Somizi’s advice to parents: Teach them their mother tongue

Entertainment legend Somizi took to Instagram to express his views on parenting and language.

“This is not an attack, but an observation,” Somizi says.

He feels that it is sad for children to be deprived of the opportunity to learn their mother tongue. For children up to the age of five, Somizi believes it’s important to create a language balance in the home.

“There is nothing wrong with sending your child to private schools, but there is a missed opportunity in not knowing your mother tongue,” he says in the video.

The biggest value, for him, is when a child is older and does not struggle to comprehend or express themselves in the vernacular. That is the missed opportunity that parents deprive their children of. Somizi said he was talking to an 18-year-old Zulu boy once who did not understand the language or seem bothered by it.

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Somizi finds that embarrassing and feels kids should not be proud of their inability to speak their mother tongue.

“Teaching your children their mother tongue does not take anything away from them,” Somizi says. “But you not teaching and speaking to them in their mother tongue is definitely going to take something away from them.”

He is grateful that he and his cousins who went to private school can converse fluently in different languages, including vernacular languages.

His post was warmly welcomed by parents who have made it their prerogative to not speak English with their children.

Umbali Wethu said: “I just don’t speak English with a black child and all my friends know that.”

Other parents spoke about the struggle of living in a multilingual home and the child experiencing speech delays because of too many languages spoken.

According to organisation Nationwide Kids: “Some people may mistakenly believe that raising a child in a bilingual household (meaning they speak more than one language) puts them at risk for language delays or a ‘silent period’ when they might not speak at all. Language delays can still occur in bilingual children, but bilingualism itself is not the cause.”