Maternal Imagery in Bible Translation: A Comparative Analysis of Divine Nurturing Metaphors Across Indigenous Languages in Ghana

In South African higher education, the dominance of English and Afrikaans continues to raise concerns about the marginalization and development of indigenous African languages. Consequently, strategies are being sought on how to revitalize indigenous languages in the higher education sector. This study argues that critical lessons for addressing these challenges and achieving the desired goals can be drawn from African literature. Therefore, this study aims to examine how African literature contributes to the development of indigenous African languages and explore strategies from African literature that can effectively revitalize and promote indigenous African languages in South African higher education. The study is a qualitative study that involves a review of African literary texts. Furthermore, thematic analysis was conducted to identify how African literature contributes to the development of indigenous African languages. Practical lessons and strategies that can inform the revitalization of these indigenous languages within higher education were identified. The identified strategies that were adopted by African literary writers in promoting indigenous languages include: documentation, codification and standardization, vocabulary expansion and modernization, cross-linguistic translation, and hybridization, and code switching. All these would require strong institutional commitment and intellectual investment. Through drawing on lessons from African literature, universities can cultivate a linguistic landscape that preserves indigenous languages and empowers them as vehicles for knowledge creation, innovation, and cultural expression.

Indigenous language media in Africa function to meet the communication, social interaction, information, educational, development and entertainment needs of people. They play a significant role in shaping language pride and language choice, in the process of informing communities about various socioeconomic developments. Indigenous African language media are part of the African indigenous communication system including music, drama, storytelling, proverbs and poetry. This book has demonstrated the various uses and applications of indigenous language media such as music, film, radio broadcasts in indigenous languages, non-verbal communication cues, town criers, graffiti and other traditional communication tools in a modern setting. A common message across all the chapters is that indigenous language media in Africa in their various formats occupy a very important role in society by mediating the realities around us, entertaining us through film, music, poetry, etc. and of course supporting the development process by mobilising marginal communities to participate in, for example, public health campaigns and democratic processes such as elections. Specifically, indigenous language films bring a fresh perspective to the cultural and creative industry. The use of indigenous languages is not limited to traditional media as there is interesting evidence on the increasing use of indigenous language media in digitally driven social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Twitter and Facebook. Scholars in this book view social media as breathing spaces for minoritised languages. There are still some challenges in using indigenous languages in social media spaces. This could be attributed to the fact that youths who in most cases constitute most social media users are unable to fully write and read in indigenous African languages because they regard them as lacking in sophistry. Indigenous language media such as African language newspapers remain in a precarious position because of a variety of political economy challenges present in Africa including the digitalisation conundrum. Studies in this book have demonstrated how indigenous language newspapers have migrated to online platforms to continue with the business of providing news and information in a digital era. Even though some indigenous communication forms are seemingly archaic in today's digital society, they still have relevance and can be used with varying success to send communication messages. In Nigeria, indigenous communication forms such as the use of palm leaves, burning of tyres, chanting, and dancing as well as the female gender stripping naked in public have been used as protest communication to draw the attention of the authorities to public grievances. The use of indigenous communication forms is despite the recent diffusion of digital technologies and utopian assumptions that digital technologies can easily usher in democratisation across the whole African continent based on the success of the Arab Spring revolutions of the early 2010s in North Africa. The Arab Spring revolutions were a series of anti-government protests that started in Tunisia in 2010 and spread into Morocco, Libya and Egypt in 2011, disposing authoritarian regimes in those countries. Indigenous communication forms can still be effectively used to inform authorities of citizen discontent and to communicate messages that can impact policy formulation. Radio broadcasts in indigenous languages promote participation and empowerment of minority and special interest groups such as women. The importance of indigenous language media has been heightened during the recent COVID-19 pandemic. In the context of the ongoing COVID-19, indigenous language media have been applied to increase awareness of the pandemic among marginal communities to prevent new infections through the adoption of appropriate health and hygiene behaviours. Using indigenous languages to communicate about COVID-19 is part of cultural promotion and preservation as the languages are prevented from further decay or death. Studies in this book also make unique theoretical contributions that gravitate towards the critical tradition to understand the phenomenon of indigenous language media in Africa. For example, radical feminism is used to analyse the content of indigenous language films in Zimbabwe. The study of indigenous language media remains a critical enterprise, and we urge other scholars interested in this field to carry on the work by focusing on themes and topics that were not exhaustively covered in this volume. For example, there is a need for future studies that are strongly founded on the critical theory tradition. Critical theory research is concerned with a critique of society focusing on domination, alienation, social struggles and the attainment of social justice. Research on indigenous language media in African foundation on critical theory will be more concerned with the dominance of Western-styled media of mass communication in Africa and how such dominance can be overturned by prioritising indigenous languages and indigenous language media with a potential of influencing and shaping policy. Most studies on indigenous language media in Africa as demonstrated in this book are still founded on qualitative methods. This is because qualitative methods are best suited to study indigenous language media in Africa as in their nature they seek to describe and understand a phenomenon in greater detail. Another reason for the predominance of qualitative studies in this book is because qualitative research is linked to interpretivism which views social reality as socially constructed and contextual. Therefore, the studies are contextually grounded by providing the unique experiences, uses and applications of indigenous language media in Africa's different geographic locations. Qualitative methods of textual analysis such as thematic analysis, content analysis and critical discourse analysis are predominantly used in data analysis. The case study approach is also frequently used to research peculiar issues about indigenous language media outlets or publications. There remains a need to conduct ethnographically grounded studies that explore how indigenous language media are produced and consumed across different contexts and cultures. Production-based ethnographies may focus on newsroom routines in the context of digitisation, motivations and skill base of African language journalists. There is also a growing need for research on indigenous language media that has pragmatic outcomes and has the potential to impact decision-making or policy shifts. Future research on indigenous language media in Africa should adopt an activist stance that deliberately aims to save indigenous languages from extension and protects such media from unfair market forces which tend to favour the dominant media that publishes in colonial languages such as English, Portuguese and French. For this we call for research that comes with actionable recommendations that function to save indigenous language media from the brink of collapse. There is a need to vary the case studies used to understand indigenous language media or to use the same case studies differently by applying new lines of inquiry and alternative theorising. With regard to film, we encourage more studies that focus on the appropriation of indigenous language films in Africa. As one of the authors has stated, there is a need for more studies on the effects of patriarchy/matriarchy in indigenous language films from the viewers' and the actors' perspectives. There is also potential for indigenous language media to improve the variety of content it offers. There are calls to have context-specific and sensitive programming that addresses the plight of people with disabilities in Namibia. Similarly indigenous language media producers can vary their content to include marginal issues that affect disadvantaged groups beyond health awareness such as food and economic security. Finally, we note that there are still few studies that research indigenous language media from a decolonial perspective. We propose a new research that is critical, policy-oriented, raising vital philosophical questions about the dominance of the English language media and adopting a decolonial approach. Decoloniality must be employed as a theoretical and methodological approach that forms part of a bigger decolonial project to promote a positive disposition towards African languages and culture. It is also important for policymakers to take indigenous media seriously because it is embedded in the culture of the people. By preserving the indigenous media, it means the culture of the people is also preserved.

