Mel
I agree! (damn!)
Lol....and that's why I say we should crown you as new 1st Lady of AALBC!
Another problem with Swahili is it's heavily influenced by Arabic since it was helped put together by them for the purposes of trading between various indigenous groups.
Infact, even if you look at the term for Kwanzaa's 7 principles...Ngooso Saba....that word "saba" isn't African but actually Arabic or atleast Semitic in origin.
Maulana Karinga put it together but the name "Maulana" is an Arabic name as well!
And the candle lighting reminds me of Hannukah.
But I still give propers to Karinga for trying to trying to give us somewhat of a culture with our own holidays and festive rituals.
It is our language that dictates our culture.
Ofcourse.
Language and words set the framework of the mind.
That's why learning a new languages often FORCES a person to think from an entirely different perspective and often times changes their orientation on life.
I remember some years ago when I was working in a restaurant and was picking up a little Espanol from some of my co-workers I would learn the words "I am hungry" in Espanol and say that exactly but it made no sense to them. In their culture they don't say "I AM hungry" instead they say "I HAVE hunger".
And when I thought about it, it made more sense because it's silly to say you ARE hungry as if you're calling yourself "hungry" when it's actually a feeling you have.
One of the problems with us attempting to get our own language is we would have to practically invent it from scratch because there is no single dominant West African ethnic group that we could legitimately latch on too. Plus being here in the West, I believe most West African languages are too limited in their vocabulary for us to adopt without being FORCED to use English or Spanish words to compensate.
Looks like Black linguistic scholars have quite a project waiting for them if they want it.....lol.
It may take decades to outline and launch a viable and unique AfroAmerican language.
Most of the time, without even noticing it -we reinforced the dominate culture - because we only know one language -american english
And the fact that most of us only only know American English also has negative financial repercussions.
If you notice, most of the people of color who are financially successful in the United States whether they are Koreans, Chinese, Nigerians, Haitians, Cubans, Ethiopians, ect......they all speak languages OTHER than just English.
Like I said earlier, speaking more than one language FORCES your brain to think in different modes but it ALSO allows you to talk and plan business and other economic moves amongst eachother without worrying about White people eave's dropping in and stealing your ideas or trying to thwart your business plans.
If you notice out in public, AfroAmericans can be talking and it doesn't bother them at all but Caucasians tend to get ANGRY and nervous as hell when Africans and other people of color start speaking in a foreign language around them!
They start looking around, sighing, rolling their eyes, ect......because they can't figure out what those people are up to, lol.