it causes speech defects. This particular gen
e doesn’t enable
us to talk but there is achance it allows speech to develop.
1.4The Invention of writing
The medium of Language is speech. Humans use sounds waves and vibrations inour voice manipulated by our voice box (larynx) to communicate with one another.But one may also argue that statement and ask how do individuals who cannotspeak communicate? The desire for humans to communicate and get in touch withone another led to the greatest invention of mankind to date and that was writing.W
riting is the world’s oldest form of information
storage and it enabled people torecord information they wished to save and also keep descriptions of events of ourlives. The era before writing was invented is known as Prehistory because the
invention of writing marked the beginning of the world’s history.
Even though themedium of language is speech, the hearing impaired use signs to communicate witheach other. This means that language can be expressed through signs as well.Writing in Namibia can be traced back to the San (Bushmen) who painted andengraved images of animals and humans on caves, rocks and mountains. One of
Namibia’s famous rock art paint
ing and engraving sites is at Twyfelfontein, and it istitled the Doubtful fountain it was discovered in 1921 by Mr R. Mack. Anotherinteresting piece of rock art painting in Namibia is the White lady painting discoveredin 1918 at the Brandberg Mountain. The paintings are believed to have been paintedaround 2000 and 6000 years ago while others are dated back to 25 000 years. Fast-forward the history of the invention of writing to today and you might actually realisethat it enabled humans to communicate with each other through Newspapers, books,magazines and Journalists.
1.5 Language in Africa
More than 180 million people in Africa speak Bantu languages (World bookencyclopaedia (P), pg. 750). The Bantu people make up the major population of all African people. This people are made up of more than 300 groups all over Africa andthey consider themselves to be a separate cultural and political unit with their ownhistory and language dialect. The first Bantu people are believed to have settled inCameroon and Ivory Coast. The influx of Bantu people in western Africa caused theirpopulation to rise. The rise in the population caused most of the Bantu speakers to
migrate into central and southern Africa. They broke up into smaller clans andfactions whom started to break away from the main Bantu who came to Africa thisresulted in new languages and nations to form in Africa. The Bantu were greatfarmers; they had large heads of cattle and goats. They could make weapons andobjects from iron because they brought knowledge of iron making to Africa. A fewreal life examples of groups that migrated from west Africa into southern Africa inNamibia are the Ovaherero , Ovazemba,Ovahimba and Ovambo this groups areconsidered to have come from the same groups of Bantu but then separated whenthey settled in Namibia. They are considered to be related because of the culturalpractices and also because of some of the similar pronunciation of words in theirlanguages. Other groups in Africa which were once one group but defected fromeach other are the Zulu in South Africa and Setswana in Botswana, the Nama andDamara cultural groups in Namibia as well.
1.6 Conclusion
What I have learned so far about language and something which is too difficult tounravel about it is its origin, we can only assume and speculate where languagecomes from and to be honest we might never know how we were able to possess aunique trait as Spoken language. The theories which try to explain the origins oflanguage are incompatible and are contradictin
g each other and thus can’t
betrusted. I also want to point out that although language is only confined to Humans,animals can still communicate and interact with one another. Communication inHumans is far more complex and complicated than in animals. Language is foreverchanging and there is no
”one
size fits all
”
criteria to it so the language we speaktoday is different from the one we spoke at the dawn of Humanity. Finally thedifference between spoken and written language has transformed what we know
about language. This is because when we are writing language we don’t write it
down as we speak it, most of the times the emotions, thoughts and meaning inspoken language are not detailed correctly in written language.