Tongue and talk: Keeping language alive in Africa

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 5 November 2024

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ghanaian journalist Justice Baidoo is teaching his two young boys how to speak the ancient African language of Ahanta. He home schools them with lessons several times a week in an effort to keep the indigenous language alive in a continent where many are disappearing due to the over dominance of English and French, and in recent years the added power of American culture through mass media, online and through mobile phones. He hears how locals are trying to revive Ahanta by setting up a radio station and running regular dedicated church services attracting a one-thousand-strong congregation, before travelling across Ghana to hear people speaking the endangered language of Animere in the village of Kunda.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I am Justice Beidu, a journalist based in Accra, Ghana.
0:05.4	As a father of two young boys, I'm on a mission to teach them a hunter,
0:09.9	the language for my village in southwestern Ghana that is slowly dying.
0:19.9	My inspiration came from the days during my master's degree in international journalism studies at the University of Cardiff in Wales.
0:30.0	It was the first time I had been to the UK and everything was new and different.
0:35.6	The one thing that struck me the most
0:37.5	was that not everyone in Britain
0:39.5	spoke English.
0:41.2	As I would learn,
0:46.6	all announcements were made in English
0:48.6	and then in Welsh.
0:54.9	The indigenous language of the 3 million people who live in that part of the UK.
1:00.4	But in my one year in Cardiff, I never heard anyone who actually spoke Welsh.
1:05.8	Though across the country, there are about 8 to 900,000 Welsh speakers. Anyway, it got me thinking about my life back
1:14.4	in Ghana, and it opened my eyes to the fact that global languages like English, especially
1:20.0	American English and French, dominate so much, and there's a real urgency to preserve our own
1:27.0	linguistic heritage.
1:28.5	Mouwa.
1:29.3	Mouwa.
1:30.2	Mouth.
1:31.2	You never taught us mouths.
1:32.6	You said you would teach us, but you never taught us.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.