Durban — A local academic is “saddened” at how the cultural identity of South Africans of Indian descent continues to erode at an alarming rate because their ancestral languages have taken a backseat to English.
Dr Sana Jeewa, lecturer of linguistics at the University of Johannesburg found it astounding that in African cultures even their youth still used their ancestral languages, but was personally aware that it was not the case in the Indian community.
Why English became the language of choice for Indians inspired her recent research project, which she presented at the 25th International Conference of the African Languages Association of Southern Africa, hosted by the University of KwaZulu-Natal, earlier this month.
To get better insight on the decimation of Indian ancestral languages, Jeewa tested the level of interest Indian youngsters had for their mother tongue languages and chose schools located in different parts of Durban as her sample set.
“I was keen to discover why this was the case and how English has become our language of choice within our population group. I have always been an advocate of having knowledge of multiple languages, so the fact that so many from my generation have lost touch of these languages saddened me and was something I needed to research further,” said Jeewa.
The Durban-born researcher started lecturing linguistics at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in 2018 during her PhD studies, and her love for languages only grew six years later.
She got into linguistics by chance, choosing it as an elective but found it to be fascinating that she added it as a major and carried on.
Her latest study focused on the hegemony of English affecting the identities of Indian students, and if they were being shaped more by class, religion and other societal factors.
“The three schools based in the eThekwini region of KwaZulu-Natal were used as the locations of the study. Each school differed significantly with one being from an old Indian township (Phoenix), another from a mixed mid-income suburb (Newlands West) and the last from a more metropolitan mixed-race area (Greyville).
“The main thought behind my study was to explore the intersection of linguistic repertoires and Indian culture in the three secondary schools.”
She wanted to identify how language identity had evolved over the decades culminating in the truly diverse identities of the present day.
“I also explored how English and other languages were used amongst the Indian population and was able to look at which languages play a role in defining us and what we use in different facets of our lives.”
Jeewa researched English, particularly the South African Indian variety.
She noticed that most participants were monolingual, while some spoke Gujarati, Urdu, Tamil and Hindi, and used words and phrases taught to them by their grandparents.
“Slang was a popular way of speaking in the secondary schools – slang is a style of language they were all familiar with and ultimately keen to use among their friends.”
The research found that multilingual strivings are not common among South African Indian pupils, instead, it found that different varieties of English serve as different languages within the Indian community.
She learnt how South African Indian English (SAIE) was widely spoken among Indian secondary school pupils and that their identities and ethnicities were not always language-embedded.
While language does play a role, elements like class, religion and residence often serve as identity markers with stronger weight.
“Language changes according to the environment, those who still lived in families with their grandparents were still familiar with their ancestral languages.
“The breakdown of the old family system has certainly played a role in English becoming the ‘only language’ young people use today.
“However, Indian ancestral languages are dying in South Africa, that is an undoubtable fact.
“I still hold the firm belief that it is important as it gives us a link to our ancestors, to our past, to Indian culture. While I understand that other elements affect our identities, to me, language is an aspect that is still vital – that multilingualism is something we need to embrace and not try to discourage,” said Jeewa.
Sunday Tribune