The South African Journal of African Languages was officially established in 1981 to advance the visibility and intellectualisation of indigenous South African languages as outlined in its aims and scope. Regrettably, greatly entrenched imperialist ideologies obstruct these languages’ comprehensive visibility in this journal. Therefore, this article critiques the (in)visibility (presence or absence) of indigenous languages in SAJAL from 1994 to 2023 using the cultural capital theory. Four notable findings emerge. Firstly, from the same year the journal was established (1981) until 1994, only English and Afrikaans were used in SAJAL, symbolising hegemonic imperialist objectives. Secondly, the use of local language titles during this period (1981, when the journal was established, until 1994, the new dawn of South Africa) suggests the commodification of indigenous South African languages. Thirdly, from 1995 to 1998, some articles and book reviews appeared in Sepedi or Sesotho sa Leboa, but this trend abruptly vanished, only re-emerging from 2015 to 2023, along with articles and book reviews in isiXhosa, isiZulu and Xitsonga. Other indigenous languages remain absent. Fourthly, over SAJAL’s history (at the time of writing this article), only fifty-three publications have been in indigenous languages, compared to hundreds in English and Afrikaans. These findings underscore the demand for authors and reviewers to reconsider language choices, and for SAJAL to address the alarming disparity between colonial and indigenous languages in its publication frequency.

Indigenous African languages have often suffered neglect in health development campaigns until recently. Considering the multi-faceted effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on different peoples and societies worldwide, this article argues that vaccine campaigns in African settings cannot be impactful if they are not disseminated in the indigenous African languages. The article is hinged on Salawu’s model of indigenous language for development communication, which affirms the connection between language of communication and people’s understanding of the message communicated. The study employed a survey experimental research method. Using the pool sampling technique, both online and offline questionnaires were used to survey the opinions of 191 Nigerian and 114 South African respondents in Lagos and Mafikeng, respectively, about dominant indigenous languages used for COVID-19 vaccine messages, their degree of understanding vaccine messages and their acceptance or rejection of the vaccine messages. Interview sessions were conducted with five purposively selected health communication and media experts to determine the significance of and challenges encountered in the use of indigenous African languages for COVID-19 vaccine campaigns. The quantitative data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistical tools, such as frequency count and percentage, chi-square, percentile and logistic regression; while the qualitative data were thematically analysed. While respondents mostly identified with messages in Yoruba, Igbo, Setswana and isiZulu, a few respondents identified with a combination of languages, although these languages did not influence their acceptance of vaccines.

