The invite simply read; "Opening of Goethe Institut - Kigali’s Language Department.” 

For two years now, the German Embassy in Rwanda has been offering language classes at the Kiyovu-based Goethe Institut, so obviously what we had in mind for the Thursday night event was the cutting of ribbons, commissioning of new classroom blocks, and maybe the showcase of a few language students. 

In his brief opening remarks, Dr. Markus Litz, the Goethe Institut Director briefed the audience on the progress of the language classes since their inception in 2014, before inviting the keynote speaker, Professor James Vuningoma, the Executive Secretary of the Rwanda Academy of Language and Culture to the floor. 

Vuningoma was supposed to present a paper on the theme; The necessity of the mother tongue and the importance of learning foreign languages.

However he had more ideas in mind:

"They gave me this theme and I simply added "The case of Kinyarwanda”, because it’s the language I know best, and it’s my mother tongue, so I can speak about it easily and at leisure.”

With this, the tone had been set, and in the next 30 minutes or so, the professor had every member of the jam packed conference room literally eating off his fingers. 

Vuningoma’s colorful presentation tackled a wide range of sub-themes.

The necessity of the mother tongue (in this case, Kinyarwanda), the importance of learning foreign languages, the preservation and promotion of Kinyarwanda, and the nature of foreign languages, among others. 

"Whether you talk of mother tongue or a foreign language, they are all languages. It’s only the characteristics that separate them, otherwise they are all languages. The common denominator between the two is that both emanate from the concept of language. So why is it important?,” the professor teased. 

"Why do we attach such importance to the necessity to preserve and promote the mother tongue, and develop the same necessity to learn other languages other than one’s own?”, he pressed on. 

"Why are you here learning Germany? Why is another one learning English? Why is another one learning French, Spanish, Chinese?”

Demystifying language

Vunimgoma spoke extensively about what forms the basic tenets of a given language, describing language as a key and driving force that facilitates human contact, communication, conversation, and sending and receiving messages. 

"Everyone makes use of it, be they a beggar or a king. From the first day we are surrounded by it. Language is the flesh and blood of our culture. You can’t separate language from culture. They are intertwined.” 

He described language as the loose strings that form a people’s culture, stressing the need to preserve our language to avoid the extinction of both the language and the culture.

"Language is a means of social cohesion, social change, and community advancement. In a nutshell, language is an emblematic sign of identity of a people, an indicative source of living. If you speak Kinyarwanda, it’s your identity as a Rwandan, you speak German, it’s your identity as a German.”

He underscored the importance of language in the process of building human relationships, adding that language shapes reality, "because language makes what we are. It’s a vehicle through which people express their thoughts, feelings, ideas, concepts –a revelation of their being what they are. If you don’t have that language of A. B, C, D … as we know it, you use signs, because that too is a language.”

The case for Kinyarwanda

Linguistically, Kinyarwanda falls under the Bantu group of languages. Its uniqueness derives from the fact that, in an area that is so linguistically diverse, with countries like the DRC counting over 350 languages, and Uganda over 50, Kinyarwanda is the only native language spoken by Rwandans. 

Professor Vunimgoma explained that though Kinyarwanda was a language specific to Rwandans, its influence stretches much further since it’s spoken by several other people who use it for different reasons. 

"It is so fortunate that we here in Rwanda speak one language. Others do not have that privilege. Kinyarwanda is a vehicular cross-border language because it’s spoken and understood by over forty million people in neighboring countries and beyond. Remember here we are 11 million. It’s the duty of this nation to recognize this treasure.”

Language and culture

Vuningoma further illustrated the intertwined nature of culture and language. 

"Kinyarwanda is the first language a child uses to communicate. That being in the womb of the mother is part of the language. That’s why a mother is important because she gives life, upbringing, and then language to a child. You can easily call it a language a mother uses to usher her child into the world, and it gives that child contact with the immediate family, community and the country at large. 

"Kinyarwanda is important not only as a source of identity of a people but also as a vehicle of cultural values through which the same people come to be known as a people –the Banyarwanda, living in a geographical area known as Rwanda.”

Kinyarwanda here to stay

On February 21 this year, as with previous years, Rwandans joined the rest of the world to celebrate the International Mother Language Day. 

It is an important date that reminds natives of respective countries that preservation of their mother tongue and its promotion prohibits those languages to die.

"The reason UNESCO designated this day was the fear of the world that some languages run the risk of disappearing, and Kinyarwanda is one of those languages,” Vuningoma explained, before posing a rhetorical question: 

"But can it disappear when we are here?”, to a resounding chorus of "no” from the packed audience. 

"It’s because of the aspiration of UNESCO based on Sustainable Development Goal 4 on education and the 230 framework for action that Rwanda is optimistic this goal will have to be reached and we’ll be seeing the results.” 

Starting January this year, Rwanda adopted Kinyarwanda as the language of instruction from kindergarten, primary, secondary, to education level, in line with the new curriculum. 

Commending the move, the professor argued that it would go a long way in raising the quality of education and learning, as what is learnt is applied directly in a learner’s life. It also increases dialogue and interaction between the learner and the teacher by providing the opportunity for genuine communication.

"We now know that you learn better when you have the system of a language in your own mother tongue. The accident of history made us to embrace French and English, and we just let Kinyarwanda go. Now we are making up for the lost years. It is hard, but with the will of this country to recover our history and our dignity, it will be possible,” Vuningoma vowed, adding: 

"One of the duties of any respectable government is to look at those things that characterize its people and with Kinyarwanda we must understand it’s a language which has gone through ups and downs because of our country’s tragic history that is known to all of us.” 

To the surprise of many, Vuningoma further revealed that he only started learning Kinyarwanda upon his return to the country from exile as a fully grown man.

"Kinyarwanda is a mother tongue but it’s also an official language, and lucky enough we are using English and French for perpetration of history, but who knows, German could be added there, Chinese, Swahili … because Rwanda needs all these languages for international connection. We are no longer a land locked country, but a land linked country, and we know where we are going with that philosophy. It therefore becomes the imperative duty of the state, through the politics of use of languages in the country to look for ways to protect, safeguard, promote and develop Kinyarwanda because of its usefulness.”

He cautioned against the new linguistic trend that he termed "Kinyafranglais” (a mixture of Kinyarwanda, French and English), which has borne a vice of some people hating their own language.

The case for learning a foreign language

"Foreign languages before they can be called foreign, are mother tongues of a give country. Such languages have become the voice and the wealth of such nations, ready for export,” Vuningoma lectured matter-of-factly. 

"Such languages have become the wealth of the Germans, of the British, the Chinese and the French … because we learn them, and this approaches them to us.

These countries identified themselves in their civilizing mission in the colonial days. That is when we started borrowing these languages.”

The professor ended his well-orchestrated presentation with some food for thought: 

"Will it be possible one day that we will find Germans learning Kinyarwanda the way these Rwandans are learning German?

Can we introduce Kinyarwanda in Germany, in London, in Washington?”