Now that the festive season has passed, I find myself reflecting on an unsettling reality I encountered in rural communities: many young people cannot speak their native languages, and in some cases, this inability is celebrated rather than questioned.
For some parents, their children’s fluency in English, often acquired through private schooling, is treated as a marker of success, modernity and upward mobility.
This pride is understandable.English functions as a global lingua franca and remains a key instrument for social and economic advancement. Scholars such as Pierre Bourdieu have described language as a form of cultural capital, one that grants access to power, education, and social mobility.
However, when the accumulation of this capital results in the abandonment of indigenous languages, we must interrogate what is being lost in the process.
Language is not merely a neutral tool for communication; it is deeply embedded in culture, identity and collective memory.
Linguist Edward Sapir famously argued that language shapes how individuals perceive and experience the world.
Similarly, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o has consistently emphasised that language is both a carrier of culture and a means through which people understand themselves and their place in society.
When children cannot speak their mother tongue, they are effectively distanced from their history, oral traditions, value systems, and modes of knowing.
This phenomenon must also be understood within the broader framework of coloniality. Frantz Fanon warned that colonialism does not end with political independence; it persists psychologically, particularly through language.
The elevation of English as the sole language of intellect and success reinforces a colonial mentality that devalues African languages and positions them as inferior, informal, or unsuitable for modern life.
Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont further remind us that language reveals far more than communicative ability. One can often infer a person’s heritage, geographic location, social class, and cultural background from the language they speak and how they speak it.
When indigenous languages are lost, so too are these markers of identity and belonging.
Importantly, this is not an argument against English.
Multilingualism, as supported by contemporary sociolinguistic research, enhances cognitive
development, critical thinking and social adaptability.
The problem arises when English is acquired at the expense of children being unable to speak their own languages.
True intellectual and cultural empowerment lies in linguistic coexistence, not linguistic
replacement.
A society that raises children who can only speak the language of former colonisers, while being disconnected from their mother tongues, risks producing generations that are globally fluent yet culturally displaced.
Preserving indigenous languages is therefore not an act of nostalgia but a necessary intervention in reclaiming identity, dignity and epistemic justice.
• Tebogo Mahlaela is a communication and marketing specialist, Unisa
