Shalom wakes up in the morning, comes to our bedroom, hugs me and greets me in her mother tongue “Good afternoon!” I blink, turn in bed, look straight at her little face and in her mother tongue, I ask “Good after what?” Biting her index finger and smiling at me she corrects the greeting “good morning mum”. Shock engulfs me; I am left speechless at how badly my own Baganda children are doing at their language. What a wakeup call.
My children don’t know the difference between “morning” and “afternoon” greetings in their mother tongue! 2013 was going to be a tough year. I was determined to crack down everybody that spoke English in our home. I had to make new rules and yes I had to do this without their father’s help because for long, I had ignored his concern about speaking English at home and Baganda-dominated gatherings. My husband always insisted that English was to stop at gate but I played deaf for some time. Now, I needed results quickly.
It’s 2016 and our children speak both English and Luganda fluently but it was hard work! Visitors or relatives who knew Luganda were asked to use their mother tongue whenever they were with our children. It was my job to remind the visitors about this.
Our outings had rules guiding us and one of them was; “Speak Luganda! Most of our friends don’t know English!” Then when we reached our destination, we winked at all the adults with a reminder “No English here!” It was fun watching everybody correcting and teaching our children new words. Back home, I revisited my book shelf for the bunch of Luganda story books that I had ditched. I got them for night time story reading. For close to a year, their father and I or the people we lived with read these stories every night after school home work was completed. Soon, our older son was reading for his younger siblings. We bought more books and stocked the library.
Having a foreign language as taught in schools being predominantly used by children in homes is not a problem to some parents. In my view, however, we as a people belong to a certain heritage and it is our responsibility as parents to pass on these beliefs to the next generation. Just like our kids, yours may insist on using English with everyone else around you. In my case, it has taken my and their father’s insistence to get them using their native language.
Where they don’t understand some words, I take time to explain, tell them what the words mean and even make them say those words after me. When I am sure they have got a certain level, I change the rules. To get your kids more interested in their own language, it would be nice, for example, to give them hints on their lineage; give them details on the deeper meaning of their surnames; visit your ancestral homes with them and show them how unique they are as a people.
Have fun chatting with the kids in your native language!
