A TONGUE THAT STRENGTHENS YET RESTRAINS

It is an interesting fact that although the official language of Mali is French (who the country was colonized by), it is actually the second language of virtually everyone here—there are six or seven main local languages spoken by ethnic groups of varying sizes in different regions of the country (Bambara, considered the national language of Mali, is used by around eighty percent of the country’s twelve million inhabitants), and children are raised from infancy in their ethnic group’s native tongue.

It isn’t until around the age of nine or ten that children begin learning French in school, but if you take the fact that a number of females don’t attend elementary school and a large number who do attend do not continue on to high school, and couple it with the fact that French is almost never spoken by children outside of the classroom, you arrive at an unfortunate conclusion: a large majority of adult women, and some men, do not ever speak French, either because they don’t know how to or because the small bit that they do know would be riddle with mistakes that they are afraid of making. And so what you have, interestingly, is an official language (French) that is virtually only used by people—mostly men—in government or other official business positions (in other words, a very small portion of the country’s population).

The tendency to prefer one’s own ethnic tongue over French (or any other language, for that matter) makes perfect sense—I think it represents a large part of the unique cultural identity that Malians value so much, and which separates them from others (after all, they are neither White nor French). But when the focus on one’s local language comes at the expense of understanding and being able to speak French—a much more useful language—I believe it becomes a poor choice, and one whose disadvantages are perhaps greater than the value of the cultural identity that the ethnic language helps to define.

First, the local languages of Mali are largely unwritten—their speakers begin learning them naturally from birth, and are exposed to them only briefly in school (if they attend). What this means is that those who do not learn to speak French are also likely to never learn how to read or write—adult illiteracy in Mali is around fifty-five percent—and the effects of this are clearly negative and potentially far-reaching. And so the exclusion of French, I believe, has a stifling effect on literacy.

Secondly, while an ethnic language (such as the national one of Bambara) carries with it a great deal of cultural identity and value, such tongues are spoken by few in Mali’s neighboring countries, and (surprise, surprise) virtually nobody in the expansive (and opportunity-filled) world beyond that. And so the ethnic language acts as a kind of restraint, keeping its faithful speakers from ever accessing relationships, resources, people, opportunities, or life outside of Mali and Africa.

The point is not at all that Malians should abandon their native language—the identity it helps give them is extremely important and must be carried on through the generations—but that if such tongues were accompanied by a solid understanding of, and ability to speak, French, it would open the doors to opportunity and improvement that they could then walk through with strong cultural identity and pride in hand. Unfortunately, those who cannot read, write, or speak French are likely to find those doors closed, and opening them again will surely prove difficult.