- Title
- Teaching Mandarin in schools is another slap in the face for African languages
- Creator
- Kaschula, Russell H, Nosilela, Bulelwa, Heugh, Kathleen, Hendricks, Monica, Maseko, Pamela
- Date
- 2015
- Type
- text
- Type
- article
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/67042
- Identifier
- vital:29023
- Identifier
- https://theconversation.com/teaching-mandarin-in-schools-is-another-slap-in-the-face-for-african-languages-48505
- Description
- publisher version
- Description
- It’s said that behind every powerful language is an army and money. Consider the case of English. In South Africa, as in its other colonies, the British arrived with the Bible in one hand and the breech-loader in the other. Behind them was the English language, military might and money. British missionaries wanted to convert Africa’s indigenous “heathens” to Christianity; to clone little English people on the continent through the medium of English. Next came the Afrikaners, descended from the Dutch. Their slaves created a “kitchen” language out of Dutch and called it Afrikaans. White Afrikaners appropriated it as their own and it became the language of apartheid. One of the tipping points of white rule was the 1976 Soweto uprising – a furious, powerful response to the news that Afrikaans would become a compulsory medium of instruction. Now there is a new potential coloniser on South Africa’s linguistic block. From 2016, Mandarin will be taught in the country’s schools as a Second Additional Language. This new government policy will see African languages bumped even further down the educational pecking order.
- Format
- Publisher
- The Conversation
- Language
- English
- Relation
- The Conversation, Kaschula, R.H., Nosilela, B., Heugh, K., Hendricks, K., Maseko, P. (2015) Teaching Mandarin in schools is another slap in the face for African languages. The Conversation, 12 November 2015, The Conversation volume number November 2015
- Rights
- The Conversation Africa, Inc.
- Rights
- Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of The Conversation Republishing guidelines Statement (https://theconversation.com/africa/republishing-guidelines)
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Collections
Hendricks, Monica (Prof)
RU DST/NRF SARChI for Intellectualisation of African Languages, Multilingualism and Education
Nosilela, Bulelwa B (Mrs)
Maseko, Pamela (Dr)
Kaschula, Russell H (Prof)
RU School of Languages and Literatures
SDG 04. Quality Education
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