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Somalia The Language and Literacy Issue
One of the principal objectives of the revolutionary regime
was the adoption of a standard orthography of the Somali
language. Such a system would enable the government to make
Somali the country's official language. Since independence
Italian and English had served as the languages of administration
and instruction in Somalia's schools. A11 government documents
had been published in the two European languages. Indeed, it had
been considered necessary that certain civil service posts of
national importance be held by two officials, one proficient in
English and the other in Italian. During the Husseen and Igaal
governments, when a number of English-speaking northerners were
put in prominent positions, English had dominated Italian in
official circles and had even begun to replace it as a medium of
instruction in southern schools. Arabic--or a heavily arabized
Somali--also had been widely used in cultural and commercial
areas and in Islamic schools and courts. Religious
traditionalists and supporters of Somalia's integration into the
Arab world had advocated that Arabic be adopted as the official
language, with Somali as a vernacular.
A few months after independence, the Somali Language
Committee was appointed to investigate the best means of writing
Somali. The committee considered nine scripts, including Arabic,
Latin, and various indigenous scripts. Its report, issued in
1962, favored the Latin script, which the committee regarded as
the best suited to represent the phonemic structure of Somali and
flexible enough to be adjusted for the dialects. Facility with a
Latin system, moreover, offered obvious advantages to those who
sought higher education outside the country. Modern printing
equipment would also be more easily and reasonably available for
Latin type. Existing Somali grammars prepared by foreign
scholars, although outdated for modern teaching methods, would
give some initial advantage in the preparation of teaching
materials. Disagreement had been so intense among opposing
factions, however, that no action was taken to adopt a standard
script, although successive governments continued to reiterate
their intention to resolve the issue.
On coming to power, the SRC made clear that it viewed the
official use of foreign languages, of which only a relatively
small fraction of the population had an adequate working
knowledge, as a threat to national unity, contributing to the
stratification of society on the basis of language. In 1971 the
SRC revived the Somali Language Committee and instructed it to
prepare textbooks for schools and adult education programs, a
national grammar, and a new Somali dictionary. However, no
decision was made at the time concerning the use of a particular
script, and each member of the committee worked in the one with
which he was familiar. The understanding was that, upon adoption
of a standard script, all materials would be immediately
transcribed.
On the third anniversary of the 1969 coup, the SRC announced
that a Latin script had been adopted as the standard script to be
used throughout Somalia beginning January 1, 1973. As a
prerequisite for continued government service, all officials were
given three months (later extended to six months) to learn the
new script and to become proficient in it. During 1973
educational material written in the standard orthography was
introduced in elementary schools and by 1975 was also being used
in secondary and higher education.
Somalia's literacy rate was estimated at only 5 percent in
1972. After adopting the new script, the SRC launched a "cultural
revolution" aimed at making the entire population literate in two
years. The first part of the massive literacy campaign was
carried out in a series of three-month sessions in urban and
rural sedentary areas and reportedly resulted in several hundred
thousand people learning to read and write. As many as 8,000
teachers were recruited, mostly among government employees and
members of the armed forces, to conduct the program.
The campaign in settled areas was followed by preparations
for a major effort among the nomads that got underway in August
1974. The program in the countryside was carried out by more than
20,000 teachers, half of whom were secondary school students
whose classes were suspended for the duration of the school year.
The rural program also compelled a privileged class of urban
youth to share the hardships of the nomadic pastoralists.
Although affected by the onset of a severe drought, the program
appeared to have achieved substantial results in the field in a
short period of time
(see Language and Education
, ch. 2).
Nevertheless, the UN estimate of Somalia's literacy rate in 1990
was only 24 percent.
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