Orthography design and harmonisation in development in Southern Africa

By Felix Banda Garth Stead/iAfrika Photos

roperly designed cross-border Of interest to this paper is the fact that Bantu lan- can play a monumental role in promoting the guages can be divided into zones or clusters of lan- use of African languages in all spheres of life, guages with varying degrees of mutual intelligibility. and hence contribute to the socio-economic Some of the languages in the Nguni language cluster development of Africans. In Southern Africa, are isiXhosa, isiZulu, siSwati and isiNdebele. Pwhere people speak related , benefits According to Miti (2006), Guthrie (1971) classifies from mass literacy campaigns for socio-economic devel- these languages in Group 40 of Zone S. The opment can only accrue from a wider readership of mate- Tswana/Sotho group is also classified in Zone S and rial, written in unified standard orthographies. Language includes the following languages: seTswana, sePedi planning and policy across geographical borders should and seSotho. Zone M includes languages such as take advantage of cross-border languages, which are cur- iciBemba, Lala, iciLamba, and ciTonga; Zone N rently promoted in isolation within nation-states. In this includes ciNyanja, ciTumbuka, ciNsenga, and ciKunda; idiom, status and corpus, planning should go beyond pro- while Zone P includes ciYao, eMakua and eLomwe. motion of isolated languages in nation-states, to a broad- What is worth noting at this juncture is that the lan- er and more comprehensive one that accounts for the guage zones or clusters do not constitute a neat pack- relatedness of Southern African languages as a result of a age, and they do not correspond to colonial borders. In common Bantu ancestry. spite of classifications into different groups, I shall It is common knowledge that most people in argue that the languages and the zones or clusters with- Southern Africa speak a Bantu language as their first in which they fall are neither mutually exclusive enti- language, and that Bantu languages are genetically ties, nor impermeable to influence from other lan- related. Miti (2006, page 45) summarises the character- guages within (and in the case of zones, from other) istics of Bantu languages. They have a noun class sys- clusters. The natural harmonisation that has been tem with a related concord system. The languages also reported for languages in the Nguni and Tswana/Sotho have a tendency for agglutinative behaviour. This groups (Msimang 1998; Jokweni 2003) and for Zone N means that Bantu languages have the propensity for and Zone P and other language groups in Zambia affixes to attach themselves to stems. (Chisanga 2003) is a case in point.

Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa 39 Opening Societies Through Advocacy

These revelations make compelling arguments for • the exchange of materials, cross-border orthographies. They also form the back- • the sharing of expenses, and ground for arguments I make about • the pooling of human resources and thus reduce the design and harmonisation in development in Southern cost of promoting these languages.” (Chanda 2002, Africa. page 28). Because the Centre for Advanced Studies of African Societies (CASAS) has been the leading advo- Most of the organisations and individuals that have cate for cross-border orthographies in the past decade, I attempted orthographic reforms have not sustained their draw mostly on its publications for illustrations and to efforts. In most cases such attempts have been haphazard demonstrate the possibilities and challenges of such and uncoordinated. However, since its inception in 1997, orthographies. However, the views expressed in this CASAS under the directorship of Professor Kwesi Kwaa paper are my own and do not necessarily reflect the Prah, has been at the forefront advocating harmonisation views of CASAS or its Director. and standardisation of orthographic conventions of African languages based on “significant degrees of Orthography reforms in Southern Africa mutual intelligibility.” (Prah 1998, page 7). Prah (1998, Early attempts at orthography reform appeared geared page 7) questions the western inventions of African lan- to enable Europeans rather than indigenous people to guages and argues that, contrary to the myth of the access African languages. Banda (2002b) reports on African Babel (where Africans “babble away in unfash- how prominent Bantuists GP Lestrade, CM Doke, JA ionable and indecipherable tongues, so many that one is Englebrecht and VN van Warmelo met at the 1937 unable to put a precise figure on them”), African lan- Inter-University Committee for African Studies guages can be clustered into a few mutually intelligible (IUCAS), not only to decide how Bantu languages groups. The western inventions of African languages and should be written (e.g. they decided to drop the prefix the accompanying proliferation of orthographies have and call them by the root only) but also resolved that the had a negative impact on Africa’s quest for socio-eco- spelling of Bantu languages should not do too much nomic development (Prah 1998). This has led to a multi- violence to the spelling-canons of English (Lestrade plication of languages, but a reduction in the number of 1993 [1937], pages 19-20). This in effect meant that the speakers of particular languages. This is because what anomalies and inconsistencies that plague European should be one language is often split into different and orthographies were imported into Africa. Not only that, smaller dialects, each with its own writing system. the resulting orthographies de-familiarised African The CASAS publication list (CASAS 2007) and the written languages from mother tongue speakers. Thus website (www.casas.co.za) have a comprehensive list of written African languages which should be a resource material in various African languages, all of which are for development became the property of the western- a result of cross-border orthographies that are also list- educated African, who presides over the new terminol- ed. The ensuing discussion on the design of cross-bor- ogy and the new rules to be implemented in the lan- der orthographies is drawn from these sources, as well guage. as my own experiences with Bantu linguistics and hav- In recent years, orthographic work has focused ing been party to the design of some CASAS orthogra- on trying to remove anomalies and contradictions in phies (cf. Prah 2003). orthographic conventions of African languages. As one would expect, the work has taken a cross-border Unified standard orthographies perspective. For instance, Chanda (2002) reports on for Southern African languages the Cross-Border Language Workshop held at Chanda (2002, page 30) identifies four kinds of orthog- Okahandja, Namibia, 23-27 September 1996, raphy planning. These are: orthography development, attended by eminent African linguists and well orthography reform, orthography standardisation, and known European experts on African languages. The orthography harmonisation. He characterises the first participants recommended that “as much as possi- three types as relevant to a single language, and the ble, orthographies of cross-border languages should fourth to more than one language. be standardised and harmonised in order to encour- He defines orthography development as the provi- age – sion of a writing system for an unwritten language. He

