I’m of great disappointment and heartbreak when I see the young ones and the teeming youth speaking English Language without any itches and glitches but fumble when speaking the mother tongue[language]. Sadly, parents nowadays want force the English Language deep down to the throat of their children, and they end up speaking terrible grammar, our society nowadays uses the English Language as the yardstick to measure the intelligence of someone, that is below belt and it makes no sense
I chanced upon many young ladies and gentlemen and they speak and make a serious blunder in the Queen’s language yet they feel pompous of themselves thinking they are speaking anything that is prudent enough. Yet, they characterize those that speak their mother language/tongue[local language] more fluent as block-headed. Many a time they keep making a serious blunder in the usage of “I am and I’m” the right preposition in every sentence, their subject-verb agreement is fueled with mistakes, their adjectival and adverbial expressions is a turn off yet they think they are speaking English which they are looking forward to accolades, you don’t need a clairvoyant to tell you this that the English Language your relatives forced you to speak is the cause of this blunder you do make when speaking and writing.
Unequivocally, I can boldly say that those that always boast to have command over the Queen’s language can not write it well, they can’t write the exact English they speak. I sometimes get perturbed when I see the English Language results of these children and other people then I ask myself, but this person which kind of English language are they speaking. We are here killing ourselves to the maximum in learning a borrowed language and we’ve shunned our local languages, posterity won’t forgive us in case these our birthright fade away.
We’ve emulated every chronicle of our colonial masters too much to the extent that I see people eating kenkey with Fork and Knife, this is not anything near being a lady or gentlemen it’s a loss of identity and dignity as a Ghanaian. Our languages are fading away! We have English/French Language speaking everywhere. What we don’t know is, when it comes to languages, we have L1 and L2, the L1 is our mother tongue while the L2 is the English Language, we need to learn L1 first to propel us well enough to learn the L2. Let’s leave the L2 to be the burden of our professional English tutors/facilitators to teach us well, even them they sometimes struggle!
Be proud of who you are, where you come from, and your culture. I love it when I hear other languages, names and history. Speaking the English Language doesn’t make you better off than the white. We are Ghanaians let’s speak our languages and make the local languages paramount., Our posterity won’t forgive us should we fail to pass on the culture to them.
Happy International Mother Language Day.
I am Nii Adjetey Quao. Actor, Playwright, Director, Poet/Spoken Word Artiste & A Teacher at Happy Kids School.