Languages My loss

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It’s my loss really, for thinking I’m superior to you because you don’t speak my language. Blame Queen Mary, the ancestor of King Charles 111. We, British subjects were forced to learn English so that we can see the world clearly, through William Wordsworth, Jonathan Swift or Virginia Woolf.

It’s my loss really, because languages have something in common, which I miss, if I don’t shake off the delusion that my language is superior. I can speak Japanese. I can say Okinawa, Nara or Osaka. No.  It’s wishful thinking.

I don’t, because they look like Zulu words but owners of the language pronounce them differently. They put the stress here, not there. Maybe they use nasal sounds to say them, like the click in my name. It’s unique to Zulu and Xhosa. You cannot say it unless you want to have a tongue accident.

Languages are pure like water down a mountain stream because of human-ness, if there is such a word. Languages are synonymous with human beings. Therefore, if I think I speak Japanese, it means I regard language speakers as human beings. It’s no big deal. Yes it is. I can do anything to you, if I don’t regard you as a human being.

It’s my loss really, if I’m so steeped in my language superiority, I miss the sisterhood between Zulu and some of Canada’s languages of the soil. I can say words like Ojibwe, Nokomis, Anishinaabe, Zhaaganaash can’t I? No. Wishful thinking but it’s a start. Language speakers are human beings, not history descriptions.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang. 

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