This paper explores the drama written in indigenous African languages across many countries in Africa. It highlights the intellectual snobbery suffered by drama written in indigenous languages, probing the reasons behind the critical marginalization. It equally probes the elemental compositions of drama written in indigenous languages, investigating how oral elements revitalize and fertilize the dramatic works. The theoretical framework for this study was anchored on Ethnodramatics, a theory of indigenous drama projected by Affiah and Osuagwu while the inspirations which substantiate indigenous African languages as viable and effective linguistic mediums for dramatic creativity are derived from Ngugi wa Thiongo’s theoretical postulation on the language of African theatre in Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986). The paper reveals that traditional African drama in indigenous languages creatively utilizes oral resources and elements such as proverbs, riddles, mime, music, songs, dance, and other folk arts in ways that embellish and relive their drama. The paper concludes that by writing in indigenous languages, playwrights expand the resources and frontiers of African indigenous languages, a situation that nurtures and preserves them.

This article explores and emphasises the crucial link between the African Renaissance and Africa's indigenous languages. It sheds light on the impact of colonial languages on Africa's colonial state. Indigenous African languages, Ndhlovu (2008, 42) says ‘are essential for the decolonisation of African minds and for the African Renaissance’. However, the finding was that the promotion of colonial languages at the expense of indigenous African languages is characteristic of the colonial state of Africa. The argument is, therefore, in favour of the consideration of indigenous African languages in the promotion of African Renaissance.

After the demise of apartheid in South Africa in 1994, 11 languages (English, Afrikaans and 9 indigenous African languages) were given official status. In the higher education landscape, English remains the dominant language of scholarship. At the University of KwaZulu-Natal, English is the main medium of instruction but the institution's language policy provides for the use of isiZulu (one of the indigenous African languages) as an additional medium of instruction. The paper discusses how three of the four colleges of the University are employing isiZulu in this role. This use of isiZulu is analysed through the following four theoretical perspectives: African scholarship, Africanization of higher education, the African Renaissance, and transformation. Whilst there are obviously some challenges in using isiZulu as a medium of instruction, it is very clear that the project deflates the myth that indigenous African languages can only serve in lower levels of education (such as primary schools) and not higher education. The paper is of relevance not only to South African universities, but also to other African (and even non-African) universities that plan to use indigenous languages as media of instruction.

Objective:South Africa has a multi-lingual population where fewer than 10% of the population speak English as a first language. This poses a challenge regarding language usage for a verbal fluency task. This study investigated the difference in number of words produced by independent groups of non-English examinees required to produce words in English, or in their first language, on a category verbal fluency task.Participants and Methods:A study on South African non-English first language participants was conducted using the Category Verbal Fluency test (animals) for a sample of nonclinical adults (N = 264) aged 18-60 years with 8-12 years of disadvantaged (poorly resourced) quality of education. Participants either had an African indigenous first language, or Afrikaans (a Dutch derivative) as a first language. The data were derived from one group of either African indigenous or Afrikaans first language participants who were required to use English for word production (Group A English) (n = 159; African indigenous n = 135; Afrikaans n = 24) and another group of participants who were required to use their first language (Group B First Language) (n = 105; African indigenous n = 83; Afrikaans n = 22). The comparative data were stratified for age ranges 18-20, 21-30, 31-40, 41-50 and 51-60 years. Level of education was broadly equivalent across the comparative groups. T-test analyses compared the number of words produced between the English versus indigenous African groups, and English versus Afrikaans first language groups for each age category.Results:The comparison for the indigenous African first language participants, revealed no significant differences in word production for words produced in English or first language regardless of age. In the comparison for the Afrikaans first language participants there was a highly consistent tendency for better word production in Afrikaans than in English. These results indicate that socio-cultural factors may be influential for English language proficiency on a verbal fluency task, rather than the effect of first language usage “per se”.Conclusions:Since the dismantling of the Apartheid system in South Africa thirty years ago, English has become the main language used in government and business and is the preferred language of tuition in schools for those speaking English or an African indigenous language, whereas during the Apartheid era, two official languages were used for government, business, and schooling (Afrikaans and English). Currently, many Afrikaans speaking individuals continue to have Afrikaans as the preferred primary language of tuition in the schools and it persists as the preferred language for use in many Afrikaans dominated business arenas. This study attests to a high level of English fluency amongst those South Africans with an indigenous African first language, who clearly are as fluent in word production using English as they are when using their first language, in contrast to the indications for Afrikaans speaking individuals. Practitioners need to be alert to sociocultural factors that can impact on the optimal use of language in test situations, which may not necessarily be the first language.

