Don�t read, can�t write

Sandy Grant | Monday May 26, 2014 14:07

Or it could simply have been a Land Board official explaining that a key letter should have been written a long time ago to a suppliant but somehow wasn’t, probably because no one was capable of writing it – thus setting back that individual’s issue for at least another six months.

My point?  Prior to the diamond years, this country was virtually illiterate and only partly numerate. It spoke and it could communicate even if it didn’t write.

 Today, having enjoyed 40 years or so of diamond wealth as well as vast change of every kind, we appear to be speaking more and communicating and writing less.

The common language of communication then and now continues to be Setswana but the language of the written word, not least, is still English. 

How is this possible and if it is true, what can it mean for this country? Only a few die-hards would question my contention about numeracy because it is only necessary to see how so many below the age of 50 need a calculator in order to add two to three, or even more tricky, to subtract two from three whereas older people could manage without even thinking about it.  Tentatively I suggest that there are now two, possibly three, tiers by which we communicate.

Verbal Setswana is the means by which much or most of its day-to-day, unrecorded business is conducted and from which the non-Setswana speaker is excluded. In contrast, the language of central, as opposed to local, government, of business, of the law, of finance, of diplomacy and of international communication is English which is both a written and recorded as well as spoken language. This, in turn, excludes the individual who only speaks Setswana. It is my impression, probably conviction, that in the last 40 years English in this country has come closer to Setswana in being a spoken rather than written language, principally because those two elements of the language are now so significantly different. 

The same truism appears to relate to Setswana which may explain why so many who speak Setswana cannot easily read it.

The third tier of language communication which exists somewhere between that deployed by the users of the cellphone/ mobile, and the  Iphone which appears to have prompted a new distinct form of written fanagolore which may, or may not have brought about a merging of the Setswana and English speakers in that half way world between what is spoken and what is written. It must be noted, however, that the ability to speak, in whatever language, is not at all the same as having the ability to communicate.  Indeed it is my impression that whilst recent developments have transformed our means of communication, our ability to communicate has in fact decreased. Repeatedly we are being advised that we all need to read. But the point is not being made that if we don’t read it is unlikely that we will ever be able to write either in Setswana or in English. 

And that if we cannot write, we are unable to communicate in that particular medium. In theory, this ought to mean that the written language here is obsolete. But if this could be a possibility, we are rapidly regressing beyond the boundaries of time and fast blurring the difference between the civilised and uncivilised world.

A mark of civilised man was that he could write his name. In reality, the rest of the world will ensure that we do not fall off that edge because for it to communicate with us we have no choice but to use both the written and spoken word. But then, if we wish to communicate with it, we have no option but to take very seriously the need for those basic skills which we have so disastrously neglected in favour of television and the computer.

But then one skill is inter-related with another. How many of us today can claim that our handwriting is other than appalling or that we can competently express ourselves in writing in any language with words that are correctly spelt, with attention to grammar and a grasp of vocabulary?

How many of us have mastered specific skills such as the keeping of minutes? Right now, I am assuming that in many professions or businesses, possibly including teaching, there are hundreds of people whose all-round communications skills come close to being the barest possible minimum.

We no longer write posted letters to each other and the skills that this generated are not those needed by email communication. So we will continue relapsing into incoherence, it seems, with a small coterie with communication abilities, probably family based, taking all the key jobs and leaving the majority to watch a soporific and frequently mindless succession of TV programmes. How do you think we will be communicating in 10 or  20 years time?