LANGUAGE IS ASSOCIATED WITH DEVELOPMENT AND TO ADOPT ONE LANGUAGE IS A HALFWAY TO DEVELOPMENT

Opinion,

By Daniel Juol Nhomngek,

Kampala, Uganda,

March 24, 2019(Nyamilepedia) — There must be someone running this country neither the President of South Sudan nor the Parliament. One of the issues that are going to affect our future is language.

Language contains values of the community and because of that people are able to reason properly as they base their reasoning on properly system. This is why China, USA, France, Russia and other countries are ahead in term of development.

For a country to be stable and to develop, no need to adopt many languages, what is needed is one language only and other languages are made optional and compulsory for the students doing into international relations and diplomacy.

We have provided in the Constitution that English is our official language then why don’t we stick to it instead of running up and down, here and there with different languages. 

In doing that we only put the country on a dose of language trial and it is destruction of the country as a group of citizens will always have a language at each stage of development and because of that we shall always begin afresh at each stage.

The whole thing is that as I have seen now, we are trying to gamble with the country and it will reach a point where we will not move any longer and finally destroy each other and the country.

For example, sometime back we joined East Africa and at the same time we wanted to join Arab League. We have now adopted Arabic as the language of business yet the Constitution provides English as an official language.

We now wanted to adopt Kiswahili as proposed and now we are also planning to introduce French and to recruit teachers from DR. Congo.

While some countries are running away from French language, South Sudan is going to it. We completely do not have a policy or ideology on where we are going in term of language.

I think South Sudan will adopt all languages and at the end of this century,  it will be rated as one of the  most multiblingul nation in the world. 

However, it will give birth to half baked language experts who will be more of a trouble than now. What our leaders should know is that language has deep rooted values and it is only when a person is able to understand it properly that is when he or she can analyse the language and come out with proper and real meaning as intended by the writer.

As we have seen today in the country, there are many half baked English and Arabic experts in the security sector who take the language literally and mark people on that language without properly analyzing the intended meaning.

For that reason, South Sudan will never development as long as we are not settled on the issue of language. This confusion will never end and as the country remains in confusion the system will remain in confusion.

We must do something. We only need one language and may be Kiswahili partly because we are part of East Africa. As we  are part of East Africa we also need English Language.

Other languages must made compulsory for the students studying international law and other subjects related to foreign relations.

In general, it is time for us to stand up against this language hunting and to make up our mind to adopt one language.

We should not adopt language because we are hoping to get externally but we should come up with our own agreed language and strength our economy so that other people struggle to come to our country instead of us pleasing others always with intention of going to other countries to work there. 

We have everything it takes to be a great nation. What we need is the leadership strategizing to set the country in the path of development without caring much of what others will say.

The author is a concern South Sudanese, he can be reached for more information through his email at juoldaniel2003@gmail.com