40 Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa Orthography design and harmonisation in development in Southern Africa points out however that orthography development can symbols, the process can also be said to be orthography also be applied to a language that already has a standard standardisation. At the same time, the process involved writing system. In this regard, orthography develop- adoption of similar graphemes and spelling rules in lan- ment means replacing the old writing system, with a guages across geographical borders, which makes it a new one. In a case where an existing writing system is process of orthography harmonisation. modified, this is called orthography reform. According In any case, the languages involved are related to Chanda (2002) this is often done to modernise pro- Bantu languages with similar sound systems and mor- nunciation and grammatical structures. One reason for pho-syntactic rules. For this reason, the four senses of this is re-codification of a language to account for new orthography design described above cannot be viewed specialised terminologies of science, technology, etc. in isolation of each other. Suffice to say that the process The third kind of orthography planning aims to pro- of designing cross-border orthographies in Southern vide a standard orthography through identification of Africa included first a description of the phonetic sys- inconsistencies, which are then purged. Chanda regards tem and grammatical systems of Bantu languages in the orthography standardisation as a special case of orthog- cluster, followed by the allocation of graphemes for the raphy reform. He describes the standardisation of the sounds as well as word, phrasal and sentence writing orthographies of the seven Zambian regional official rules. However, even as one is working with one cluster languages in 1977 (cf. Chanda 2002, pages 53-59) as an one always takes into account the rules of writing and illustration of orthography standardisation or reform. the graphemic representation of related sounds in other Chanda calls the fourth kind orthography harmonisa- clusters. In essence, similar sounds and words should tion proper, as it involves more than one language. He be represented the same way within and across different describes the two senses in which orthography harmoni- related clusters. sation may be envisaged as a situation where the choices of graphemes and spelling rules are given in such a way Design features of cross-border orthographies that “in all the languages concerned the same sound is The following are the founding principles of the design symbolised by the same grapheme and the same spelling of an efficacious orthography as can be abstracted from rules apply to the same elements or similar grammatical Mtenje (2002, page 84) and Bamgbose (1978): structures, unless there is a specific reason not to do so” (Chanda 2002, page 30). The second sense relates to a 1. Consistency situation in which the languages do not have a writing • One grapheme must always represent one system, and are provided with a body of graphemes and . spelling rules. As in the previous case, the languages 2. Accuracy concerned are prescribed the same graphemes and the • All and only significant sounds in a language same spelling rules for the same sound and same ele- should be represented. ments or similar grammatical structures. • Phonetic symbols should not be used unless However, considering that Bantu languages (and absolutely necessary, while should be particularly languages in a cluster) are closely related, avoided altogether. rather than kinds of orthography planning, I prefer the 3. Similarity term “processes”, which may or may not overlap in exe- • Characters should be maximally distinct. cution. In the harmonisation work that I have been • The same character in languages within the involved in, the four processes often overlap. For same cluster and related ones should represent instance, the new CASAS standard orthography for the same sound. South-Central African languages (Banda et al, 2002) • A language spoken in several countries should involved all the four processes rolled into one. It have the same characters to represent its sounds involved orthography development as dialects such as across geographical borders. ciTumbuka and ciNgoni (with no writing history) were brought into the fold. It also involved reforming cross- Since as discussed above most of the languages in border languages such as ciNyanja, ciYao, Luvale and Southern Africa belong to the Bantu language family, ciTonga. Since the process involved eliminating incon- they tend to have similar vowel and consonant systems, sistencies and the adoption of graphemes instead of and they tend to behave in a similar way morphologi-

Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa 41 Opening Societies Through Advocacy cally and syntactically (see Miti 2006 for comparative Thus, Musehane et al decided to adopt the in Bantu phonology and morphology). Theoretically, this tshiVenda cross-border orthography so that the above means it is possible to adopt similar graphemes and words would be written as: spelling rules within and across clusters (Banda 2002b). Therefore orthographies of cross-border languages in luphyaphya Southern Africa should be designed in such a way as to khomphyutha effectively use the least number of symbols to represent phyidzi adequately all the major phonological distinctions of given languages within clusters and across clusters. Musehane et al reserve the for labialised To elaborate on the founding principles above, I sounds only, and the for palatalised sounds. now turn to specific design principles based on Banda (2002a, 2002b), Capo (2000, 2002) and Nyombe b) Where principle (a) is not practical or where one (2002). I should point out that these design principles sound is to be represented by two or more are not exhaustive. They are conceived as guidelines graphemes, then there is need to justify the use rather than as specified rules of cross-border ortho- of different graphemes to represent the same graphic design. In the discussion which follows below I sound show some of the challenges posed by existing mission- Nyombe (2002) calls this the principle of harmonisa- ary and colonial inspired orthographies, and how these tion of graphemes. This principle is also meant to can be resolved in designing cross-border orthogra- ensure that the same “signified” must always have the phies. same “signifier” (Capo 2002, page 9) within a language and preferably across related languages. This comes a) One distinctive sound should be represented about if for linguistic (and most often political) reasons by one phonetic/ alphabetic symbol one sound has to be represented by two or more Cross-border orthographies entail unification of graphemes across borders. However, where such a situ- graphemes. This means that as much as possible “the ation arises, the conditions which dictate the use of dif- same grapheme should be used to represent one and the ferent graphemes for the same sound should be clearly same sound as much as is practicable” (Nyombe 2002, spelt out. One expects this to happen across clusters and page 37). This is one of the major challenges posed by particularly in unrelated languages, but when dealing in some of the orthographies in circulation in Africa. It is related languages (as in Bantu languages of Southern not uncommon to find one phoneme being represented Africa) incidents are minimal. My experience with the by two distinct graphemes in the same language. design of cross-border orthographies was that linguistic Musehane et al (forthcoming) show that in arguments and the need for uniformity always proved tshiVenda the palatal glide is in some cases repre- decisive on the one sound and one graphemic represen- sented in writing as in the bilabial glide . This tation argument. The choice of and , rather should not necessarily cause problems if the same than and for unaspirated and aspirated grapheme consistently represents the same sound all the palatal affricates, respectively, for the unified standard time. However as the following examples from orthography for ciNyanja is a case in point (see (c) and Musehane et al (forthcoming) show this is not the case. (e) below for further elaboration).

For example as : c) Ensure economy and preciseness wanga mine Cross-border orthographies should be designed in such wana obtain a way as to ensure economy and preciseness in the use wothe all of graphemes by getting rid of redundant elements. For example, in Malawian ciNyanja (or ciCewa, as but as in the following: it is often referred to in Malawi) in the written material the aspirated palatal affricate is presented as luphwaphwa soft maize cob (Chichewa Board 1990, cited in Kamwendo 2002) khompwutha computer while the same sound is represented as in phwidzi female sheep ciNyanja material written in Zambia (cf. Zambia 1977).

42 Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa Orthography design and harmonisation in development in Southern Africa

