Opinion: To the Point - Another way to languages

Here in South Africa, my grandson is my co-informant. He explains to me many of the things I don't understand. One of these is language. South Africa has 11 official languages, and although some of them are similar, others have very different vocabularies and grammatical structures. Many of the African languages are what is called 'agglutinative' - words are built up of several meanings, and change according to what is being said. It is common for people to be multilingual, even if they are illiterate. Languages are picked up by ear, and there is a lot of 'code switching', when people swap languages mid-sentence, or add words or phrases from one language to another.

My grandson's African grandmother, Gogo, has been his main teacher, although she does not read or write. He explains, 'African languages are difficult, because you basically have to know a lot of languages to learn one. If you already know one like Zulu then it is easier because you can pick up the others. I can understand my Gogo sometimes when she speaks to me in Pedi, but it is hard to speak back to her in Pedi. Sometimes when my cousins speak we can't understand each other. But my Gogo or my Dad will translate. Everybody wants to learn more languages. They love learning the languages that come in handy. Then if people who don't know each other meet, they can find out which languages they have in common.

'At school they repeat words till we learn them. Teacher gives us tests and we write down the answers. At my Gogo's house she speaks first in Pedi, and when she translates we have to remember.'

English is a world language, and it makes English speakers lazy - they see no need to speak other languages. But if you speak a minority language then you have to learn other languages. As a child it can be an exciting proposition, rather than a daunting one. My grandson thinks people naturally love learning languages, because they want to communicate with others. He also believes it comes easily. Lucky him!