Whose Words Do We Think In?

Kwasi Wiredu was a philosopher from Ghana who taught that African thinkers should examine the concepts they inherited from colonial education. He called the work conceptual decolonization. It means asking which ideas were taken on without scrutiny, and whether they fit the thinker’s own language and experience.

He did not say to reject foreign ideas. He said to test them, and to see what the thinker’s own language could contribute. Language shapes what is easy to say, so comparing languages can show assumptions hidden in each.

Henry Odera Oruka, from Kenya, argued that individual sages in oral cultures also did philosophy, by questioning received customs and giving reasons. Both thinkers resisted the claim that reflection is found only in books from one region.

The translated rule

A school adopts a rule translated from a foreign handbook, and the teachers find that one key word, rendered as “property,” does not match how their community thinks about shared land. The rule causes confusion.

They ask the elders how the community would describe the idea. The answer changes the rule’s wording, and the new rule is clearer to everyone. The teachers say they have kept the best of the handbook and fitted it to the place.

Try this today Pick a word for an idea you use a lot, and write how you would explain it in another language you know.