The post Countryside Grammar: The Use Of Vernacular In Offices? appeared first on Career Point Kenya.Click on the link for the original.
By Mark Namaswa,
“When my former schoolmates received their university admission letters in 2008 and I didn’t, I became concerned and decided to visit the university to find out why mine had delayed,” recalls 27-year-old Anthony Wangui Mutinda. Anthony walked to the main administration block admissions counter for inquiries. There was a queue and he waited patiently for his turn. As he handed over his identity card to an admissions officer, instead of keying in the particulars for a system search, she glanced at it and passed it on to a colleague who gave it one look and they both burst into laughter.
He waited to know what was amiss, and got the answer soon enough. The clerks were joking in vernacular about Anthony’s middle name . They had mistakenly assumed he didn’t understand their language and when he demanded an apology she declined; and the ensuing verbal exchange caused a scene.
He is not alone; 26-year-old Vicky Wandera, a journalist, also found the same torment of vernacular unbearable while on field attachment. “Whenever I handed in my articles, the two editors would converse in their mother tongue and laugh. Though I knew they might have not necessarily been gossiping or laughing at me, I found it very uncomfortable,” she confesses.
These are some of the many cases in public workplaces where vernacular has been misapplied as a discrete language code and it backfired. Many people have landed themselves in hot water situations for attempting to use vernacular as a secret code only to discover later the person they supposedly excluded from the conversation understood them.
“Different organizations have different cultures and structures,” states Caroline Mwangi, HR Manager, Crown Beverages “for example, family-owned organizations can very well communicate in vernacular as it may be easier for them to understand each other. However, in the corporate environment, people are drawn from diverse backgrounds and ethnicities so uniform communication is critical,” she states.
“When it comes to one-on-one communication in the office, mother tongue should better be spoken behind closed doors or during social hours like breaks or lunch hour. You can’t dictate to people as they unwind and relax,” she advises. “Speaking vernacular across the corridor can be inappropriate as you know, perception is everything. You might easily think one is back biting you when they simply are having their own conversations.”
Martin Githaiga, HR consultant, Corporate Staffing Services, concurs: “Among the staff vernacular can be good in promoting inter-personal relationships but it shouldn’t be encouraged as standard practice. Visitors, clients or non-speakers of the language might feel alienated—official communication should be restricted to national languages,” he stresses.
“In short,” sums up Ms Mwangi, “the forum, the structure and the working culture of an organization are the biggest determinants on how and when vernacular should be used,” she says. “If the use of vernacular happens in the right context, then there should be no problem with it as long as we are sensitive to others.”
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The post Countryside Grammar: The Use Of Vernacular In Offices? appeared first on Career Point Kenya.Click on the link for the original.
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