one time hearing a primary school student exclaiming ‘My
mother parent!’ and it actually took me a minute before I understood that what
she meant was the Kiswahili exclamation of ‘mamangu mzazi!’ When you ask them
they say, we are supposed not to dare talk Kiswahili at school unless during
Kiswahili lesson so they opted for direct translation. But what is even worse
is that even the honorable people in the society have been caught doing the
same. Without pointing fingers, one member of the parliament said ‘I am eyes’
to mean ‘niko macho’ when caught asleep in the parliament.
The youth
actually find it fun to be talking in the direct translation form and well, I
have to admit that it is quite interesting how fast they think. ‘Mum is
scratching the coconut’ to mean ‘mama yuwakuna nazi’ Another example is how a
boy was telling his teacher ‘my dad pulls the cigarette’ to mean ‘yuwavuta
sigara’ but that’s not the end of it; they can actually write you an entire
composition doing the same.
The most recent
one and most widely spread is the internet language. Teachers have been made to
cancel a lot of words in examination papers due to the effect of internet
language. Words like ‘LOL’ for ‘laugh out loud’ ‘btw’ for ‘by the way’ tnx’ for
‘thanks’ among many others is what has made youths apparently ‘lazy’ in writing
with correct spellings and proper language.
Well, it may be
funny but the effect of it all is what is seen in the compositions and
examination papers and students tend to fail miserably for such reasons. It is
important that students know how to differentiate what is play time and when it
is time to get serious with studies and language.
