Date: 23 August 2023 Time: 13h00 - 14h30 Venue: New Arts Building, L1 Presenter: Dr. Hugues Steve Ndinga-Koumba-Binza Zoom meeting: https://zoom.us/j/99125843788?pwd=OGRpL3ErMXVqTklub0NrTkhEZ1hMdz09 Meeting ID: 991 2584 3788 Passcode: RBiHe0 ABSTRACT: Mother-tongue education (MTE) is understood as any form of schooling where the pupil’s initial language is the language of learning and teaching (Lolt). As such, and as shown in various case studies, it is an ideal process for solving issues such as illiteracy, school failure and language decline. In many accounts and as it is implemented in several countries, MTE however does not take into consideration a number of contextual societal and socio-linguistic realities. The current paper focuses a single aspect of socio-linguistic realities in the African context, i.e. language different varieties, also known as dialects. From a linguistic point of view, a dialect is “any distinct variety of a language” (Matthews 1997: 96). More precisely, it is a “regionally or socially distinctive variety of language, identified by a particular set of words and grammatical structures” (Crystal 2013: 142). From a dialectological point of view, there is no such thing as a unified language: Any language is only manifested through its various dialects. Thus, deciding on a language for MTE is actually deciding on one of the varieties of a language. In most languages, the standard variety is automatically chosen for MTE. However, it has been proven that the standard variety is very often not the actual mother-tongue of the pupils. In the African context, (African) languages are known to be very diverse having numerous dialects and even sub-dialects (sociolects). Some of these variants can be so distinct that for certain reasons, speakers of these variants may not see themselves as speaking the same language. At the same time, some genuinely different languages are bound together as varieties of the same language. This relationship between dialects of the same language on one hand, and between cognate languages on the other hand, represents a definite challenge for MTE in many parts of the African continent. The present paper makes an outline of dialectal concerns that come across MTE implementation in the African context. Further, the paper provides an insight into the implementation of MTE without discriminating speakers of non-standardized varieties of a particular language.