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The Difficulties Experienced by Luo and Swahili Children THE DIFFICULTIES EXPERIENCED BY LUO AND SWAHILI CHILDREN IN LEARNING ENG LISH by DONALD OWUOR. B~ A~ A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. Department of Education, McGill University. Montreal. August, 1963. PREFACE The purpose of the dissertation is to locate, analyse and define the diliiculties which Luo and Swahili children· in the schools of Kenya experience when learning English, and to make sorne suggestions regarding the elimination of those difficulties. English is the official language of Kenya. It is also the language of instruc tion at alllevels of education above secondary school. It is important, therefore. that the teaching of English in the schools of Kenya be of the highest standard attainable. Sorne knowledge of the factors which influence the way African children learn Engllsh is essential if the standards of the teaching of English in Kenya are to be improved. I wish to express my indebtedness to Mr. B. J. Spolsky for his valuable suggestions and guidance throughout this study. I am also grateful to Prof. Reginald Edwards for the counsel and help I received from him. CONTENTS 1. CHAPTER 1 Introduction .......................... Page 1 2. CHAPTER II Luo and Swahili children at schoo1 •••••••••••••• • 17 (a) The schoo1 system • • ••••• . 18 (b} The LuQ child in the system •••••••• . 28 (c) The Swahili child in the system ••• . .. 35 (d) Sorne of their ex.ternal handicaps ••• . 39 3. CHAPTER ID The sounds of English, Luo_ and Swahili • • • • • • • • • • • 47 (a) The consonantal phonemes. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 50 (b) Consonant clusters • • • • • • • 60 (c) Vowel phonemes • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 63 4. CHAPT ER IV The cultural factor in language •••••••••••• . • • 129 (a) Learning English culture • • • • • • • • • . 134 (b) Family relationships in English and Luo. 139 (c) Family relationships in Swahili. • • • •• . 146 (d) New ideas and abjects •••••••••••• . 148 5. CHAPTER V Conclusion • • • . 155 6. BIBLIOGRAPHY . 163 ILLUSTRATIONS - 1. The Phonemic Structure of English, Luo and Swahili•••• Page 54(a) 2. Family Relationships in English, Luo and Swahili • • • • • tt 141 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Like other countries which have only recently emerged from British colonial rule, for example, India and Ceylon, or are on the verge of attaining self-government, Kenya has had to face the task of choosing an official language. In her case the choice has been complicated by the prominence of two languages, namely, Swahili and English. Swahili, a Bantu-based language, is widely spoken and under- stood among the country1s population, whose languages belong mainly to the Bantu family of languages. It is estimated that sorne 71 000,000 people throughout East Africa speak Swahili as their native language. 1 In Kenya it is the language of commerce and the medium of communi- cation between the educated and the uneducated, since the latter do not speak English, and between tribe and tri be throughout East Africa. However, some tribes, such as the Baganda in Uganda, deign to speak Swahili not at all, or only occasionally, although they understand it perfectiy, their intense pride in their history, culture and language making them see in Swahili a fornùess, upstart language which should give way to their own language on every occasion. English, on the other hand, is the language used at the higher 1. Frank A. Rice ed. Study of the Role of Second Languages, (Center for Applied Linguistics of the Modern Language Associa­ tion of America, Washington, D. C., 1962) p. 70 -2- levels of administration and education, as weil as in normal busiœ ss transactions and social intercourse between Europeans and educated Africans, or Europeans and Asians, or educated Africans from dif- ferent tribal backgrounds. lt is the language of the socially privileged 2 and most influential group in the country. For example, it is the language used in Legislative Council, the Nairobi Stock Exchange and in all Government departm.ents and offices. Education and the ability to speak English are synonymous in Kenya, for the one, under favourable circums tances, almost always leads to the other. And the educated are the doctors, lawyers, engineers, veterinary scientists, teachers, re- search workers and others on whom the welfare and progress of the country depend. When the choice came to be made between these two languages re gard had to be had to the relative merl ts of each as a medium of communication not only among Kenya1 s nine million people, but also with the wider world community from which Kenya could not afford to eut herself. lndeed, the Minister of Education, in cautioning members of Legislative Counc:U against too precipitate an introduction of Swahili as the language of secondary schools and higher institutions of learning, used this very argument. He said, among other things, that 2. Ibid. p. 71 -3- unless the people of Kenya are going to be eut off from the rest of the world in educational developrœ nt, and world knowledge in the cultural and scientific fields. it is quite obvious that English must remain the language of education. 