Languages ​​of Rwanda

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Location of Rwanda

As of February 2017 , the four official languages ​​of Rwanda are Kinyarwanda , English , French and Swahili .

Previously, a regulation that was enshrined in the constitution of Rwanda in 2003 applied . Article 5 states: “The national language [of Rwanda] is Kinyarwanda. The official languages ​​are Kinyarwanda, French and English. "

Rwanda is one of the few countries in Africa in which almost the entire population - with the Bantu language Kinyarwanda - shares a common mother tongue. Although the modern history of Rwanda has been shaped by ethnic tensions between the Hutu and Tutsi peoples, they share this common language. This also applies to the Twa group , a small ethnic minority in the country. Nevertheless, the language issue is a political issue.

Historical development

During the German colonial rule in Rwanda, Swahili was the official language of administration. After the occupation of Rwanda by Belgian colonial troops in 1915 and the assumption of the League of Nations mandate in 1918, the new masters brought with them French, which was made the country's official language in 1929. Even after Rwanda's independence in the first half of the 1960s, French remained the official language. B. on the education system (see below) . From 1979 to 1991, Kinyarwanda was used as the language of instruction instead of French in secondary education. In 1994, English was introduced as a subject. English was first given official status in 1996 in that parents were left to decide whether their children were taught in English or in French. In October 2008 the Rwandan government made the landmark decision that, in order to give Rwanda better access to the East African Community (EAC) and other international organizations in the future, French should be replaced by English as the language of instruction. Since 2009, there has been a changeover to English , which was formally completed in the course of 2010 . In February 2017, Swahili became the fourth official language in Rwanda. Swahili, the lingua franca of East Africa, is already the official language in three large EAC countries and is also the most important language for communication within the Rwandan army.

Background of the language change

The background to this change is the aforementioned conflict between the Hutu and Tutsi population groups, which since the 1960s has resulted in various massacres, expulsions and finally the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. Since the 1960s, Tutsi had fled in several waves, mainly to neighboring (English-speaking) Uganda or Tanzania , so that at the beginning of the 1990s a total of around 600,000 Tutsi were living as refugees abroad. The 1994 genocide of the Tutsi was ended by the invasion of a guerrilla army led by Paul Kagame , made up of Tutsi who had fled to Uganda. The Tutsi, who now returned to Rwanda and took power, had, like the former President Kagame, mostly spent most of their lives in English-speaking Uganda or were even born there. Since 1994 there was a power elite in Rwanda who mostly did not understand the French official language of the country and sometimes spoke Kinyarwanda poorly. At the same time, the relationship with France was heavily strained, as the new masters blamed France for the genocide. The official justification, however, also included the fact that Rwanda was increasingly orienting itself towards its English-speaking neighboring countries: In 2007, the country joined the East African Union and in 2009 Rwanda became the 54th member of the (English-speaking) Commonwealth .

Importance of the official languages

The question of the official language has significant practical implications. After the government took the decision on October 14, 2008 to switch the school and administrative language from French to English, this was seen by francophone observers as a “new step in the break with France”. However, this view was not shared by Rwandan representatives and rejected with the note that Rwanda did not intend to leave the Organized Francophonie ( OIF ) and that it had comparatively more French speakers than OIF member states such as Albania or Laos.

The changeover took place in the ministries and authorities as early as the spring of 2009, which meant that from now on all official documents had to be written in English. In 2010, the conversion of the school language from French to English was formally completed. Kinyarwanda continued to be the language of instruction in Rwanda for the first three years of primary school. From the fourth grade and for all secondary schools, English was the language of instruction and examination. Since there were not enough teaching staff with sufficient English skills, teachers from neighboring Uganda and Tanzania were also recruited. Since there was also a lack of English-language teaching materials, there was a three-year transition period from 2010 to 2013, during which French and English coexisted in schools and universities and students could decide in which of the two languages ​​they would like to take their exams.

The government's policy apparently fell on fertile ground among the population, because as early as 2010 the French press complained that in Rwanda, both in the capital and in the country, "hello" was being heard more and more often instead of "bonjour". French had also fallen back to third place behind Kinyarwanda and English in 2012, when it came to literacy among the population older than 15 years. This trend will be intensified in the future by the introduction of Swahili as the fourth official language in February 2017 , especially since the number of people with a reasonable knowledge of French has always been comparatively low. And this despite the fact that French has been the official language since 1929. In addition, the proportion of the population under the age of 15 in Rwanda is very high. In 2002 it was almost 44%. These young people are now all growing up in a predominantly English-speaking school system. Even if the rapid change sometimes causes problems, the country's development into a new member of the English-speaking world is unlikely to be stopped in the years to come.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nasra Bishumba: Rwanda: MPs Approve Law Making Official Kiswahili Language. In: The New Times. February 9, 2017, accessed December 5, 2017 .
  2. ^ «La langue nationale est le kinyarwanda. Les langues officielles sont le kinyarwanda, le français et l'anglais » French translation
  3. ↑ Geordie Kenyon Sinclair: English in Rwanda: "Inevitability" meets obstacles on the ground . University of Toronto, December 2012, p. 4
  4. ↑ a b c Geordie Kenyon Sinclair: English in Rwanda: “Inevitability” meets obstacles on the ground . University of Toronto, December 2012, p. 9
  5. ↑ Nasra Bishumba: Rwanda: MPs Approve Law Making Official Kiswahili Language. In: TheNewTimes. February 9, 2017, accessed December 5, 2017 .
  6. ↑ On the number of Tutsi refugees in the early 1990s, see Steering Committee of the Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda: The International Response to Conflict and Genocide: Lessons from the Rwanda Experience. In particular Tor Sellström and Lennart Wohlgemuth: Study 1: Historical Perspective: Some Explanatory Factors , here Chapter 3 ( Memento from March 7, 2006 in the web archive archive.today ), accessed on December 18, 2007, 11:30 p.m. (This reference is taken from the genocide in Rwanda )
  7. ^ Matt Brown: France faces accusations over Rwanda massacre . ( Memento of the original from August 12, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: TheNational , August 26, 2008, accessed September 22, 2008 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.thenational.ae
  8. ↑ Rwanda . thecommonwealth.org
  9. ↑ Le Rwanda va devenir bilingue . jeuneafrique.com, December 14, 2008
  10. ↑ dradio.de
  11. ↑ Le français, un luxe inutile au Rwanda , ledevoir.com, August 14, 2010
  12. ↑ Statistical analysis for 2012 on page 104 (Table 47: Distribution (%) of the resident population aged 15 years and above by language (s) of literacy by sex, province and area of ​​residence): Rwanda Fourth Population and Housing Census, 2012 . statistics.gov.rw - Thematic Report: Education characteristics of the population. National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR), Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning (MINECOFIN) [Rwanda], January 2014.
  13. ^ Why Rwanda said goodbye to French . theguardian.com, Jan 16, 2009
  14. ↑ 1991 census data: number of speakers for French 5.1%, Swahili 2.3%, English 0.8% of the population. Census data 2002: Number of speakers for Kinyarwanda 99.7%, French 3.7%, Swahili 3% and English 1.8%. Geordie Kenyon Sinclair: English in Rwanda: “Inevitability” meets obstacles on the ground . University of Toronto, December 2012, p. 2.
  15. ↑ Speak English? Invest here. French need not apply . economist.com, October 15, 2012