South Africa's Oldest Language Is Fighting To Survive

South Africa’s Oldest Language Is Fighting To Survive

Photo Courtesy of Northern Cape

Ouma Katrina Esau is the last fluent speaker of N|uu, a San language also known as South Africa’s original language. She is on a mission to fight for and preserve the endangered language.

Ouma Katrina Esau was born in 1933 when the centuries-long suppression of her people and their heritage was accelerating. In 1948, formal apartheid institutionalized racism, and the San languages, including N|uu, were derided as “ugly” and forbidden. This lead people of the San heritage to begin rejecting it in favor of Afrikaans.

N|uu was declared extinct in 1973, only to be rediscovered in the late 1990s when Elsie Vaalbooi, an N|uu speaker, made a public radio call for other speakers of the language to come forth. This led dozens of elderly speakers across the Northern Cape area to resurface.

According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Africans speak nearly 2,000 different languages. Many of these languages will be extinct by the end of the century. N|uu is now the sole survivor of the Tuu cluster of San languages spoken in what is now South Africa.

At 88-years-old, Esau is the only remaining fluent speaker of N|uu, following the deaths of her elder sisters– Hanna Koper and Griet Seekoei and younger brother Simon Sauls.

This has led to Esau starting a language school, ǂAqe ǁX’oqe – meaning “Gaze at the Stars” to fulfill her desire to teach N|uu to children.

“The aim of the school is that we want to hear the language. We also want to see it in books. We want to keep it visible. We’re doing this because it’s a matter of the heart for us,” she says in the book about her.

Esau never learned to read or write and uses songs, images and play to teach the language. In addition to that, she has been recording audio and video of herself to make sure the language is heard in the future.

“I’m teaching the language because I don’t want it to become extinct when we die. I want to pass on as much of it as I can, but I am very aware that we don’t have a lot of time,” Esau said.

Sheena Shah from the school of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London and Matthias Brezinger of the Centre for African Language Diversity in Cape Town assisted Esau’s fight, helping her create a N|uu alphabet, a guide for basic grammar rules. Esau also released a children’s book, “Tortoise and Ostrich,” which is the first-ever written book in the N|uu language.

We commend Esau for her fruitful efforts to fight and preserve South Africa’s history, a piece of our history.

See more of her story here:

Aziah Kamari

Aziah Kamari Pless is a writer and content creator with 5+ years of experience in freelance writer, editor and PR roles. A graduate of Florida State University, she received her Bachelor of Arts degree in English: Editing, Writing and Media. She incorporates her interests in music, fashion, media and entertainment to create versatile and compelling content.