The Language of African Literature & World Englishes

The Language of African Literature    

While I was reading the Thiong’o and how English was forced on Africans by their colonial rulers I couldn’t help but think of the similarities between their experience and Koreans during Japanese rule. Koreans were forced to speak Japanese and Japanese was the language that was used in schools. Also, the Japanese forced Korean to change their name to a Japanese one. They even forced their culture on us and ignored our culture.

What I found especially powerful was how schools forced kids to tell on each other when they spoke African. The system made them betray each other and again reminded me of similar situations that happened in Korea. Also, I think it is important to point out the fact that no matter how hard the colonial rulers tried to exterminate the African languages, the languages survived.

Thinking about Korea’s experience, I could feel how Africans must have felt. As Thiong’o mentioned language is closely tied to one’s culture and to lose one’s language is not just losing one’s culture but losing one’s soul as well.

World Englishes

There is no denying the fact that English is spoken all over the world and that variations have been created that does not get the same recognition as those varieties spoken by the inner circle.

However, I think intelligibility is one of the most important factors that need to be kept in mind when discussing World Englishes. How else can people speaking different variations of English communicate?

Of course, there is the interpretability factor but as long as the Englishes are intelligible, people should be able to manage the interpretability.

Kachru makes a good point how the different variations and uses of English need to be considered when teaching ESL.