Where you aware that languages can go extinct? There is even a scale to rate how ‘safe’ a language is on earth. I’m very sure on which side of the spectrum English sits right now. While many people have long glorified western languages, indigenous people across the African continent have made efforts to preserve African languages and dialects. One such person in South Africa’s Katrina Esau.

She was born on the 4^th of February 1933 on a farm near Olifantshoek in the Southern Kalahari Desert. Esau is the last fluent speaker of the endangered language N|uu. She grew up in a family of eight sisters and three brothers on a farm in which speaking their language was discouraged. Esau never attended formal school and began working on the farm from the age of sixteen later marrying her late husband Dirk Tities and giving birth to eleven children. She spoke Afrikaans, the language prescribed by the Apartheid government. 

N|uu is an ancient San language from the Tuu family. The language is said to be over 25,000 years old and may come to its demise. In the 1990s, N|uu witnessed a resurgence in the Northern Cape with about twenty fluent speakers which comprised of Esau (of course), her siblings and other elders. Many of these speaks have since passed, leaving Esau as the only fluent speaker who exists on the planet. Esau opened a school where she would teach the language and customs which has since been vandalized and sits abandoned. Esau is not alone in her efforts to preserve her beloved mother tongue. In 2021 she and her granddaughter, Claudia Snyman co-authored the children’s book titled ‘Qhoi n|a Tijho’ (Tortoise and Ostrich). Consequently, the authorship of this title also made it the first children’s book to be written in N|uu. The book has since been translated to English and Afrikaans and proceeds for the book go towards Esau’s efforts to preserve the N|uu language. 

For her efforts, Esau is the winner of the 2012 PanSALB Khoe and San Unsung Heroes Award, the 2014 Presidential National Orders with the Order of the Baobab in silver and was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Cape Town. Today, she lives in Upington with her granddaughter and continues to pass her knowledge to the younger generation.