Kenyan author Ng\u0169g\u0129 wa Thiong’o is well known for his promotion of the use of mother tongue languages, but he caused a bit of a stir recently when he gave an acceptance speech for an international award in his preferred Gikuyu language.<\/p>\n
He spoke out in favour of writers adopting their own tongue instead of colonial languages nearly six decades ago and now writes exclusively in Gikuyu.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m really a believer in the equality of languages and I believe that every language even if spoken by five people has a right to be,\u201d Ngugi told the BBC\u2019s Focus on Africa programme.<\/p>\n
He added that “the challenge we have is how people from one language community can have conversations with members of another language community\u201d without there being the assumption that there is a dominant language.<\/p>\n
He also said that the dominance of some languages is destroying cultures and hindering communication.<\/p>\n
\u201cMonolingualism is the carbon monoxide of culture and multilingualism is the oxygen of culture.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kenyan author Ng\u0169g\u0129 wa Thiong’o is well known for his promotion of the use of mother tongue languages, but he caused a bit of a stir recently when he gave an acceptance speech for an international award in his preferred Gikuyu language. He spoke out in favour of writers adopting their own tongue instead of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":6,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"source_name":"BBC","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override_template":"0","override":[{"template":"1","single_blog_custom":"","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"1","show_view_counter":"1","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"0","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"override_image_size":"0","image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post":"0","trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post":"0","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","sponsored_post_name":"","sponsored_post_url":"","sponsored_post_logo_enable":"0","sponsored_post_logo":"","sponsored_post_desc":""},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":""},"jnews_social_meta":{"fb_title":"","fb_description":"","fb_image":"","twitter_title":"","twitter_description":"","twitter_image":""},"jnews_override_counter":{"override_view_counter":"0","view_counter_number":"0","override_share_counter":"0","share_counter_number":"0","override_like_counter":"0","like_counter_number":"0","override_dislike_counter":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,29],"tags":[160,161],"class_list":["post-1505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-east-africa","tag-multilingualism","tag-ngugi-wa-thiongo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}