Africa-Press – Angola. The Angolan Academy of Letters (AAL) defended today, in Luanda, the introduction of national languages, such as Portuguese, into the Angolan education system.
In an interview, to be published soon, the president of the academy, Paulo de Carvalho, lamented the fact that almost 50 years after the proclamation of independence, almost nothing had been done to change the situation, despite many appeals.
He recalled that, at the moment, Portuguese is the only official language in Angola.
The academy is in favor of introducing more than one official language, as it believes that national languages should, several of them, be “official languages”.
In its proposal, the AAL presents a solution that involves dividing the country into linguistic regions.
“Each region could have two or three official languages, and not just Portuguese, depending on the importance of each national language in that same region”, he pointed out.
According to one of the principles of sociolinguistics, children must have access to instruction in their mother tongue, in their first language.
“Unfortunately in Angola we have, from the outset, some children who are disadvantaged, because they do not have Portuguese as their mother tongue, therefore, these children should have access to instruction in their language”, he said.
He revealed that Angola has cases of at least seven languages that should be considered regionally as official languages.
“We are approaching 50 years since the proclamation of independence and almost nothing has been done in that direction,” he lamented.
Established in September 2016, AAL is a non-profit, cultural and scientific association. It is also a literary institution that has responsibility for publishing works of great historical and literary value.
Paulo de Carvalho, who is running to succeed him in the elections on Friday (4 October), as head of the single list, is the second president of this association. The first was the writer Boaventura Cardoso.
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