I am a writer, or at least I try to be one. Writers have their tools, just like any other worker; and just like any other worker, writers have to protect their tools. Carpenters must ensure that their saws, or their planes, are sharp in order to be able to produce good furniture.
In the same way, a writer must ensure that words retain their original sharpness through proper use. Misuse of words blunts them till they lose all sharpness and all meaning. As George Orwell argued, careless and dishonest language corrupts our ability to think clearly, thereby enabling political manipulation and tyranny.
There are many ways in which the tools of a writer can lose their sharpness. The most obvious way is when words are adapted to suit the interests of people in power. Left can be turned into right and right into left by decree. In Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll, Alice meets Humpty Dumpty who argues the following.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean different things–that’s all.”
”The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master–that’s all.”
Repeating a lie
This might seem strange, and it would be very difficult to communicate with someone who insists that mangoes are called bananas and bananas are called avocado. But in the world of politics it is rather different. The Nazi leaders, for instance, believed that if you repeat a lie long enough, it becomes the truth.
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Of course, as the masters, they had the power to do this and, as masters always do, they controlled all forms of media and people had to sing the new “truth” whatever their inner feelings and, as George Orwell showed in 1984, without conscious and active resistance, lie/truth becomes a part of our thinking, subverting and confining it to what the masters want.
The same applies to many of the words we use. For example, how can we continue to insist that our national ideology is ujamaa when the whole economic and political system is the antithesis of ujamaa? Thus, as we rail against the effects of the capitalist system but call it ujamaa, ujamaa is then blamed for what it is not. The paranoia of the Americans about socialism is the same!
There are so many words like that, and over the next weeks, I would like to examine how particular words change their meaning to suit the interests of “the master”: democracy, constitution, participation, etc. There are so many words whose meaning has been blunted to the point of meaninglessness.
Disliking English
Of course, it can work the other way as well. Here in Tanzania, we follow the French principle of trying to control language, to direct what words can and cannot be used. For the French, it is part of their dislike of the hegemony of the English language, and here it might partly be the same as there seems to be an inherent dislike of borrowing words from other languages, regardless of the fact that all countries do the same.
More than 50 per cent of English words have been borrowed or assimilated from other languages and even more so in the use of scientific terminologies. But when people adapt here, there is often an outcry, and conversely new official words are produced which no one ever uses.
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For example, I had to edit an English-Swahili phrase book for tourists and others wanting to get some basic Swahili. I discovered that the official word for ATM is kiotomotela. Duh! Who has ever used that word? I requested clarification and was told to use this official word. So it became my party joke:
A tourist needs an ATM and stops a passerby holding his phrase book in one hand.
Erm samahani nadugu. Wapi kiotomotela?
Nini?
Kiotomotela.
Passerby shakes his head. Tourist becomes agitated and thrusts the phrase book in the face of the passerby.
Harpar. Kiotomotela.
Passerby laughs. Oh ATM …
Because that is the word everyone uses, whatever the official word might say.
And there are so many beautiful words created in the same way, often by changing the pronunciation. Kondakta becomes konda, flywheel becomes filiwili, shock absorber becomes shokapu.
Organic Swahili words
These become organic Swahili words as the words fit the reality of those using them and pronunciation adapts to Kiswahili and the words. I guess this is possible because, while the “masters” might disagree with such a word, it doesn’t interfere with the nature of their masterhood; hence linguistic creativity continues to thrive.
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In other cases it becomes a joke again, especially when the “masters” – I guess without reference to their official language watchdog – insist on direct translations. At one stage they translated ‘feedback’ as mlishonyuma. Mlisho for feed and nyuma for back but it was pointed out that such a word could have disastrous, nay rainbow, connotations and we moved to mrejesho or mrejesho.
More recently we have had the use of the word makinikia for concentrate. In mining terminology, a concentrate is a partially purified, high-value product created by crushing raw ore and removing waste rock.
On the other hand, makinikia comes from the word makini, meaning attentive, so kumakinikia is to concentrate – on one’s work, etc. It has nothing to do with mining products and comes from a failure to recognise that concentrate has more than one meaning in English!
Linguists, BAKITA, the official language watchdog, pointed this out, but who were the masters? They decided the word meant what they wanted it to mean. God forbid that they should admit a mistake.
Saving by destroying
Another example in Swahili is the word washikadau, or more frequently wadau, to mean stakeholders. Again, this comes from failing to understand that the word stake has more than one meaning in English. Two of its many meanings are:
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An interest or share in an undertaking or enterprise, hence the term stakeholder, someone who has an interest in some undertaking or enterprise.
A bet.
So all stakeholders have now become betters. No wonder our young people have become addicted!
At its most extreme, you get total contradictions such as the famous quote from an American officer after bombing a village in Vietnam into oblivion who claimed: “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”
Destroy and save are obviously opposites, but through his definition of “save,” – for example save from Communism, save from the enemy – he had saved it even if there was no one left alive.
So the way language is used largely defines the way we think, hence the need to consciously defend their true meanings against distortions from the “masters.” In the next few weeks, we will examine the particular words that are key to our understanding of the world.
Karibuni!
Richard Mabala is an educator, poet, and author. He is available at rmabala@yahoo.com or on X as @MabalaMakengeza. These are the writer’s own opinions, and they do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of The Chanzo. Do you want to publish in this space? Contact our editors at editor@thechanzo.com for further inquiries.
