{"id":1683,"date":"2014-09-17T11:14:37","date_gmt":"2014-09-17T10:14:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iwacu-burundi.org\/blogs\/english\/?p=1683"},"modified":"2016-07-19T08:25:28","modified_gmt":"2016-07-19T08:25:28","slug":"english-is-now-official-language-of-burundi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iwacu-burundi.org\/englishnews\/english-is-now-official-language-of-burundi\/","title":{"rendered":"English is now official language of Burundi"},"content":{"rendered":"

The National Assembly unanimously adopted a draft law on the status of languages including English as an official language, on 28 August 2014. Government officials are in the process of learning more about the language.<\/strong>-Diane Uwimana<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Members<\/a>

Members of the Parliament in their plenary session adopted the law unanimously \u00a9Iwacu<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cThe national language is Kirundi. The official languages are Kirundi and other languages determined by law\u201d, such is the provision of article 5 of the Constitution, an article which does not however specify these \u2018other languages\u2019. The National Assembly analyzed and adopted a draft law on the status of languages in Burundi in order to correct this error.
\nThe draft law aims to provide order in Burundi\u2019s linguistic landscape. The new regulation specifically mentions English, a language newly introduced in this francophone country. When the law comes into effect; Kirundi, French and English all carry the same weight, being the country’s three official languages. It is worth mentioning that four languages (Kirundi, Swahili, French, and English) are spoken frequently in Burundi without any regulation so far.
\nJoseph Butore, the Minister of High Education and Scientific Research who defended the draft law at the National Assembly, indicated that adopting English as an official language will allow the country to be in conformity with other EA partner States.
\n\u201cWe do not want to close the doors to French speaking people, we want both francophone\u2019s and anglophone\u2019s to feel at ease and comfortable in their vehicular languages\u201d, the Minister explained in the National Assembly.<\/p>\n

\u201cOfficials are putting new regulations into practice\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI no longer need to translate my report from English to French\u201d, says an official working at the Ministry of Defence and Former Combatants. He indicates that when he took part in regional and international conferences held in English, he had to translate the final reports into Burundi\u2019s administrative language, the French. \u201cStarting now, our administrative officials will undertake and learn this language urgently\u201d, he predicts.
\nIn the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development Planning, some training is already on the agenda. \u201cAbout 104 officials will be trained in English this October. They will acquire some basic English knowledge, because we are supposed to know it\u201d, says Christian Kwizera, the Deputy Spokesperson of that Ministry. He goes on saying that a language should be learned by practising it: \u201cWe will no longer use translation during regional and international conferences.\u201d
\nWhen Burundi joined the East African Community in 2007, some officials took it upon themselves to acquire some English knowledge in different English learning centres.<\/p>\n

According to the basic laws, the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research states that Kirundi should be used in debates, speeches and draft laws. \u201cEven Kirundi (our mother tongue) does not yet fully enjoy official status referred to the basic law because this language is not yet mandatory to use in debates and bills to study and to enact, nor is it the exclusive language of institutions\u2019 functioning\u201d, says Joseph Butore.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The National Assembly unanimously adopted a draft law on the status of languages including English as an official language, on 28 August 2014. Government officials are in the process of learning more about the language.-Diane Uwimana \u201cThe national language is Kirundi. The official languages are Kirundi and other languages determined by law\u201d, such is the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2880,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[233,463],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iwacu-burundi.org\/englishnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1683"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iwacu-burundi.org\/englishnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iwacu-burundi.org\/englishnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iwacu-burundi.org\/englishnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iwacu-burundi.org\/englishnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1683"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.iwacu-burundi.org\/englishnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2881,"href":"https:\/\/www.iwacu-burundi.org\/englishnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1683\/revisions\/2881"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iwacu-burundi.org\/englishnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iwacu-burundi.org\/englishnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iwacu-burundi.org\/englishnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iwacu-burundi.org\/englishnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}