Colonialism created a hierarchy of languages in Kenya. At the top was English, the language of power and prestige. In the middle was Swahili, the language of commerce and the colonial administration. At the bottom were the African languages: Kikuyu, Luhya, Kalenjin, Maasai, Samburu, and others.
This hierarchy was not natural or neutral. It reflected colonial power. English was the language of the colonizer. Knowing English was essential for access to education, to well-paying jobs, to power. Swahili was the language of the colonial state's dealings with the African population. African languages were positioned as local, as limited, as insufficient for modern life.
The psychological consequences were severe. Africans internalized the message that their own languages were inferior. Parents who wanted their children to succeed sent them to schools where they would learn English and, if they were fortunate, discouraged the use of African languages. Speaking an African language could mark you as rural, as uneducated, as limited.
After independence, the hierarchy was maintained. English remained the language of power. The constitution made English and Swahili official languages, but English remained dominant in education, government, and commerce. African languages were excluded from formal education and official contexts.
The consequences persist. A Kenyan child educated in English, who reads Shakespeare and Dickens but has limited literacy in their own language, is a legacy of colonial language hierarchy. The assumption that serious knowledge is available in English, that African knowledge is folk knowledge, is a legacy of this hierarchy.
Language hierarchy created a situation where people are alienated from their own languages. A Kikuyu person who cannot read or write Gikuyu, who thinks of Gikuyu as a language for old people or rural people, is a product of language hierarchy that colonialism created.
The psychological consequence is profound. People lose connection to their own languages and, with it, connection to the knowledge, the poetry, the intellectual traditions encoded in those languages.
See Also
- Language Politics
- Decolonising the Mind
- Sheng as Cultural Legacy
- Colonial Education Legacy
- The Postcolonial Body