An 88-year-old woman is being commended for going to great lengths to preserve her native tongue of N|uu, South Africa’s original language, which has been labeled “critically endangered” by the United Nations.
Katrina Esau, who is also known as Ouma (translated to grandmother in Afrikaans) was born and raised in a South African township called Rosedale, where she lived on a White-owned farm. She recalls being told that she was forbidden to speak her mother tongue of N|uu and was forced to speak Afrikaans.
Esau would grow up to become a chief in her community who worked to preserve the N|uu language and heritage. She began by teaching children how to speak the language, which consists of 112 sounds, including 45 unique clicks.
“I’m teaching the language because I don’t want it to become extinct when we die. I want to pass on as much of it as I can but I am very aware that we don’t have a lot of time,” Esau told Face2Face Africa.
Esau now runs a school in the country, which helps students between the ages of three to 19 learn how to use the language in their daily interactions. Lessons include teaching them basic sayings, including greetings, animal names, body parts and short sentences.
Even more interesting is that Esau never learned how to read or write, so she would use songs and other forms of popular culture to learn how to read and write in the language. She says she now works double duty to teach her students and teach herself as well.
“When you look at the African languages, you learn that they help communicate different perspectives on life, relationships, spirituality, the earth, health, humanity,” Matthias Brezinger of the Centre for African Language Diversity in Cape Town, who has worked to create the N|uu alphabet, told Face2Face Africa. “There is a wealth of knowledge on survival that has been passed down through the years in indigenous communities that the Western world knows very little about and when these languages die, that unique knowledge is also lost.”
Esau was recently awarded the Order of the Baobab – one of South Africa’s highest honors – for her efforts in preserving the N|uu language.
“Other people have their own languages. Why must my language be allowed to die? It must go on,” Esau said after winning the award. “As long as there are people, the language must go on.”
