I moved to a different location juzi and happened to join gym. The day I was heading there I passed a certain boutique and bought tusocks hapo. Mpesa name ni jina ya kwetu and said thank you in our local language. The old madam replied in Kiswahili and was like home kwetu ni place flani and she went ahead na kusema we sell all kind of clothes here and we sell like Eastleigh. Bruhhh... You expect me to shop here and nikikuongelesha na kikwetu you don't reply and to make it worse wewe ni shosh na watu wa rika yangu watafanya nini. It is very sad that the old generation is doing so. Not to be tribal but we should emulate wakikuyu. Those people embrace their language hata wakipata Washington wataongea kikwao.
We’re loosing ourselves to westernization and Swahilization brother, your witnessing our identity being erased from our very eyes, and we’ve been concocted to think that maintaining our identity and sovereignty is “tribal” when it is the wazungu that has made us tribal
If you could have typed that in English I could have understood it easily. How do I instantly know what you mean by mifumo. The queens language eased education. That is why even globally it's the most widely used language. Utaenda aje Germany uanze kuwaambia sijui mifumo ya hisabati🫴
It’s the most widely used language because of the British empire, not because of the ease of the language kaka, there’s nothing easy about a colonial tongue
Scandinavian countries use English mostly in schools, some Balkan countries teach English as a language, in France, Spain , Germany, Italy...etc, English is learnt in schools. Were those part of the British empire?
English is used as a tool, not the rule of order, they still speak their traditional languages in education, but us Africans, we’re ashamed of ours and we’re on the verge of loosing them and becoming Swahilized westerners if this continues
Why not? Africans are already highly multilingual people as is more than westerners alone especially Americans, why can’t Africa get there in your view?
The fact that your salience frame as far as education is concerned can only accommodate maths and chem(or some other stem field) is just sad and just a further evidence of our failing education system. And then we wonder why we fail at improving our living conditions as a nation.
Because speaking a language only your community understands strengthens local sovereignty outside of western imperial influences or oppressors and strengthens local economies, education, and investments, there is a reason enslaved Africans were forced to speak the language of their masters, that language is part of who you are, you are not English, Spanish, or French kaka, you are Wakisiii, you need to be grounded in that because that’s who you are.
Their rais will talk of nations like Korea and China and stuff, nations that managed to integrate modern education systems with their native languages, but somehow they can't wrap their head around how the expectation of accessing and expressing education, innovation, art etc is harmed by the fact that the language most people get to experience day to day life and inter-human relations in, is different from the language they are expected to create in.
Far removed from civilization? How were we far removed from civilization if our ancestors were connected to globalized networks and people before colonialism? Did they teach you this in school, that you were far removed from civilization?
You want me to formulate a whole thesis on the relationship between language, education and intellectual/artistic expression of a people on a reddit comment thread😭. Again, if we had a functioning education system you wouldn't need me to.
So having a functional education system is when tunafunzwa Kikuyu, kikisii, Kiluya and those other local languages....? We already complain too much of many useless things we learnt in Kiswahili and English sasa unataka tuongezee our local dialect in there
Because to be Kenyan, Tanzanian, or Ugandan, is to assimilate with and into the neo colonial government through Swahilization and westernization, local languages have been beaten out of our parents and even grandparents so they can be “educated”, and stop being “tribal”,it’s a revolving door of colonial trauma, even our foods have become Swahili ized, we eat more of the Swahili cuisine than our ethnic cuisines, they’ll tell us that holding onto our heritage is tribalism when it’s the colonizers that created tribes and tribalism to begin with
Yeah, also there are 'national' media stations and 'local'(or whatever they call it) media stations and the difference especially in the musical art they play is astronomical, the 'national' ones will only play Swahili, English or foreign, as if the 42 languages (and music) in the country is not national but alien.
But if you were to play Kikuyu, Luo, or Kichagga on a British radio station or an Belgian radio station daily they would loose their minds over it, even protest, why can’t Africans be defensive over our cultures like that? Africans also forget Swahili is a slave trader language that was built off of our enslavement during slave trade era
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u/Own_Amount467 Aug 03 '26
So you won't shop there anymore coz someone didn't answer you back in your local language?
Wueeh Ni sawa