I haven’t written about my Community for a very long time. All is well with me, except what the English Writer saw in 1984 from 1930, is coming to pass. He said it in plain words. I don’t know if you were also listening to him. It has come to reality. What he said is happening “feeli feeli” in our Community.
I never knew words was that powerful. Yes ooo. They have power. Their power is beyond measure. You don’t need guns, cutlass, machete or those bows and arrows used in the war between the Manlarla of Kaleo and the Sons of Wa for supremacy. The one the Sons of the Waala led by Bajuri handsomely defeated the Gbarni led Manlarla. They wouldn’t have been defeated if they had known how to use words to ignite power.
I know you don’t like hearing about it because one of your great grandfathers was slain in this war which changed the thoughts of one of your uncles completely likewise everything around him. And you see the way everything changed with a lost war, so does everything changes with a lost battle in language.
I wished your people had listened to the son from the ‘water-mouth.’ How do they call him again? I knew it was ‘something’ Sakyi. Aha! Kobina Sakyi, I’m told. Or the Kenyan son, Ngugu Wa Thiango, from the heart of the lion jungle, where the sun never set. They know, and perhaps was certain, that language was the motor force of thought upon which the world revolves.
Don’t ask any of your menopausal questions? Let me finish first. I beg waa!!! And so yes, it was true. When you want to change the mindset of generations, alter their language and you don’t have to worry about their actions. The main reason our colonial masters were very happy to grant us our independence with so much joy.
They know what they were doing. They know we can get freedom from them but we can’t have freedom from ourselves for ourselves with their language deeply rooted in our minds. So, they left us with their language. And we grabbed it with the claws of an eagle. Their work was done. But was this the biggest problem we encountered?
No. It wasn’t the biggest problem. We inherited the language in it pure form, not the purest though; what the Ghanaian young lady will call secondary virgin but it wasn’t as slovenly as it is today. What happened? Because we don’t think for ourselves. The language dictated our thoughts. Whenever it is twisted, we danced along. The Way and Manner that the English writer, George Orwell, predicted in 1984.
He has a magic eye. He saw things from afar that we didn’t see. When they call you a writer, not any ordinary writer but a novelist, a poet or prose writer, you should have the sight of foresight. However, what I don’t understand is, in the land of “beautiful nonsense,” our own land, where we wanted freedom so much, and at present, those people who wanted it dearly, are those reduced to the slovenliness that George Orwell talked about.
Those who still pursue the purest form of language, the form that Michel Foucault, the revered philological philosopher, talked about, they are casted as ‘abrofo sem’, it’s not even amongst the illiterates; at least, that would’ve been understood, instead, it’s the so called literates who quakes, “speak normal English” as if what you speak just landed from Jupiter. And they are the very same people who parade themselves as the learned commodities from the English Market.
Language is living. Language is life. That I agreed. Very well. It transcended generations. But language shouldn’t be fed cabbages and carrots or lactogens from the GMO world. It will grow faster than the intended duration. And the faster it grows, the faster it dies and the faster it rots. So are it’s people. As a result, we either jettison it all together or we start to learn its proper usage. Don’t proffer what you think you don’t understand as “big Words” into a language you’re lazily accustomed.
Language is to the mind what the heart is to the body. When it function properly everything is in its correct order. And when it does not function properly, the community, people and every other thing is in disorder. Hence we must guard our thoughts carefully. And to guard our thoughts, we must preserve the sanctity of our language in it proper sense. It’s only when you begin to understand these words in their proper perspective that you begin to appreciate how pure, sacrosanct and what they can do to our lives.
Before I leave you, I want you to know that a ‘mumu’ in the most noisiest market begins to mimic the noise while the most noisiest person in a ‘mumu’ market turns to lose his noise. I fear for my kith and kin as George Orwell feared for his language. I dreaded this day when your son, my elderly brother, introduced me into this language thing at my crawling stage of schooling. But it’s well! It’s well! My country shall prevail.
Whenever language lose it function, words lost their meaning. This is what has engulfed us as a community. Words have lost their meaning. However, words can continue to lose their meanings. But one word that we cannot allow to lose its meaning is Democracy. It might have suffered in our hands, but it should never be allowed to lose it meaning.
By Al Latif Kambo-Naa