The Zambian ciNyanja, which uses to repre- tongue speakers do not encounter in their everyday life. sent the unaspirated palatal affricate and as its Mtenje (2002) lists ten rules to account for use of aspirated counterpart, is more economical and precise and in relation to . Since the ten rules are a conse- than the Malawian. The ‘t’ in as suggested in the quence of the importation of into ciNyanja, speak- Chichewa Board (1990, pages 15-16, cited in ers of the language have difficulties internalising the Kamwendo 2002) is clearly redundant. In this regard, sound and the rules that come with it. Speaking the principle of economy demands that redundant ele- ciNyanja with sounds odd to native speakers of the ments should be omitted (Capo 2000, 2002). language as the sound does not exist in their language What is clear is that the different representations of (Kamwendo 2002; Mtenje 2002; Banda 2002). The the aspirated and unaspirated voiceless palatal features prominently in the bible, hymns and church affricates has brought unnecessary confusion, making it sermons. Perhaps this what the late Dr Hastings difficult for readers and writers alike. Kamwendo Kamuzu Banda meant when he accused Chief Mwase (2002) illustrates this lack of consistency in the of the Nyanja/ Cewa, who is supposed to be custodian ciNyanja orthographies by giving the following exam- of the language, of speaking chimishoni (Kamwendo ple from Ketulo et al. (1997: 49) from Mozambique 2003). Chimishoni is a pejorative term referring to one who wrote: who speaks ciNyanja like a white missionary, who can- not get the pronunciation or the grammar of the lan- chikomekome ca nkhuyu guage right. kuculukana nkwabwino In short, the introduction of flouts a related chimanga chilola principle which says that orthography design needs “to chala cimodzi siciswa take into account the (automatic internalised) phono- chikuni chimodzi sicipsetsa mphika. logical rules applied by native speakers...” (Capo, 2002, page 9). Even in borrowed English words, ciNyanja In the above ciNyanja proverbs, the writer uses both speakers tend to replace with (cf. Banda and in free variation to represent the voice- 2002a). Thus, the introduction of and the accompa- less palatal affricate sound. This is not for aesthetic nying rules for writing it is unnecessary and makes effect but a direct consequence of uneconomic, impre- writing unnecessarily difficult, particularly when one cise and inconsistent orthographies operating in considers the other inconsistencies discussed else- Zambia, Mozambique and Malawi. From learners’ per- where. spectives (and readers generally), this makes for a very Where there is need to change particular rules of unfriendly orthography, as and are maximal- spelling and grapheme representation as some of the ly distinct and yet in writing they are treated as having symbols may now carry psycho-social appeal to the the same sound quality. users, “consideration should be given to socio-psycho- logical and socio-cultural needs of the users of the d) Words and sounds should be written as native symbol in the process of changing symbols.” speakers of a particular dialect or language (Nyombe 2002, pages 37-38). This involves ensuring pronounce them that speakers of the languages concerned are involved As argued above, the defining feature of missionary and in the design and formulation of the rules concerned. colonial orthographies is that they were designed with It might also be necessary to hold sensitisation work- European second language speakers or formally educat- shops to show people concerned about the benefits of ed African elites in mind. The creation of in proposed changes. This requires specialist linguists ciNyanja and the adoption of the disjunctive writing and funding. system in some Bantu languages such as seSotho (see Matumo 1969 and Mokatimi, Machobane and Matlosa e) The Aim should be a reader-friendly 2003 for discussion on seSotho) are cases in point. orthography meant to ease reading and writing, Mtenje (2002) criticises the arbitrariness with which the and hence easy promotion of literacy for was introduced into the written form of the lan- socio-economic development guage. The introduction of into ciNyanja necessi- The orthography should be designed for ease of reading tated the creation of a set of rules of use which mother and writing by speakers. This means that if (for mor-

Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa 43 Opening Societies Through Advocacy pho-phonological reasons) in one dialect the grapheme dzhweedzhwee becomes jweejwee mixed up noise representations and the rules for writing are easier to dzhwi becomes jwi sudden catch follow than in another, it is the former that should be adopted in the unified standard orthography. By way of g) Avoid diacritics and phonetic symbols illustration, in the ciNyanja examples given elsewhere, In some West African languages, diacritics are used to it was the and that were adopted to represent mark the various tones even in ordinary script writing. the unaspirated and aspirated palatal affricates, respec- In Southern African orthographies, is not marked tively, for the unified standard orthography (cf. Banda in ordinary reading material except in technical books 2002a; Banda et al. 2001; Kamwendo 2002, 2003). The such as dictionaries. Diacritics function to alter the pho- as a marker of aspiration would cause unnecessary netic value of a grapheme. These are indicated at the confusion as one would need to explain the occurrence bottom or above a letter. However, in most cases the in Malawi ciNyanja of the following minimal pairs: value of the letter is determinable from the context of use. kale long time ago khale to sit [usually Similarly, cross-border orthographies should be with nothing to designed in such a way as to limit graphemes to those do] that are easy to write by hand, or easily available on a pala plough phala porridge normal computer keyboard. It is noteworthy that a num- kola to trap khola kraal ber of Southern African orthographies still have a com- bination of letters and phonetic symbols. The most The use of instead of in the second column common phonetic symbol still in use is the voiceless as a way to mark aspiration would be difficult to justify velar nasal /?/ or /ñ/. For the velar nasal or as the grapheme also represents the voiceless alveolar are preferred for cross-border languages of Southern stop. This would also run counter to the principles dis- Africa. cussed in (a) and (c) above, and would make a user- unfriendly orthography. h) Harmonise alphabet and orthographic conventions within and across clusters f) Avoid combination of letters where possible In theory, similar writing rules in Bantu languages A combination of letters may be used to represent a dis- should lead to more or less similar alphabetical repre- tinctive sound, only where no single letter currently sentations across related clusters (and within clusters in exists to represent that particular sound. In such cases, particular). As already shown, most Southern African preference should be given to those letter combinations languages belong to the Bantu language group and they currently in use. In this regard, preference should be on show degrees of affinity to each other. Multilingualism graphemes already created and being used to denote and the propensity for natural harmonisation for lan- particular sounds. The idea here is to design an orthog- guages in contact is another factor that needs consider- raphy that caters for a multiplicity of users rather singu- ation (Jokweni 2003; Chisanga 2003; Msimang 1998). lar users. Thus, the need to take advantage of multilingual Africa In tshiVenda the voiced palatal affricate /?/ is some- (and the relatedness of Bantu languages in particular), times written as . Since the grapheme is not entails that the design of orthographies must account in use in the language, and since it had already been for the alphabet and spelling system of one cluster as adopted in other Bantu languages, it makes sense to well as those generated in other related clusters. adopt (Musehane et al, forthcoming). Thus, The above principles have informed the design of Musehane and his team decided to replace with the cross-border orthographies in Southern Africa (for for the voiced palatal affricate sound. Musehane et more details, see Banda 2002a; Jokweni et al. 2003; al give the following changes for the adopted cross-bor- Prah 2003). What is evident in the three publications der orthography for tshiVenda: (and in the discussion so far) is that the starting point for the design of cross-border orthographies is the dzhena becomes jena enter abstraction of Bantu phonology and morphological dzhamu becomes jamu jam rules, and then to those operating within and across the dzhele becomes jele jail clusters. The languages or dialects, though important,

