No matter how learned you are, please don’t stop learning…till your dying day

Learning, so goes an adage, is a life-long process. Even PhD holders and professors never stop learning despite their high academic standing, and they’re always ready to receive new knowledge, not only from their peers, but also from those they teach. And books.

Media men and women have language as their stock-in-trade. It means, if you toil as a scribbler in Bongo as a means to earn your daily ugali, informing, educating and entertaining others, mastering English and/or Kiswahili is not an option.

To paraphrase the legendary East African journalist, author and editor Philip Ochieng (1938-2021), if you lack language mastery, you’ve no business working in a newsroom!

To master a skill and sustain the mastery thence acquired, you need to remain open to learning, all the way to your dying day.

It’s sad, therefore, to notice that many of our people, including journalists, aren’t keen on learning to better their linguistic skills, ostensibly because they already have certificates, diplomas and degrees in their pockets.

Or else, how else can we explain the failure of some of our otherwise seasoned electronic media practitioners to learn—despite repetitive reminders by experts from Bakita, our country’s Kiswahili council—that it’s incorrect to say “mhanga” but “mwathirika” if you’ve in mind the word victim? Or that it’s not right to say “masaa” 24 but “saa” 24? no matter the number of  hours you’re talking about? Or that we shouldn’t say “mapungufu” but “upungufu” not matter how many shortcomings you’re referring to?

It’s not uncommon to hear a seasoned sports broadcaster saying mchezaji-tegemezi instead of mchezaji tegemeo/mtegemewa when informing listeners about a dependable player such Aziz Ki.  Let’s not stop learning.

This columnist is a dedicated, never-miss listener of Radio One’s Saturday programme, Kumekucha Kiswahili, yet he studied the language up to university!

Having thus lectured (bah!) let’s proceed with dishing out linguistic gems picked up from a section of the Bongo English press over the week. Here we go…

Bongo’s senior-most Sunday broadsheet of June 8 has a Page 2 story entitled, ‘UV-CCM mourns wing’s secretary’, in which the scribbler writes in the last-but-one paragraph:  “Eye witnesses said the fatal incident (sic!) occurred on Wednesday when Mr E.N. was returning to Chamwino from Ntyuka Hospital where he and ‘A wife’ had taken their child for treatment.”

Mr so and so with “a” wife? Nope; we say Mr so and so with HIS wife.

In the last paragraph where he concludes his sad story on the accident that ended the lives of a man, his wife and child, our scribbling colleague writes: “The trio reportedly STRUCK by a lorry on their way back and died on the spot.”

The sentence we quote doesn’t make sense to us and, we guess, his readers at large. We suppose the scribbler meant to say: “The trio WAS reportedly HIT (not struck) by a lorry on their way back...”

Another story on the same page had this headline, ‘Coffee auction exceeds indicative price,’ and in Para 7, the scribbler, in his move to quote a coffee board boss, writes: “Under a three-year strategic plan, over 10,000 hectares will be planted with improved coffee varieties. This initiative will increase the region’s income WITH 96bn/-annually…”

Increase the region’s income with…? No, Siree! We say “increase the region’s income BY 96bn/-annually…”

In Para 8, the scribbler purports to quote the boss as saying further: “Tanzania has made significant progress in the coffee crop over the past three years. During this time, FARMERS’ prices have consistently improved…”

Farmers’ prices have improved? We say no; it is COFFEE prices that have improved.

Ah, this treacherous language called English!