Which Languages Do I Speak?
The limits of my language means the limits of my world.
~― Ludwig Wittgenstein
In my country there are about 43 different cultures and all these different cultures have a variant language which is their native language. There are major groups which later split into small groups with some having almost similar native languages but still somehow different. There are Bantus, who migrated some migrated to the highlands while others migrated to the coastal plains. My cultural background comes from those Bantus who migrated to the Highlands close to Mt.Kenya. My cultural group being The Kikuyu.
So my first language to learn was Kikuyu.
Kikuyu is a Bantu Language for one of the sub groups of those Bantus who migrated to the highlands, settling on one side of Mount Kenya, and also along the escarpments of The Rift Valley.
Moving away from my rural home has overtime led to my ethnic language losing its touch especially with the lack of practice with the language only being used when communicating with my Grand mom which only happens occasionally. I also deep down wanted to unlearn the language and adapt English as my native language, It may not make sense why I had that desir, but using it as the default language of communication and English as a second language means thinking in my native language and translating that to English, which I don't find so attractive, and would rather do the vice versa.
Took some time to get a hang of things and slowly transition my thinking from the native language, but as they say practice makes perfect.
My second language is Swahili. back when I started attending school that was the language the teachers mostly used to communicate to students with, a result of the language being one of the two National Languages, the government having set Swahili and English as the National Languages. Swahili also known locally as Kiswahili is a Bantu Language for the Swahili people who during migration, migrated to the coastal plains.
It is widely understood by almost everyone in my Country and even some neighbouring countries, but with minor variations. It is highly used in urban areas, sub urban areas and even some rural areas many preferring to use Swahili as their default language of communication rather than use one's native language, which would hinder communications considering there are over 43 different variations of different languages, since it is very easy to learn it is highly adopted.
Personally I think due to the conflicts between Swahili and my native language Kikuyu, I never got to really master or like Swahili that much. I struggled with it alot especially back in high school where it was compulsory to take two languages. There is a constant conflict between letters "l" and "r" between the two languages and it is a pain since interchanging the two can lead to miscommunication.
My third language, is English. Since I was a kid I had a higher liking for this language which many tend to consider complicated but it really isn't. Well it is coming from native language and Swahili. We started learning it in lower primary and I immediately realized I excelled much better at English than in Swahili, which highly influenced my liking of the Language more.
Being surrounded by a myriad of different books and novels since I was a kid also meant I got to spend much time familiarizing myself with the language. Reading both fiction and non-fiction highly influenced that desire to change my thinking from using my native language to using English. In high school I choose to focus on English and I didn't really pay attention to Swahili and slowly worked on improving mostly my pronunciations and vocabulary. This was not always met with a positive attitude from others who struggled with the language and so I transitioned into only spending time with a small group of friends who we would play Scrabble during our free time and practice our mastery of the language.
After joining college I thought many would be more open to using English rather than Swahili but that is not the case at many local universities many preferring to use an upgraded version of Swahili which is comprised of mixing Swahili with some English words. For a while I struggled, but with time I formed new associations with people who had a higher desire similar to mine of being native speakers of English, and basically I am still along the journey, but so far I love the progress. I can communicate articulately using English without referencing to either Swahili or my Native language for aid in translation of some words.
Overtime I have also gotten to interact with different cultures and got to learn the Borana language which is a language for a group of Cushites who migrated from the North to the North-Eastern Part of the Kenya. With the lack of practice I have slowly lost touch with the language and I am no longer fluent in it.
And so currently the languages I speak fluently are 3: English, Swahili and Kikuyu. I will see you guy's in my next update.
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Disclaimer:
~ Images credits: pexels.com
