Professor Issah Samuel Alhassan, the Dean of the Faculty of Ghanaian Language Education at the College of Education, Winneba has urged parents to make it prestigious for their children to embrace and speak the local language.
“We must make accessible linguistic input in the language of their identity,” he said.
Professor Alhassan said language was the bridge that connected people to their past and paved the way for the future.
He was addressing the launch of the third edition of the Sisaali English Dictionary at Tumu.
It was organised by the Sissala Literacy Development (SILAP) in collaboration with the Ghana Institute of Linguistics, Literacy and Bible Translation (GILLBT).
It was attended by Directors of Education, representatives of the Members of Parliament, the Sissala East Assembly, chiefs and the public.
He said Language carried the essence of a people, their values, beliefs, and traditions, and the medium through which people expressed their deepest thoughts, emotions and aspirations.
“The Sissali language is not merely a means of communication; it is the embodiment of our collective identity, a testament to the resilience and ingenuity of our ancestors,” he said.
He explained that for a group to abandon their language for any other prestigious language would be providing the enemy with a knife to cut the Sissala throat.
“The launch of this dictionary is a salient move towards the preservation of the identity of the people, as dictionaries by themselves do not only present users with a list of words but it is a source of information on the socio-economic artefacts of the people to learn providing meaning of words, phrases, contextual meaning and the right pronunciation,” he explained further.
He advised all to pass it on to future generations as a sacred trust by celebrating the beauty and power of the language, saying, “It is the lifeblood of the identity, the thread that binds together the people.”
He challenged all to work in diverse ways by investing in and deliberately transmitting the language in all sacred forms to children and grandchildren who are the forebears of the Sissali tribe.
Kuoro Richard Babini Kanton, the Paramount Chief of the Tumu Traditional Council, promised to support the learning of Sisaali language development at the tertiary level and urged every parent to buy a book each for their ward.
Mr Moses Luri, a lecturer, at the University College of Education, who led the discussion on “The Teaching and Learning of Sisaali in the Basic Schools: Prospects and the way Forward,” congratulated the key stakeholders for the tremendous efforts made to write the Dictionary.
Mr Luri called on the government to make the study of Ghanaian language a compulsory subject and not an elective, saying, “I still disagree with the current situation, where Ghana Education Service (GES) has directed Regional and District Directors of Education to make Ghanaian language an elective but not mandatory.
“If only one subject must be taught in our Ghanaian schools, then it must be the Ghanaian language, it makes you a Ghanaian apart from all the above arguments,” he stressed.
He called for efforts to be made in the short term to seek approval from GES- National Curriculum Accreditation Authority (NACCA) for the teaching, learning and examination of Sisaali at all levels of Education in the Sissala communities.
The unveiling of the book was done by Professor Abdul-Mumin Selanwiah Salifu, the Principal of the Tumu College of Education.
An initial sale of the Dictionary yielded GH¢3200.
GNA
