{"id":96,"date":"2010-02-11T09:35:10","date_gmt":"2010-02-11T09:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/2010\/02\/11\/letters-4\/"},"modified":"2010-02-11T09:35:10","modified_gmt":"2010-02-11T09:35:10","slug":"letters-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/letters-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Letters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Readers’ Response\/ Opinion<\/span><\/span><\/strong> <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

To Our Readers\u00a0 <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/h1>\n

Your views are of interest to us. They help us balance the argument in the correct perspective. We welcome you to draw our attention to anything or opinion expressed in the Mauritius Times (or any national or international event of interest) with which\u00a0you agree from your own angle or disagree due to a different appreciation of facts. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

We will gratefully receive your communications at the email address: <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

mtimes@intnet.mu<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span> <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

We may decide to publish your comments or the relevant parts thereof if we consider that they will help our readers better understand specific contexts and maintain MT as the foremost and most balanced analytical newspaper of the country. <\/span> <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Kreol unfit as language of instruction in higher studies<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I refuse to believe that a well-educated university lecturer, politician, and social activist like Dev Virahsawmy (and a seasoned linguist to boot!) would have written the sentence \u201cMauritian Creole will become Morisien and will enter the curriculum as medium and language of higher studies<\/em>\u201d (Mauritius Times<\/em>, 5 February) after having given the idea it expresses any thought, leave alone serious thought. Mr Virahsawmy should be the last person to whom I should be telling that the number of languages existing<\/em> in the world today is about 7000; that languages emerge and evolve (as Mr Virahsawmy rightly points out), but also die in \u2018mass graves\u2019 more common than the ones that our power-obsessed leaders inflict on humankind every now and then even at the beginning of the Third Millennium. The latest language to die, among the 3500 that face the likelihood of extinction (http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/8500108.stm), was the 70,000 year-old Bo language of Great Andamanese tribe living in India\u2019s island territories of the Andamans. When Boa Sr died very recently. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Even languages lacking a written form contribute to civilization<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

Now, Mr Virahsawmy, an educator, knows very well that a language is defined as a particular system for encoding and decoding information. Thus, to take an extreme case, the blind, deaf and speech-disabled young Helen Keller learned the word \u201cwater\u201d through the intelligent (intelligent, not stupidly soft-hearted) care of her teacher Mrs. Sullivan through a sign-and-feel-and-phonetic combination of a \u2018language\u2019 from which \u2018non-traditional\u2019 languages, such as sign language and Braille were developed or refined. <\/span><\/p>\n

But, to limit ourselves to more commonly-understood usages of the word language, Mr Virahsawmy is right that languages that may not have evolved a written form are not necessarily inferior to those that have. He is right that languages, whether thriving or facing possible extinction, should be celebrated rather than denigrated. As a statement lifted from the link provided above puts it: \u201c\u2026Key insights of biology, pharmacology, genetics, and navigation arose and persisted solely by word of mouth, in small, unwritten tongues. [The speakers of these languages] tell [anthropologists] how their ancestors calculated accurately the passing of seasons without clocks or calendars; how humans adapted to hostile environments, from the Arctic to Amazonia [and to colonial Mauritius].\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

At the same time, educators, in particular, ought to constantly keep in mind that languages, like cultures and (as Robert Wright has so felicitously documented in his recent best-seller \u201cThe Evolution of Religions\u201d) religions, reflect the contexts in which they emerged, the environments in which they spread, the opportunities and challenges that their users opened up or had to face. The fate of languages is interlinked with that of peoples and cultures and, over longer periods of time, of species, as they undergo parallel competitive evolutions or extinctions. Thus the people of the Yupik tribe of Alaska have names for 99 distinct sea ice formations in their environmentally adapted language, and they thrive in a climate where the most hardy group of Canadian or American explorers spread over an area of the land and unable to communicate with their colleagues the features of the landscape, knowledge of which might be essential to their survival, would soon die.<\/span><\/p>\n

In his best-selling book \u201cGuns, Germs and Steel\u201d, Jared Diamond explains how the he found the \u2018cargo people\u2019 of Papua-New Guinea and of the South Pacific every bit as intelligent as he is and every bit as fond of the material comforts of modern civilization as he is. He assures us that it would not be difficult to teach the \u2018cargo people\u2019 to settle and grow high-yield crops and domesticate animals for agricultural planting and harvesting. But, they prefer their traditional way of life and are wiling to look upon visiting Europeans or other modern peoples as near-deities bringing \u2018cargo\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

I beg forgiveness for this pedantry, but all this to demonstrate convincingly that Mr Virahsawmy is conflating linguistics, with sociology and anthropology and pedagogy and politics. This makes for a terrible mess!<\/span><\/p>\n

Kreol unfit as medium of instruction beyond Form III<\/span><\/span><\/strong> <\/span><\/p>\n

I strongly favour the celebration of Kreol\/Morisien as a national language. I strongly favour its use as a supplement<\/strong> to the medium of instruction at what is called, in American parlance, \u201cprimary to junior secondary\u201d schooling level. I am convinced that it will be impracticable at a higher level of education, simply because it lacks the concepts that are necessary for effective encoding and decoding and communication of information at that level.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have always insisted that there is no normal child studying his geometry at around the age bracket 12 -15 who has not, however, fleetingly, asked himself the question that Carl Gauss so successfully asked himself as a child and went on therefrom to develop non-Euclidean Geometry: \u201cWhat if we relax one of Euclid\u2019s postulates, the most evident candidate being the fifth postulate about parallel lines\u201d. When he started on that path, Gauss did not have the concepts to clearly develop his thoughts. He formulated new concepts, the German language and the environment that his benefactor the Duke of Gottingen provided for him easing his task. <\/span><\/p>\n

