In Search of a National Language: A reaction

I read with utter dissatisfaction a feature  with the headline ,” In search of a national language” in the Daily Graphic of Monday February 24, 2014 in which the author, Victor C.T. Ofinam-Antwi, boldly asserted that Ghana does not have a potential national language.

When we were in school, we were taught that writers of argumentative essays must appear logical or their readers will reject their point of view. Here are a few of the laundry list of the logical fallacies (errors in reasoning) I encountered while reading the article: 

Reprehensible Argument: In the first place, if a writer is using expert support for an argument of national importance, he should use the appropriate one. Quoting dictionaries instead of fitting sources such as encyclopaedias weakens one’s argument unless, of course, the fellow is composing a high school essay. 

Contradictory Premises: If every tribe needs to have a linguistic correlation with a language before it is accepted as a national language, then English shouldn’t have been adopted in the first place as a national language. Which Ghanaian tribe has a linguistic lineage with English?  

Hasty Generalisation: Kofi Wayo, a non-Twi speaking Ghanaian, does not want to speak Twi so every non-Twi Ghanaian doesn’t want to use Twi. (Even the President, a Gonja, spoke Twi in most of his campaign tours during the last election.)

Hypothesis Contrary to Fact/False Analogy/Red Herring: The inclusion of the Hutu-Tutsi strife in the feature is an irrelevant precedent. Why? Ghana does not have two major ethnic groups competing for supremacy as in the case of Rwanda before the war. Ghana has many ethnic groups who co-exist peacefully. 

Again, what does the writer mean by “some are unhappy about the neglect of their language”?

Compare Ghana’s political map of 1957 to 2014. You will find that many towns have outpaced others in both infrastructure and status simply because they were selected by the state as district or regional capitals.

Have other towns complained about this? Accra is the capital of Ghana; it belongs to the Ga tribe. Has any other tribe said that they are not happy? Ghana’s main harbour is at Tema— a Ga land. 

Should Nkrumah have ignored its       vantage position and instead had the port constructed at Axim or Keta at a time when it was going to serve the construction of the dam at Akosombo? What does this tell us? 

A country harnesses all its resources for rapid development.  If any ethnic group has something that we think will be beneficial to all of us, we adopt it and use it nationally. 

Alexander Pope once said that a little learning is such a dangerous thing. The author asserted that the Twi language has become popular because Twi-speaking Akans have traversed the country in their search for greener pastures— taking their language along.

For his information, the Twi language has for centuries been the underlying unifying force among the various ethnic groups in this geographical enclave. Studies about early African slave rebellions in the new world (Suriname, Jamaica, Guyana, St. Johns-USA) point to the intelligibility of a common language (Twi) in  this part of the world as one major factor which enabled slaves from the Gold Coast to successfully rebel while others failed. 

I quote the exact words of lawyer and historian, Edward Long, an 18th century white Jamaican colonist: “Immediately we ban the importation of slaves from the Gold Coast to this island, Jamaica will be better placed because there is this unity among people from that part of Africa. They seem to understand a particular language.

This has created unity among them making them see themselves equal to the British.”  You wouldn’t assume that all Gold Coasters taken to Jamaica were Twi people. I live in a very large rented apartment in northern Accra; nearly all my neighbours are Gas and Ewes, yet not for once have they conversed in Ga, Ewe or the so-called English. 

Whenever they interact, they use Twi. It doesn’t in any way make Twi superior. They only use it because that’s the language they both understand better. 

Clearly, when a language of this nature is used nationally, quite a lot of people will better understand how the nation is governed because in reality Standard English is understood by only a fraction of the population. 

Language is a key tool to a nation’s development and if there’s a language that can be harnessed for that purpose why not?

Opinions are like onions. Just because Dr K.B. Asante thinks that we should seek proficiency in English doesn’t imply that we should forget who we are. Even in Wales, a unit of Great Britain, children have been punished for speaking English instead of Welsh in primary schools. 

This story was carried on Walesonline and other major newspapers in the United Kingdom in October, 2012. The Junior Graphic also published it the same year. You think Ghanaians will become British? We are black people. We are Africans. Before South Africa became independence, they had two European languages: Afrikaans (Dutch) and English as their official languages. 

Today, South Africa is independent with eleven official languages: two Germanic and nine African languages of Bantu origin (Ndebele, Northern Sotho, Sotho, Swazi, Tswana, Tsonga, Venda, Xhosa and Zulu). What does this teach us? When there is little or no doubt that a language will be useful to our development as a nation, nothing prevents us from elevating it to an official status— we could add Twi, Ga, Ewe, Dagomba, etc.  whenever the need arises. 

Writer’s e-mail: jacuzie2003@yahoo.com