3 Under these conditions the only logical choice was English. However, from the point of view of the effort called for and the order of ability necessary for adequate m.astery, Swahili would have been the better choice because of the close links it has with the Bantu family of languages. For those people whose languages belong to this group. for example, the Kikuyu, Embu, Luhya, Kamba and Kisii,. mastering Swahili is relatively easy since their languages and Swahili have certain morphological features in common. Even the Luo and the Masai, whose languages belong to the Nilotic family of languages, or the Somali, who speak a Hamitl.c language, do not in general find it difficult to learn Swahili. It was perhaps because of these considerations that Tanganyika, Kenya's s·outhern neighbour whose entire African population speak languages of the Bantu group, decided to make Swahili, rather than English, her official language. But even in Tanganyika, English re- mains the language of higher education. ln Kenya it was not a question of adopting English as the country's official language, but rather of deciding whether to continue 3. Lesislative Council Debates, Official Report. Thursday, !3th December, 1962, (Government Printer, Nairobi) p. 266. -4- to have it as the official language or to substitute Swahili for i~ for English had been Kenya•s official language since the establishment of British rule in the country towards the end of the 19th century. In lndonesla, on the other hand, one foreign language, Dutch, was re- placed by another foreign language, English, as the official language of the country when Dutch colonial rule came to an end in 1948. 4 In other words, intense national pride and consciousness in Kenya made it essential that an indigenous language, rather than a foreign one, be considered as a possible official language of the country, whereas in Indonesia considerations of the greater access English would give Indonesians to the intellectual, technical and commercial world, as compared with Dutch or Malay, made English a better choice than Du.tch or Malay. Besicles, the odium attached by Indonesians to every- thing Dutch after the end of Du.tch rule militated against the retention of Dutch as lndonesia1s official language. Even in the United States, national pride demanded that that country develop its own system, rather than lmport everything from Great Britain. As Noah Webster stated: As an independent nation, our honour requires us to have a system of our own, in language as well as in Government. Great Britain whose children we are, and whose language we speak., should no longer be our standard; for the taste of her writers is already cor­ rupted and her language on the decline. 5 4. I am indebted for this information to Henry Van Eykens who served in the Dutch army in lndonesia between 1944 and 1948. 5. Noah Webster, Dissertations on the English Language, (Boston, 1789) p. 20. -5- In Kenya the choice has been made, if in terms tb.at are not specifie. When the question of the country•s official language was debated in Legislative Council in December, 1962, members were of the opinion that Swahili will one day be the official language of this country, and were satisfied that Swahili is the most suitable medium. for keeping the Government. the leaders and the people of this a:>untry in close contact. 6 This was an oblique way of stating the fact tb.at English~ for sorne seventy years Kenya1s official language, would remain so until re- placed by Swahili. It is the author•s belief tb.at this change will not be made within the next twenty year s, if it is made at all, for it will take the country1s educators about that long to improve the teaching of Swahili in the schools to a point where the maj ority of the people would be able to speak understandable Swahili. For many people at present make do with broken Swahili of limited vocabulary range, as the Swahili-speaking Russian woman who accompanied the Soviet delegation to the Afro-Asian Solidarity Conference at Moshi, Tanganyika, in February , 1962~ discovered.. rouch to her bewilderment and annoyance, when she tried to converse in Swahili with members of the Kenya delegation. 1 In any case,. if and when Swahili replaces English as the official language of Kenya, English will still remain the language of the secondary schools and uni versities. 6. Op. cit. Legislative Council Debates, p. 278. 7. Lugo Taguaba, "The Conference at Moshi11, East African Newsletter, Vol. n, No. 5, Fe bruary, 1963 .. p. 3. -6- lt is fortu.nate that Kenya has a considerable history of English language teaching in the schools.
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