Ngugi Wa Thiong’o about African languages 

Ngugi Wa Thiong’o was an African Kenyan writer who was against the use of non-native language and against the use of English. He was one of the leading novelist of East Africa who fought against the Colonialism of that time and overall. As soon as he witnessed the brutality of the Europeans in Africa, he intended to start writing in his own native language. He write under his traditional name and write in Bantu language of kikuyu people. His aim of writing in his own native language was to spread awareness among people of their own language. He was of the point that by writing in native language he can tell his people and other the richness and importance of African language.

He stand of the view that the entire African writer should write in his or her own native language. He show strong objection about writing in English and French. In his interview “To the best of our knowledge” with Steve Paulson, he argue about his language and said one way to “decolonize the African mind” is to adopt African Languages. Colonialism has greatly affected the mind of the people and even after it has ended; it left prints of it on the mind of the people. People has adopt much of the Europeans culture, language and traditions. Language comes at the top of it because it is directly link to our thinking ability. In another way, we can say that mind has been colonize. Europeans has gone but they left our mind colonized, which can only be decolonize by one’s own struggle to fight with it.  That was the point of Ngugi that by start speaking, writing and thinking in our native language one can totally vanished the prints of colonialization.

According to Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, “If you know all the languages of the world but not your mother tongue, that is enslavement. Knowing your mother tongue and all the other languages too is empowerment.”

Decolonizing the mind

Ngugi has spent his life living in his own culture. In his book, “Decolonizing the mind” Ngugi reveals hard truth about the expansion of colonialism in his time. He shows that how their life was before Europeans take over the control. He tell the events before the colonialization and events after colonialization. Before colonialization they teach them in the own native language, Gikuyu. After colonialization, “English became the language of my formal education” (Ngugi in “Decolonizing the mind”). After British expansion on all over the Africa, they bought many changes into it. Foremost change of it was that they common their language among the people of Africa. They started with decolonizing the mind of the people. Inhabitants of the Africa was forbidden not speak Gikuyu language. Ngugi has given many instances of it in this book of him. He says that one the inhuman example of this is that whenever someone was “caught speaking Gikuyu in the vicinity of the school. The culprit was given corporal punishment- three to five strokes of the cane on bare buttocks, or was made to carry a metal plate around the neck with inscriptions such as I AM A DONKEY.”

These happenings led Ngugi to raise voice against the brutality of the colonizers. After writing his novels in English language, he shift towards his native language. He started with self-analysis. He decolonize his mind first, he published his first novel, “Devil on the Cross”, in his native language. He write this novel while staying in prison. He was in jail after his publication of the play, “I will marry when I want”. In this play, he unveil the injustices and inequalities of the colonizers. For which he was put to jail and then in jail he write his first novel in Gikuyu language. The only thing available there to write on was a tissue paper. He receive huge criticism for writing in Gikuyu. Ngugi says, “In some academic quarters I have been confronted with the rebuke, ‘Why have you abandoned us?’ It was almost if, in choosing to write in Gikuyu, I was doing something abnormal”. In “decolonizing the mind”, Ngugi states Frantz Fanon. He pick a quote from his essay ‘Return to the Roots’. Fanon says, “To choose a language is to choose a world”. He explain this by saying, “if a Kenyan writer writes in English- no matter how radical the context of that literature- he cannot possibly directly talk to the peasants and workers of Kenya...” Ngugi further believes that it is the duty of the Afrikaans writer towards his culture to nurture the existing language and culture there.

Without it, English would probably be completely occupied and the local languages, which belonged to them, would all become extinct. Ngugi common this message among his people and motivate them to write in their own languages. Ngugi describes three possible foundations from which relevance and perspective can be established: the national democratic basis, the philosophical and class basis. In the end, Ngugi hopes that the African language will be guided by the struggle for national, democratic and human liberation.