by Ken Kamoche

Special to the G21

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Ken
Kamoche

Hong Kong, CHINA - Ngugi wa Thiongo is Kenya's best-known author. For quite some time now, he has been writing only in Gikuyu, his mother tongue, which has sharply divided his readers. By rubbing the previous dictatorial regime the wrong way, he was forced to flee the country, and now lives in the USA. He was in Kenya recently, during which time he promoted his latest novel, "Murogi wa Kagogo" (Wizard of the Crow).

I have been reading it and in the process testing my Gikuyu, which I don't get to use often, living as I do in Hong Kong. While I have enjoyed this exciting political satire, I am left with two questions.

• One: Are African vernacular languages sufficiently equipped to deal with the challenges of our times?
• Two: Are vernacular writers like Ngugi wa Thiong'o really nurturing or eroding African languages?

Ngugi has eschewed writing fiction in English in the hope that he will help preserve our vernacular languages. That is a noble goal which I fully support. Those who condemn him for writing in Gikuyu because they cannot read the language should hold their horses and wait for the inevitable translation.

But I want to put forward a new and controversial argument: that in his efforts to preserve our language(s), Ngugi inadvertently ends up perpetuating a hybrid language that is only part Gikuyu. In a sense therefore, he finds himself in the paradoxical position of purporting to defend the Gikuyu language and rejecting English, while in fact he succeeds in sneaking into his discourse a disproportionate volume of 'Englishisms' through what I call the phonetic backdoor. Ngugi is preaching Gikuyu while practicing pidgin English.

In "Writers in Politics" (1981,) Ngugi laments that Kenyan writers in English have not produced African literature, but "Afro-Saxon literature" or "Anglophone literature". I contend that Ngugi himself has lent legitimacy to this deplorable state of affairs by strengthening the 'saxon' or 'anglophone' part of the above phenomenon through his extensive use of English-language derived phonetics which masquerade as vernacular.

He leaves us with the impression that we are writing (and speaking) an indigenous language while in reality we are admitting how indispensable is the English language to the development and raison d'etre of vernacular languages. It is no wonder that his detractors reckon he should simply stick to the English they recognize.

Let me explain. There are many words we use in vernacular which are derived from English. Many of these have become accepted as words of vernacular and so they remain. New generations assume they are speaking their vernacular but in fact they are speaking pidgin English. Kenyans don't realize they are speaking pidgin, because they associate the term with places like West and Central Africa or the West Indies. For me a simple definition of pidgin: language resulting from contact between Europeans and so-called indigenous peoples.

In "Murogi wa Kagogo", right from the first page where Ngugi makes his dedication, he talks about 'humwaka' (homework). In his acknowledgement, he throws in words like 'bamiri' (family), 'Njanuari' (January), miriniamu (millennium). It goes on and on, page after page. It gets bizarre when he talks of 'riyunioni ya bamiri' (family reunion), 'bathi thibeco' (special pass), and so forth. You don't have to be a Gikuyu speaker to recognize that this is not Gikuyu. It is pidgin English. No doubt many other of our languages have fallen into this trap.

Apologists of English language claim that our vernacular languages are too superficial to capture modern concepts. Therefore, we are stuck with phonetic monstrosities like 'thekondari' (secondary), 'thwiti' (sweet), 'borithi' (police) etc, with which "Murogi wa Kagogo" is littered.

But I do believe that if we search carefully, we can find appropriate vernacular terms. It is not clear from reading Ngugi's Gikuyu works that this has been achieved. I can understand his need to locate his narrative within the situational context of the spoken language, in order to achieve authenticity. He might then claim he is mirroring the language as he hears it spoken.

But going by the examples in the dedication, acknowledgement, biography and synopsis sections which are not part of the narrative, I am not persuaded that Ngugi is making enough of an effort to promote the bona f ide vernacular that he wants so much to defend and promote. Of course it is not up to him to ensure that Africans speak their languages 'correctly'.

But he is on record, isn't he, as defending the right of people in the developing world to write in their own indigenous languages and for such writings to be accepted as the legitimate expression of a people's aspirations and part of their heritage. Personally, I don't believe that expressions like 'riyunioni ya bamiri' constitute a part of Ngugi's indigenous language and heritage. Not my language and heritage, anyway, which I share with him.

So where does that leave us? Should we seek to retain purity in language in order to reaffirm our identity as Africans? There are obstacles that render this an unrealistic option. They have tried it in France, in an effort to stop the English language contaminating French. But in this day and age, efforts to impose a desired form of language by fiat are doomed from the word go. Efforts to police the use of language are clearly at odds with the freedom of expression.

Are vernacular languages really ill-equipped to handle the world of science, technology and all forms of modernity? And should we therefore agree to be colonized by the English language, the so-called language of international business? I don't believe we are dealing with a lost cause. It is just that the current generations have lost the proficiency enjoyed by our grandparents and those who went before them. Our knowledge of vernacular languages is shallow and limited which is why in Kenya we resort so easily to pidgin English and Sheng (a bizarre combination of English, Kiswahili and regional vernaculars).

What Ngugi's Gikuyu writings achieve is to expose the myth that we have a rich tapestry of vernacular languages that are alive and well. Those of us who live abroad for lengthy periods experience real difficulty just keeping our vernacular languages alive. But it is even more tragic when I meet people in Kenya who boast that their children don't speak vernacular. Sadly, the quality of their spoken English is also often below par. These generations of vernacular-challenged Kenyans will have no difficulty with Ngugi's phonetic monstrosities like 'raithenithi' (licence), if only they could read it.

I'll be the first to plead mea culpa in using these hybrid languages, so I am not a purist by any stretch of imagination. But if I were to write in vernacular, I would worry very much about the claim that I'm promoting the vernacular if I'm having to borrow so much from another language, in this case English. One problem is that we rush to absorb a foreign word because we are too lazy to think of, or to invent an appropriate vernacular one.

So, Ngugi says 'tuimanjini' when he means 'let's imagine'; 'athimairite' when he means 'while smiling'. We are deluding ourselves that we are speaking vernacular. Do we have to accept Ngugi's 'terebiconi' (television) and 'karenda' (calendar)? I don't think so. Here's why: living as I do amongst the Chinese, I have noted how Cantonese has grown organically by creating words that are contextually valid and which draw from the indigenous people's real experiences.

Although they have borrowed many terms, they have also invented many words in recent decades. Take cinema for example. While Ngugi's narrator opts for the simplistic 'thenema', the Cantonese have invented a word, 'dihnying,' which means electric image. For computer they have come up with 'dihnlou', electric brain. Ngugi talks of writing a 'riboti', while the Cantonese 'bou gou' signifies 'a document that tells', hence a report.

Taking these few and simple examples, the question arises, if others can invent sensible terms to represent the meanings they ascribe to new and emergent concepts and thoughts, why are we rushing to transliterate English words into bizarre-sounding phonetics? No doubt the philologists and linguists have a perfectly simple explanation. But next time my Chinese friends who have an interest in Gikuyu ask me, 'Kamoche, please explain the etymology of this Gikuyu word in Ngugi's novel: 'kamiti''. I will, with some embarrassment, refer them to the barrel of Ngugi's pen. Sorry, that should be Ngugi's 'taipu raita.'

In closing, I want to remind Ngugi of the fine words he wrote in "Writers in Politics". On page 64 he says:

'we cannot develop our literatures and cultures through borrowed tongues and imitations'.

Ngugi has been a great proponent of decolonizing our minds. It is time to decolonize African languages.