Similarly, every child at some point asks himself, when he goes to sleep: \u201cWhat is absolute<\/strong> nothing\u201d. Like me, he tucks the question in some dark corner of his brain. Only if he has mastered some more evolutionarily advanced language does he go on, as I have done, to read, with complete understanding John Barrow\u2019s book \u201cThe Book of Nothing\u201d and possibly contribute to advance knowledge in that cutting-edge field of human intellectual investigation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kreol simply does not have that complexity, that richness of concepts. Trying to pretend otherwise does a disservice to the celebration of the Kreol\/Morisien language rather than celebrates it. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

Slahoodine Malleck Amode
<\/span><\/em><\/strong>Canada<\/span><\/em> <\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Comm\u00e9morations des ind\u00e9pendances africaines
Le temps des clarifications
<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

L\u2019id\u00e9e de devoir comm\u00e9morer les cinquante ans d\u2019ind\u00e9pendance de leur pays en compagnie de l\u2019ex-colonisateur \u00e9tait loin de faire l\u2019unanimit\u00e9 parmi les Africains. Certains ont trouv\u00e9 le projet saugrenu. D\u2019autres y ont flair\u00e9 un pi\u00e8ge, d\u2019autant que l\u2019ind\u00e9pendance \u00e9quivaut, pour le moins, \u00e0 un divorce, et ne m\u00e9rite donc pas un d\u00e9fil\u00e9, le 14\u00a0juillet, aux c\u00f4t\u00e9s des troupes fran\u00e7aises, sur les Champs-Elys\u00e9es\u2026<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

On s\u2019attendait \u00e0 des manifestations d\u2019hostilit\u00e9, mais pas de sit\u00f4t. Et voil\u00e0 qu\u2019une figure de premier plan dans la lutte pour l\u2019ind\u00e9pendance du Cameroun vient d\u2019ouvrir le feu, en rappelant quelques faits historiques. \u00ab\u00a0Nous, Camerounais, dit Samuel Mack-Kit, nous avons gard\u00e9 de l\u2019ind\u00e9pendance un go\u00fbt amer. L\u2019histoire de notre ind\u00e9pendance a \u00e9t\u00e9 une histoire sanglante. Et jusqu\u2019ici, les gouvernements de la France officielle ont fait semblant d\u2019ignorer cette r\u00e9alit\u00e9. Nous disons donc que pour ce qui nous concerne, tant que l\u2019on ne tombera pas d\u2019accord sur l\u2019appr\u00e9ciation des conditions de cette ind\u00e9pendance, nous ne pouvons la f\u00eater ensemble.\u00a0\u00bb<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Et d\u2019exiger de la France qu\u2019elle reconnaisse qu\u2019elle a envoy\u00e9 au Cameroun, de 1955 \u00e0 1964-1966, une arm\u00e9e qui a fait la guerre aux nationalistes camerounais. \u00ab\u00a0Car, d\u00e9plore-t-il, il n\u2019est indiqu\u00e9 nulle part dans les livres d\u2019histoire qu\u2019il y a eu une guerre d\u2019ind\u00e9pendance au Cameroun.\u00a0\u00bb<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Pour \u00e9viter les b\u00e9vues\u2026<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Les r\u00e9flexions de Samuel Mack-Kit nous ram\u00e8nent \u00e0 une autre r\u00e9alit\u00e9, qui pourrait expliquer, au moins en partie, le mauvais usage qui a \u00e9t\u00e9 fait de certaines de ces ind\u00e9pendances que tous les Etats veulent c\u00e9l\u00e9brer aujourd\u2019hui\u00a0: ceux \u00e0 qui l\u2019on a remis les cl\u00e9s des Etats ind\u00e9pendants n\u2019\u00e9taient pas toujours ceux qui luttaient pour la souverainet\u00e9 internationale. Certains \u00e9taient tout simplement du c\u00f4t\u00e9\u2026 du pouvoir colonial, qu\u2019ils ont cru devoir continuer \u00e0 servir.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Les initiateurs de ces comm\u00e9morations conjointes voulaient sans doute c\u00e9l\u00e9brer un demi-si\u00e8cle d\u2019amiti\u00e9 et de coop\u00e9ration franco-africaine dont Paris estime avoir de bonnes raisons de se f\u00e9liciter. Mais qu\u2019en pensent les populations et l\u2019intelligentsia africaines\u00a0? Peut-\u00eatre est-il encore temps, pour les organisateurs de ces festivit\u00e9s, de rattraper les oublis et d\u2019\u00e9viter les b\u00e9vues, de mieux penser leur projet, dont la r\u00e9ussite passe par leur aptitude \u00e0 ne pas passer par pertes et profits les blessures et autres \u00e9raflures de l\u2019Histoire, les humiliations et le sang vers\u00e9, dont on s\u2019est \u2013\u00a0h\u00e9las\u00a0!\u00a0\u2013 peu pr\u00e9occup\u00e9 au cours du demi-si\u00e8cle \u00e9coul\u00e9.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Jean-Baptiste Placca<\/strong><\/span><\/a>
<\/span>MFI<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Readers’ Response\/ Opinion \u00a0 To Our Readers\u00a0 \u00a0 Your views are of interest to us. They help us balance the argument in the correct perspective. We welcome you to draw our attention to anything or opinion expressed in the Mauritius Times (or any national or international event of interest) with which\u00a0you agree from your own […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8QzSF-1y","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}