44 Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa Orthography design and harmonisation in development in Southern Africa provide illustrations for the rules that have already been of cross-border languages and a cadre of specialist lin- extracted. guists in African languages to design cross-border As a way of illustrating the above argument, at an orthographies. The sheer volume of reading material in orthography standardisation workshop organised by the African languages resulting from such cross-border Centre of Advanced Studies of African Societies cooperation is astounding. This also shows that it is (CASAS) while I and a team of linguistics from possible to design orthographies that defy colonial bor- Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique were designing a ders. This in itself portends well for future inclusive single orthography for Zone N languages, it became socio-economic development of African peoples. apparent that the same conclusions and proposals we A cursory look at the cross-border orthographies had made for this zone were similar to those made for and the publications listed by CASAS (2007), shows Zone P (see Banda et al 2002, 2002a). We found we the amount of effort put in by those involved in the could combine into one what should have been two sep- designs. The cross-border nature is also captured in the arate orthographies for the two zones. This culminated different nationalities of the authors for each orthogra- in an aptly titled unified standard orthography in 2002: phy. The blurbs in the introduction and acknowledge- A Unified Standard Orthography of South-Central ment pages of the orthographies tell their own story African Languages: Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia. about the amount of effort as well as the international CASAS: Cape Town. make-up of the design teams. For example, in What was amazing was that at a teachers and writ- September 2002, CASAS organised a team of linguists ers workshop meant to introduce the above unified stan- to design a Nguni orthography for isiZulu, siSwati, dard orthography to Zone N languages in Zambia, on isiXhosa isiNdebele and related dialects in Swaziland, 19-20 April 2007, writers in kiKaonde, iciBemba, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Zambia, iciLamba, and ciTonga which belong to different clus- Malawi and Tanzania. This culminated in a publication ters, found the user-friendly cross-border orthography by Jokweni M, Ngubane S, Khumalo L, Kwetana M, easy to adapt to their own languages. In fact, the whole Nkosi J, Sibanda E and Zindela N. 2003. A Unified group was able to use this single orthography to pro- Standard Orthography for Nguni Languages: duce written primers and reading materials. In other Swaziland, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, words, whereas the Zambian orthographies in use Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania. CASAS: Cape Town. (Zambia 1977) have seven orthographies and seven sep- Another international team designed A Standard arate sets of grapheme realisations and spelling systems Unified Orthography for Sotho/Tswana Languages: for the seven official languages, A Unified Standard Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia Orthography of South-Central African Languages: and Zimbabwe. CASAS: Cape Town. The technical Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia has one set of gener- orthographic team and subsequent authors were Andy al rules. What seems to be the case is that since these Chebanne, Makali Mokitimi, Lits’episo Matlosa, are all Bantu languages they have similar sound and Rosalia Nakin, Mildred Wakumelo Nkolola, Sekgothe morphological systems. Makgoattsana and Mats’epo Machobane. The orthogra- Secondly, as mentioned above, multilingualism and phy was published in 2003. language contact is engendering natural harmonisation At the same September 2002 workshop, yet anoth- in Zambian languages (cf Chisanga 2003), just as it is er team tackled xiTsonga/xiChangana cluster. This led between the Nguni and Tswana/ Sotho clusters in to a publication of the cross-border orthography by Gauteng in South Africa (cf Msimang 1998; Jokweni Sitoe B, Chimbutana F, Mabaso XE, Nkuna PH, 2003). A Unified Standard Orthography of South- Nxumalo NE and Hlungwani MC. 2003. A Unified Central African Languages: Malawi, Mozambique and Standard Orthography for XiTsonga/XiChangana: Zambia has now become the prototype for the design of South Africa and Mozambique. CASAS: Cape Town. other cross-border orthographies, not only in Southern This was followed in 2006 by a unified standard Africa but also in East and West Africa. Some of the orthography for chiShona varieties. The publication is cross-border orthographies are discussed below. entitled A Unified Standard Orthography for Shona As can be gleaned from the CASAS Publication list Language Varieties: Botswana, Mozambique and (2007), and the Website (www.casas.co.za), the centre Zimbabwe. The authors and designers of this cross-bor- has managed to bring together mother tongue speakers der orthography came from the three countries.

Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa 45 Opening Societies Through Advocacy

The cross-border language tshiVenda held its tech- Mozambique and Malawi (for example), the promotion nical workshop on 19-20 July 2007. The meeting was of ciNyanja, ciYao, siLozi, iciBemba, etc is reduced to attended by speakers of the language from South Africa speakers within the countries concerned. This limits the and Zimbabwe. A Unified Standard Orthography for potential that massive numbers of speakers of the lan- TshiVenda: South Africa and Zimbabwe will be pub- guages could have had, for instance, on literacy devel- lished in 2008 by CASAS. The authors are NM opment, had the promotion of the languages been done Musehane, K Ladzani, M Raphalalani, SR Mulaudzi at across-border levels. and SR Muleya. The apartheid legacy in Using the same design, One of the major problems in South Africa in which people CASAS has also extended its are perceived to belong to work on unified standard designing and implementing unified singular linguistic entities, orthographies to cross-border does not help matters. This languages of East and West standard orthographies in Southern explains why any talk of har- Africa, as well as Khoi-San monisation of Nguni and languages of Southern Africa is the lack of political cohesion Tswana/Sotho clusters in Africa. South Africa (e.g. Alexander Teachers and writers and will among member states about 1989) is often dismissed. workshops have already been Msimang (1998, page 171) organised in Zambia, how best to use African languages. for example, dismisses any Mozambique Namibia and chance of a harmonised Zimbabwe. Reading material and school books have Nguni or Sotho, but sees the possibility of unifying and been prepared and published using the new orthogra- standardising orthographies for the languages in each of phies. The process of producing materials that can be the clusters. shared across borders and between related African lan- African governments have not taken the lead in guages is well underway (CASAS 2007). orthography reform. During the design of some of the Again as can be seen from the blurbs, the design of orthographies discussed above, concern was often cross-border orthographies and the workshops as well raised about the poor government support for such proj- as publication of the material would be difficult without ects, and about whether the material produced using the material, specialist and financial backing from organi- newly designed orthographies would be endorsed by sations such as OSISA, Norad, Kellogs and the Ford governments (see Kamwendo 2002 for detailed discus- Foundation to name a few. sion on the issue). Another hurdle in the design and development of Challenges unified standard orthographies has been lack of It is clear from the above that there have been success- expertise or capacity in a number of dialects. es in the design of cross-border orthographies. Whereas it is imperative and desirable to involve However, there are also a number of challenges. One of speech communities of the languages concerned the major problems in designing and implementing uni- (Kamwendo 2002), it is sometimes difficult to find fied standard orthographies in Southern Africa is the expert native speaker linguists in some languages lack of political cohesion and will among member who are able to do a formal linguistic analysis of the states about how best to use African languages. The language concerned, and to come up with a compre- language in education policies in Southern African hensive list of in the language to draw out countries are at best haphazard and uncoordinated. For rules for graphemes and writing. instance, even though the South African constitution There is also a problem of what Kamwendo (2002, preserves the right of South Africans to use African lan- 2003) calls the myth of language ownership. This is guages in different spheres of life, the eleven official where individuals feel they own a particular language languages are described and promoted as bounded and and that any changes to the writing system have to be unrelated entities. In particular, Nguni and sanctioned by them. The case of Dr Hastings Kamuzu Tswana/Sotho languages are described as if they only Banda bestowing on himself custodianship of ciNyanja exist in South Africa. Similarly, in Zambia, is one extreme case of the myth of language ownership.

