If I was not completely sure before about the fact that my mother tongue would die with me, then now I am 100 per cent sure.
I will be the last of my line to ever speak the glorious language that my ancestors spoke for many generations before them.
It dawned on me that this would be the fate of the language just recently.
You see, I had deceived myself into thinking that at this middle-twenty-something age of mine, I had still hoped to learn.
I would employ the help of everyone I knew who could speak it if I had to, is what I told myself.
And I actually made a few steps towards almost getting there in 2022.
I had nailed the greetings down, a few important expressions and, of course (because I am not completely useless), I already knew a few choice words for several abstract things, such as furniture, food and animals.
I think where I lost hope was the execution of the language.
I had to practise speaking alone with no one else to help correct me or bounce off my knowledge and discoveries on.
I couldn’t tell for a long time if I was on the right path or not. I think there’s a saying that goes “You cannot learn in a vacuum”?
Anyway, long story short, I barely learned enough to tell people that I actually could speak the language.
I think the final nail in the coffin for me was when my very own offspring confirmed my suspicions.
First of all, this three-year-old is very smart, just the way all these new-generation babies are.
They are born with smartphones in their hands, and they can swipe across screens months after they have just arrived into this world.
So my toddler knows a thing or two about navigating YouTube (for kids) pretty well by now, and she can be glued there quietly for a long time.
The results? I’m sure so many more experienced parents will tell me the dangers of screen time for children, but that kid has an impressive English vocabulary for a three-year-old.
Okay, maybe impressive compared to some of us older guys. I remember when I could fully put together speech sentences in English. I was only seven years old.
I could speak Kiswahili, too, which my toddler speaks as well, but no mother tongue.
The other day, she asked for a glass of water and said 'water' like an American (Wa-ra).
It is still haunting me.
I think it is such a big shame because I am told that my mother tongue is one of the easiest Luhya subtribe languages to learn.
Yet I cannot speak it to save my life.
Now my child is doomed to the same fate.
To make matters worse, I have been trying to learn a new language, Spanish.
If my ancestors were upset that I could not speak my mother tongue, they must be turning in their graves to know that I am devoting my time to learning a European language.
I can just hear them grovelling, “Is one colonialist’s language not enough?”
It really is not.
This is the age of the global village, and we have an app for everything but teaching mother tongues.
