Somalia halts campaign on foreign languages

The administration of Mogadishu in Somalia said Thursday it is temporarily stopping the campaign on removal of signage written in foreign languages in order to give traders time to implement the order.

A local government spokesman, Abdifitah Halane told Xinhua the campaign was still on course but that the mayor had given traders an additional ten days to carry out the exercise on their own.

He noted that the move was not aimed at hampering trade in the city. Halane said there was need to preserve and promote the Somali language which is facing competition from other foreign languages.

"We started this exercise in order to preserve our language. This came after we realised most of the traders were using English in our door advertising and signage," said Halane.

City officials this week went round the central business district of Mogadishu bringing down boards with foreign languages while other traders decided to paint out sections which had foreign languages.

Somali and Arabic are official languages in Somalia but the return of Somalis from diaspora has led to proliferation of other languages which the mayor notes is detrimental to the existence of the local language.

Government offices still use English in official documents and communication besides Arabic and Somali. Enditem