A quoi sert le sango?

This PDF contains both the French and English version of this article.Written about fifty years ago for translation into French with the title one sees above, this manuscript was intended as an offering to the new nation whose citizens were hopeful about their future, governing themselves. Independence meant recognizing in the constitution the Sango language as truly their own langue nationale. But French would still be the official language, so what chance did Sango have? Aware of the bias that came with colonization against the use of indigenous languages, I wanted tô thwart this insidious influence among the nation's citizens and leaders. Several years later the Ministry of Education, with the help of Unesco, sponsored preparations for teaching the Sango language in primary schools. This, to international specialists, must have seemed like the wrong path to take. The children already knew Sango or would soon be picking it up. Knowing what were nouns and verbs in the language would not have done them any good. They needed to be lifted up to a healthier and happier life with the aid of the nation's lingua franca. This could have begun with literacy in Sango. In my own campaign, aided by my wife and the primers (Ba la 'See the sun') we prepared in the 1950s—even with an orthography poorly based on French—we found that people could learn to read in three months. With a 'phonological' representation of words teaching people to read would be easier and perhaps even faster. A new orthography was later adopted by the ministry, but it marks tones, its Central African sponsor imagining them necessary for learning the pronunciation of the new words that would be needed in the computer age. Except for a few experimental classes, literacy in Sango was abandoned by government planners. But what about the future? At the present time the nation is unstable in almost every aspect of life. Yet we can hope for peace and the restoration of order. Then Sango should be given a chance to help. It may be the left hand to the French right hand, but two hands are better than one. (November 11,2014