Intricacies concerning indigenous languages in the South African milieu demonstrate intransigence that necessitates a scholarly contestation. This is in addition to the parades that have been made by the post-colonial government and language experts to ennoble the stature of these indigenous languages. With that context, this article underscores the historical component of indigenous languages and retainment strides - including challenges – that have been underlined in respect of South African indigenous language matters. The objective, among others, is to underscore those challenges concerning indigenous African languages, and in particular, South African indigenous languages exhibit tenacity. To ratify the claims of the article, a systemic literature review is appreciated as a fragmentary qualitative research methodology while conceptualization of language matters in South Africa couches the theoretical underpinnings. The principal discussion is that challenges that prevail within the phenomenon of language in the South African context must be acknowledged in a bid to solicit reasonable solutions to the problematized phenomenon. For future scholarly implications, it is debated that indigenous language matters must be contested.

This paper presents the findings of a study conducted to investigate the impact of the adoption of the eleven official languages and related democratic policies on the production of books in indigenous languages as well as the role of public libraries in promoting the use of books written in indigenous languages. The study reveals that. despite the provisions of the New Constitution regarding language. it seems that the publishing houses have not made much effort to reduce the predominant status traditionally enjoyed by Afrikaans and English in the South African publishing industry. The findings also show that most libraries have collections published mainly in English and Afrikaans. In addition. it was found that books in indigenous languages made up less than 1% of the collections of most of the responding libraries. The results of this study portray a poor state of publishing in indigenous South African languages. It is recommended that every effort should be made to promote the use of these languages more widely and government support be solicited.

The recognition of sign language as a full-fledged human language with linguistics description has led to several research works in both theoretical and applied linguistics considering different aspects. The present study extends this research to the Ghanaian context, with the aim of providing an overview of past and current research on indigenous and foreign-based sign languages in Ghana. We considered published and unpublished works from Ghanaian and foreign researchers and synthesized these to know the areas that have been covered. We specifically explored research on indigenous sign languages in Ghana; the contributions of Dr Andrew Foster in sign language literacy; research on foreign-based sign languages in Ghana; language contact, language vitality, language documentation and other sociological issues. We discussed our findings with respect to the descriptive analysis of sign languages in Ghana: vitality and vulnerability of different sign languages in Ghana. Relevant to our paper is the vulnerability and the possible endangerment of indigenous sign languages in Ghana. We argue that indigenous sign languages in Ghana risk endangerment, whereas foreignbased sign languages have potential for development. We suggest the involvement of local linguists in documentation, research, and the analysis of SLs in Ghana to ensure the survival of indigenous SLs and increased research on SLs in Ghana.KEY WORDS: sign language, Ghana, indigenous, foreign-based, overview

