Challenges in use and development of kambaatissata
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Date
2012-09
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The study attempts to investigate the contribution of MT speakers to use and development of Kambaatissaata and then steadily progressed to assess the factors challenging the vitality and development of the language. Interviews, FGDs, and questionnaires supplemented with document analysis, observation and debates were the methods used for data gathering. In order to select the representative informants random sampling, based on proportional distributions of attributes like age, sex, social status, literacy, occupation in the varieties of domains of language use such as schools, government offices, religion, ritual ceremonies and different settings were applied. The result of the study shows that MT speakers of Kambaatissata are not fully committed to the use of the language in whole domains and to contribute for the development of Kambaatissata in the oral and in the written discourses. The community role model, the more educated section of the society is more reluctant to use the MT in the different domains of life, including the home. This is because of some humiliations associated to the language and the nation and less techcized/modernized nature of the language. The most influential social institutions in the society, the religious organizations and the mass media are not devoted for using the language and are not promoting it to be used by the people. Even in some angles the religious institutions reflect some negative influences to its vitality. The zonal administration manifested some efforts of developing it by way of preparing a dictionary and some textbooks for lower primary education. But there was no strong language planning program put in place in the zone to standardize it.
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As a result of mainly these, the population has developed negative attitude towards its own language, has developed the tendency towards refraining from transmitting the MT to the next generation, and has become reluctant to use the MT in every day transactions, to listen to secular music or religious songs in the language, and has even revealed tendencies of abandoning their language in favor of Amharic and English. This has made the language not fully functional in all domains in the indigenous community and has inhibited its development despite the favorable policy environment at the present time. The study suggests certain measures to be taken by the religious institutions, intellectuals of the MT speakers, the zonal administration and the population as a whole to reform the current tendency and act in favor of using and developing the language.
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kambaatissata