After showering, I rushed to the bedroom. Just when I was about to retire to bed, my phone gave a tinkle. At first, I ignored it because my eyes were heavy after hours of coding. But, it kept ringing. I wondered who could be calling at that ungodly hour. Still groping for my glasses in the dark, I answered the call.
Then came the deep masculine voice of my uncle, Egya Kabrah, a renowned fisherman in Cape Three Point. He said, “I just heard that there’s a disaster in a town close to Essikado. I have been trying to reach your mother and the family but to no avail. Have you heard from them?”, he asked. “Oops! No, please. I will get in touch with Ampiah and revert,” I said.
The moment I hung up, a wave of anxiety swept over me. As I was about to call my friend, my eyes chanced on a notification which made my heart skip a beat. I quickly turned on the TV to confirm what I saw. To my utter surprise, the reportage from TV3 had it that there had been a petrol explosion at a town the news anchor struggled to mention. The headline read, “Fire Engulfs Ngiresia, a Suburb of Sekondi”.
The news correspondent interviewed two eye witnesses for their accounts on the explosion. The first speaker, in the person of Mrs. Angelina Arthur, the then assembly woman of the town, began her narrative. She spoke with fluent English. She had an impressive vocabulary and undeniable confidence.
Unlike the assembly woman, the second eye witness, a middle-aged man, gave his vivid account of the incident in a quintessential ‘Takoradi Fante’, chipping in simple English sentences occasionally. He was very articulate.His responses? Very thoughtful, practical, and deeply informed by lived experiences.
As comments began appearing online, I observed with rapt attention. Many people praised the first speaker. They ascribed intelligence to her. Her proficiency in English was highly commended. The second speaker, despite offering equally valuable insights, was virtually overlooked. In fact, he received far less recognition, with some even mocking how he spoke ‘FanTwi’, a blend of Fante and Twi, on a free-to-air television.
I gave myself ample time to get my thoughts together on the issue. As I pondered this occurrence in our everyday lives and activities, I came to the realisation that the problem is not about learning or speaking English. The real issue is when language becomes a hierarchy of human value. I mean; when fluency overshadows wisdom, that’s a dysfunction. Cultural assumptions often become most powerful when not scrutinised.
Who did this to us? This language bias has been in existence for a very long time. Back in school, those who could speak English fluently were preferred in leadership positions. They told us not to express ourselves in our local dialects. As a matter of fact, students who were fond of speaking vernacular were deemed dunces. Many people became victims of abuse and bullies simply because they were not allowed to express themselves in their most preferred languages.
Now, my take on this language and class perception is this : we don’t have to glorify one and sideline the others. We can genuinely appreciate the value of learning and speaking English without treating it as the sole indicator of intelligence. Multilingual abilities can be celebrated without diminishing local languages.
Cultural adaptation requires us to become more intentional listeners, paying closer attention to depth than style. We have to recognise that intelligence expresses itself in many ways. True intelligence is revealed by the quality of our thinking, the clarity of our understanding, and the impact of our actions. The next time we hear someone speak, the most important consideration shouldn’t be the language they speak, but how carefully we listen enough to hear the value of their words.
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