'In which language do you dream?': An OverviewSOMETIMES IN THE 1980S, THE DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE at the University of Nairobi erupted into an interesting but curious debate at the centre of which was the question: which language do you dream? If your answer to this question was that you dreamt in any of the indigenous African languages, you were perceived to be 'mentally decolonized'; if you dreamt in English, French or any other non- African language, you were deemed 'mentally colonized'.This anecdote, perhaps, provides a fitting start to this essay which analyses Ngugi wa Thiong'o's commitment to and advocacy for writing in indigenous African languages. In this essay, I examine Ngugi's mission of resisting past and present foreign domination and of forging an authentic African identity through writing in Gikuyu.This analysis is based on four of Ngugfs books of essays: Decolonising the Mind; Homecoming; Moving the Centre; and Writers in Politics. It is noted that, since he launched the movement in the late 1960s to rename the Department of English at the University of Nairobi, the Department of Literature, Ngugi has continued to ceaselessly explore ways of defining the true identity of the African. Convinced that the African body and soul are dismembered, Ngugi is committed to 're-membering' these broken and scattered parts.Which is why he 'decolonized his mind' by writing the following works in Gikuyu: Caitaani Mutharaba-ini (translated as Devil on the Cross), Matigari Ma Njiruungi, Ngaahika Ndeenda, Maitu Njugira (with Ngugi wa Mirii), Njamba Nene na Mbaathi i Mathagu, and Murogi wa Gagogo (translated as The Wizard of the Crow), among others. It should also be mentioned that, in keeping with this vision, Ngugi founded the Kamiriithu community theatre troupe that performed plays in the Gikuyu language.I will explore this Ngugian standpoint for its strengths and weaknesses. While drawing on the (post)colonial approach, I analyse Ngugfs use of language to shape both a dominated people's resistance to asphyxiating foreign influence(s) and the formation of their distinct identity. The essay also seeks to answer the question: Can literature in indigenous languages communicate to a wider audience?In Decolonising the Mind, Ngugi declares:In 1977, 1 published 'Petals of Blood' and said farewell to English language as a vehicle of my writing of plays, novels and short stories. All my subsequent writings have been written directly in Gikuyu language. 'Decolonising the Mind' is my farewell to English as a vehicle for any of my writings. From now on, it is Gikuyu and Kiswahili all the way. [...] The call for the rediscovery and the resumption of our language is a call for a regenerative reconnection with [. . .] the real language of humankind.1For Ngugi to make such a bold (rather controversial) statement, there must have been certain experiences and observations that motivated him. One may recall that Ngugi had published Weep not Child, The River Between, A Grain of Wheat, and Petals of Blood, as well as Homecoming, in English.So, what are the factors that impelled Ngugi to not only advocate but also take practical action by writing in an indigenous African language? He contends thatI am lamenting a neo-colonial situation which has meant the European bourgeoisie once again stealing our talents and geniuses as they have stolen our economies. One of Imperialism's potent weapons is the cultural bomb to annihilate a people's belief in their names, languages, their environment their heritage, their unity and capacity. [ . . . ] This makes them want to identify with other people's languages rather than their own. [. . . ] Language and literature were taking us further and further away from ourselves to other selves, from our world to other worlds. [...] Language was the means of the means of spiritual subjugation.2In this Ngugian construct, the colonial and neocolonial tragedy in Africa has continued to flourish partly because of the linguistic alienation of the people from their indigenous languages. …

Borrowing occurs when a language adds a word from another language to its own lexicon. Languages in neighbouring regions often borrow from each other. In South Africa, there are over nine indigenous languages, in addition to Afrikaans and English, all of which coexist. In their coexistence they borrow from one another. African language dictionaries reveal that these languages have borrowed a great deal from Afrikaans and English. However, one would expect these dictionaries to reflect some borrowing from other indigenous languages; on the contrary, they include very few such words. Although, one encounters many words from indigenous languages being used by other African languages in their spoken language and literary works, these are not included in dictionaries. This article seeks to highlight factors contributing to the failure to include words borrowed from other indigenous languages in African language dictionaries. Keywords: Borrowing, Dictionary Compilation, Indigenous Languages, Lexicon, Morpheme, Vocabulary, Developing Languages, Loan Words, Terminology, Etymology, Lexicography

This paper investigates the challenges associated with the inconspicuousness of indigenous African languages in the South African education system, as established during empirical research conducted by the author for his PhD thesis. According to the findings of the research, integrating indigenous African languages in the basic education sector is a key strategic shift that should be considered for it could fast-track efforts to elevate and promote indigenous African languages as media of educational instruction. These languages have been discriminated against for decades, since the era of colonisation and Apartheid South Africa. Despite attempts by the democratic government, through transformative legislative frameworks, African languages are inconspicuous within the education sector. Institutions of learning have developed multilingual language policies yet their implementation remains a problem. Based on the critical review of the literature on indigenous African languages, and with a focus on information and communication technology (ICT), the paper investigates policy opportunities and challenges. The paper concludes by assessing the low profile of indigenous languages in education, and its likely impact on the high failure rate in South African schools.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19 towards the end of 2019 and its proliferation across the globe, the lives of many populations have been disrupted, causing intense turbulence in social, economic and political dimensions. With that in mind, this article reflects on and problematises the neglect of the indigenous South African languages by the national government in mainstream communications on COVID-19. Qualitative research inquiry is utilised to explore the importance of indigenous languages in South Africa’s healthcare system. By the same token, an attempt to underline some of the predominant challenges within the selected phenomenon is argumentatively presented using a scoping literature review as a research technique. The findings and discussions indicate that the desolation of indigenous South African languages can be regarded as a repetitive episode of the (post)colonial injustices pertaining to indigenous South African languages as well as the healthcare system. Thus, the concluding remarks emphasise the urgency of inculcating indigenous South African languages into all communication systems, with special reference to the healthcare system.