OPINION
By Khadija Patel
As we approach another State of the Nation (Sona) address by President Jacob Zuma, there are sure to be the usual laments over his oratory skills. There will be the usual quota of criticism over his pronunciation. There may even be some advice dished out to his speechwriters. KHADIJA PATEL argues that this obsession with Zuma's pronunciation of English misunderstands how language functions - and some of this criticism may even be racist.
Flippant analyses of the use of the English language often overlook that English, like any other language, is a living thing. Language is not a lifeless instrument of manipulation passed on to us in childhood. We use language to understand ourselves, and the world in which we live. We use language to negotiate our tensions and smooth our interactions. It is a vibrant, social construct, which we acquire as infants - or learn later on - and then continue to use in ways that make most sense in the world we live in.
The annual inclusion of new words into the dictionary is just one way in which language changes, shifts, alters. To give you a sense of how much English has changed through history, what I'm writing here, is vastly different to the English William Shakespeare wrote in the 17th century. Language changes in relation to changes in the society where it is used. Crucially, language changes in relation to who we are.
And yet, the use of language - referencing the English language in particular in this column - is mired in intolerance and tension. It's present in the denial of mother-tongue education (when the mother tongue is not English) in many schools; it is also present in the complaints about other people's use of the language.
And too often, complaints about the way other people use English can be understood through the prism of viewing or treating people as intrinsically different from and alien to oneself. Or as the British linguist David Crystal puts it: "They doesn't speak like us, therefore they aren't like us; therefore they don't like us."
