[Crew member holding film clapperboard in front of camera on set of “Masoyinbo (Do Not Speak English)” game show]
[Game show host interacting with contestants]
[Paper in hand of a contestant]
Olalekan Fabilola (interview): “If Masoyinbo (Do not speak English) had started in maybe like 10 years ago, it wouldn’t have been what it is now. But we’re in the age of cultural resurgence. People want to go back to their roots. The first generation, second generation, third generation, everyone wants to know why, where they are from, and so it’s timely.”
[Audience watching the game show]
Tomi Adeshokan (interview): “I don’t think it’s (Yoruba) going extinct, but I do believe that, like, less and less of us will speak it (Yoruba). And I think it’s very important for us to immerse ourselves in our culture and not to be fully identifying with other cultures, like the American, the Western culture.”
[Game show host interacting with contestants]
[Shungu Chidovi, Shona language teacher, conducting online lesson with Canada-based student Nyashadzashe Machingura]
Nyashadzashe Machingura (interview): “I remember, like, my siblings, they would be speaking Shona, and my cousins would be speaking Shona and I would be the only one who didn’t know how to and it just made me feel like very left out, and like I just was like missing out on my culture. So, that really is one of the big things that like led me to start learning Shona.”
[Chidovi and Machingura during an online lesson]
[Chidovi scrolling on her laptop]
Shungu Chidovi (interview): “The idea to start getting into language teaching actually came from my audience. So I had no intention of teaching languages, but the more I wrote, the more I got inquiries from readers saying: ‘Do you teach Shona?’ But then I realized that culture and language are intertwined. So whilst I didn’t see it at the time that I was really writing about the Shona language, my audience pointed it out to me.”
[Believe Mubonderi, linguistics lecturer at Zimbabwe Open University]
[Books on shelf]
Believe Mubonderi (interview): “When you talk of Africa, you talk of English, French, Portuguese. So you realize there are many different countries in Africa. They had many different language policies. And in most cases, African languages were actually sidelined. They only may be relegated to the home domain, cultural domain. They were never exposed or modernized to be used in commerce, to be used in science and technology. So as far as we are concerned with the status, I would say that most African languages, they still have a very low status. And when a language is a very low status, there’s a danger that that language eventually will become extinct.”
[People walking in streets]
This script was provided by The Associated Press.