It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change – Charles Darwin. What is meant by adaptability is the ability to change to suit the environment.
The father of evolution made the lofty claim given above after observing many species on this planet. I have not gone so far as finding out which species he had studied or had in mind, but I know that dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes once roamed earth. Some of them were very strong indeed but did not survive. I know also that once upon a time, earth had intelligent beings called Neanderthals, very close to human beings, but today Homo neanderthalensis no longer roams earth. Despite their intelligence, compared to other species that existed alongside them, Neanderthals have been wiped off the planet’s face.
The crocodile, on the other hand, is one of the longest surviving species. It has adapted to its environment so well that it is now an amphibious creature, surviving on land and in water. It can remain submerged for more than one hour. If it is motionless, it can stay underwater for up to eight hours. It uses oxygen very sparingly in such moments, its blood vessels carrying the life supporting gas only to those muscles that need it. Over the millennia the crocodile has undergone many adaptations, and has evolved into a killing machine par excellence.
This article is not about organisms but about languages. Just like in the case of living organism, survival of languages depends on how adaptable they are. For a language to be adaptable it must be flexible enough to continuously change. A language that ceases to change dies. Greek and Latin were once classical languages of Europe but both are considered dead now. They kept changing over the period they were in use, which is what kept them going. Both eventually changed so radically that they became different languages. Ancient Greek became modern Greek and Latin evolved into French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian.
Languages change by absorbing new words either from other languages or through the process of coining new words. Both keep a language invigorated, increasing its survival chances in the process.
Chichewa is a surviving language because it keeps changing. When he was a boy, Kamuzu Banda spoke the type of Chichewa that was close to the pure form of the language. He left the country and stayed abroad for forty years. When he came back the language had evolved so much that it was technically a different language from the one he had known. Many people still wonder up to now why Kamuzu opted to use English more than his native Chichewa. This short treatise hopefully provides some useful insights into Kamuzu’s preference for English.
The Chichewa language had absorbed many new words from other languages. A modern Chichewa speaker thinks many of these words are of Chewa origin. Words like achimwene or achemwali (brother or sister) are from Yao. Abambo (father or man) is a Ngoni word, the Chichewa equivalent being atate. Magazi (blood) is also Ngoni. In Chichewa blood is mwazi. Nsapato (shoes) is Portuguese as is mbatata (potatoes) while ndege (airplane) is Swahili. The list of words that have been assimilated into Chichewa is endless. Words like mapilikaniro (Yao word for ears) are heard often in the Chichewa of Southern Malawi.
Besides words from other languages, Chichewa has been flooded with coined words. The youths continually add new words to the language. A bereaved young man is said to have mourned his departed mother in this manner: “masten, zoona, mungavaye osatithokera!” (So you have gone without saying anything, mum!). The statement is supposedly a Chichewa one but 75% of the words are coined. The youth of today speak a very different version of Chichewa (with many coined words) from what some of us grew up speaking.
Many years ago, I passed through Lusaka Airport. I heard people speak what I initially thought was an unintelligible language but soon discovered that it was a version of Chichewa. They call it Chinyanja in Zambia. If Chichewa has undergone change, its sister language has been transformed massively, almost beyond recognition. Many English words have been incorporated into Chinyanja. Kuwarning’a, for example, is to warn. A Chichewa speaker would use the word kuchenjeza.
It is these changes that keep Chichewa (and Chinyanja) going. The day that Chichewa will cease to undergo changes will be its doomsday. But that day is not coming any time soon as Chichewa still needs to incorporate many new words to express scientific concepts.