46 Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa Orthography design and harmonisation in development in Southern Africa

Sometimes for ethnic and identity reasons, some A comprehensive design of Bantu language people are too conservative to accept any modification orthographies needs to take into account that, unlike the to a writing system even if this is done to remove incon- western philosophy that spawned the different seSotho sistencies and inaccuracies to enhance readability. dialects into unrelated entities (for example), these lan- Machobane and Mokitimi (1998) discuss how some guages are in fact permeable and without frontiers. Sothos in Lesotho were so attached to the inconsistent There is no reason that the seSotho speakers in South and inaccurate orthography they were accustomed to Africa should develop different graphemes in use and that they refused to use a unified standard one, which spelling rules from those in use in Lesotho. Similarly, they could have shared with South Africa. there is no reason why ciNyanja speakers in Malawi, Designing orthography is one thing. Making sure Mozambique and Zambia should have different spelling that the material produced in the orthography reaches systems and writing rules. the people it is meant for is quite another. In this regard it is evident that status planning and Disseminating material across geographical borders corpus planning should take a cross-border perspective. makes it doubly difficult as the distribution networks In corpus planning, for example, there could be joint are diffuse and uncoordinated. The big national and cross-border committees to ensure that new terminolo- international publishers that control these networks are gy coming into Nguni, Tswana/ Sotho, ciNyanja, in it to make profits for their shareholders, while the iciBemba, etc is similar. Msimang (1998) argues that majority of NGOs involved in literacy and socio-eco- the strategy of pooling technical terminology has nomic development programmes in Africa are in it for worked well with Japanese, which shares modern con- altruistic purposes. This means that non-profit making cepts with Mandarin and Taiwanese, while the Arabic organisations are always under great pressure to ensure dialects draw from a unified standard terminology pro- that their material is comparable to that produced by gramme. There is no reason why Southern African established publishers, whilst at the same time produc- countries cannot come together to try for such a venture ing such material under reduced financial and material under regional organisations such as SADC. conditions. This is a very delicate act. This is where Moreover, given the multilingual reality of organisations such as OSISA, Norad, Kellogs, Ford Southern Africa, the design also needs to consider sec- Foundation, etc can come in to help in capacity build- ond, third or even fourth language speakers. These ing and logistics of disseminating the material. would swell the number of potential readers and users of material. Moreover, considering that the languages Concluding remarks in Southern Africa belong to the same family, adher- From the foregoing, it can be concluded that orthography ing to the design principles discussed above would planning should be a deliberate process and part of a larg- mean that second or third language speakers of partic- er language planning endeavour. Such language planning ular languages would not have to relearn their alpha- should be done as part of cross-border planning of related bet to be able to read a particular book. Such designed Bantu languages. As Prah (2003, 1998) has argued devel- orthographies would ensure that reading in African lit- opment in Africa can only accrue if speakers of related erature is not strictly restricted to first language speak- dialects in Africa pool their dialects. This pooling of lin- ers of a particular dialect as is often the case. In this guistic resources does not mean language engineering in regard, it is worth noting that the sales of English which languages are collapsed into singular dialects; material are boosted to unimaginable proportions by rather the language can share the same graphemes and second-,third-, and fourth-language speakers. In addi- rules for writing and reading. The design then should be tion, if one learns to read English from England, one geared for enhancing the number of readers as well as can easily read American or Australian English as developing the literacy levels of the masses. Unifying they obey more or less the same rules of reading and orthographies would consolidate the use of African lan- writing. guages “to facilitate the economics of scale in the devel- As it is, some Bantu language orthographies are opment of educational materials for African societies.” closed shops, designed for the western-educated (Prah 1998, page 8). This would in turn facilitate educa- African, as the written form of the language is tion in the language Africans know best and hence lead to divorced from that which the masses use. These socio-cultural and economic development. issues are discussed above. What remains is popular-

Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa 47 Opening Societies Through Advocacy ising and holding workshops for teachers and writers vations on the differences and similarities on some linguistic items. to adopt the new orthographies. Despite the caveats, In Prah Kwaa Kwesi (ed) Speaking in Unison. Cape Town: CASAS, pp. 103- 116. the prognosis so far has been positive. Looking at Guthrie, Malcolm 1971. Comparative Bantu: An Introduction what is happening in developed countries in the west to the Comparative Linguistics and Prehistory of the Bantu and the fast developing countries of the east, integra- Languages. 4 Vols. Farnborough: The Gregg Press. tion rather than segregation is the decisive factor. Jokweni, Mbulelo. 2003. Two Nguni languages: a comparative Therefore, even if the current African regimes are analysis of orthography and terminology. In Chebanne Andy, Jokweni Mbelelo, Mokitimi Makali Isabella and Ngubane reluctant to use cross-border orthographies, the work Sihawukele (eds) Unifying Southern African Languages.Cape that has been done so far will leave a legacy that Town: CASAS, pp. 163-172. future generations can develop. Kamwendo Gregory H. 2002. A SWOT analysis of the har- monisation of Malwian and Zambian languages’ orthographies. In Banda, Felix (ed) Language Across Border. Cape Town: CASAS, Felix Banda is professor of linguistics in the Department of pp. 103-116. Linguistics, University of the Western Cape, South Africa. He holds Kamwendo Gregory H. 2003. On language ownership and a PhD in Linguistics from the Free University in Brussels, and has orthographic reforms in Malawi. In Prah Kwaa Kwesi (ed) Speaking wide research interests in bilingualism and multilingual practices in in Unison. Cape Town: CASAS, pp. 89-102. schools and communities, language education, Bantu linguistics Ketulo, FEP, Macalane, G. and Chicuecue, C. 1997. Bukhu la and writing systems, Hallidayan systemic functional linguistics and Cinyanja: Bukhu la 5. Maputo: INDE. the sociolinguistics of language contact. Lestrade, GP. 1993 [1937]. The spelling of names of Bantu lan- guages and tribes in English. In Herbert, Robert, K. (ed) Foundations in Southern African Linguistics. Johannesburg: References Witswatersrand University Press, pp. 19-21 Alexander, Neville. 1998. Language Policy and National Unity Machobane, Mats’epo and Mokitimi, Makali. 1998. Problems in South Africa/Azania. Cape Town: Buchu Books. in the development of . In Prah, Kwaa Kwesi Bamgbose, Ayo. 1978. On devising, reforming and harmonis- (ed) Between Distinction and Extinction. Johannesburg: ing orthographies of African languages. African Languages: Witswatersrand University Press, pp. 203-212. Proceedings of the Meeting of Experts on the Transcription and Matumo, Z. 1969. Phonological considerations for unifying the Harmonization of African Languages. Paris: UNESCO. orthographies of the Sotho languages. MA thesis, Duquesne Banda, Felix (ed) 2002a. Language Across Border. Cape Town: University. CASAS. Miti, Lazarus. 2006. Comparative Bantu Phonology and Banda, Felix. 2002b. Towards a standard Bantu orthography. In Morphology. Cape Town: CASAS. Prah, Kwesi Kwaa (ed). Writing African. Cape Town: CASAS, pp. Mokatimi, Makali Isabella, Machobane Mats’epo and Matlosa 43-54. Lits’episo. 2003. Harmonisation of orthography of the Sotho group Banda, Felix 2003. Orthographic conventions of Nguni and of languages. In Chebanne Andy, Jokweni Mbulelo, Mokitimi groups: issues in harmonisation. In Chebanne Andy, Makali Isabella and Ngubane Sihawukele (eds) Unifying Southern Jokweni Mbelelo, Mokitimi Makali Isabella and Ngubane African Languages. Cape Town: CASAS, pp. 135-142. Sihawukele (eds). Unifying Southern African Languages. Cape Msimang Themba.1998. The nature and history of harmonisa- Town: CASAS, pp. 15-24. tion of South African languages. In Prah, Kwaa Kwesi (ed) Between Banda Felix, Mtenje Al, Miti Lazarus, Chanda Vincent, Distinction and Extinction. Johannesburg: Witswatersrand Kamwendo Gregory, Ngunga Armindo, Liphola Marcelino and University Press, pp. 165-174. Manuel Carlos 2002. A Unified Standard Orthography of South- Mtenje, Al. 2002. Towards the harmonisation of Cinyanja Central African Languages: Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia. dialects: some preliminary considerations. In Banda, Felix (ed) Cape Town: CASAS. Language Across Border. Cape Town: CASAS, pp. 83-90. Capo, Hounkpati BC. 2000. The New Ewe Orthography Based Musehane NM, Ladzani K, Raphalalani M, Mulaudzi SR and on the GBE Standard Orthography. Cape Town: CASAS. Muleya SR (forthcoming) The Standard Unified Orthography for Capo, Hounkpati BC 2002. The pan-dialect approach to ortho- TSHIVENDA (South Africa and Zimbabwe). Cape Town: CASAS. graphic conventions: the case of Gbe languages of West Africa. In Nyombe BVG. 2002. Unified orthography for Nilotic lan- Prah, Kwesi Kwaa (ed). Writing African. Cape Town: CASAS, pp. guages. In Prah, Kwesi Kwaa (ed) Writing African. Cape Town: 5-26. CASAS, pp. 27-42. Centre for Advanced Studies of African Societies, 2007. Prah, Kwesi Kwaa.1998. Introduction: the missing link in CASAS Publications. Cape Town: CASAS. African education and development. In Prah, Kwaa Kwesi (ed) Chanda, Vincent M. 2002. Orthography planning across lan- guages and countries: some thought and proposals. In Banda, Felix (ed) Language Across Border. Cape Town: CASAS, pp. 27-50. Chichewa Board. 1990. Chichewa Orthography Rules. Zomba: Government Printer. Chisanga, Teresa. 2003. Lusaka Cinyanja and Icibemba: obser-

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