Sustaining Nigerian Local Languages

Mummy, mummy, grandma was talking nonsense; she was making noise like that bird that comes to our balcony: Haha, haha aa!!’’ says Eleena, a five-year-old girl.

Eleena was narrating her conversation with her grandmother who she met for the first time when they travelled to the village for holidays.

The old woman was speaking Igbo to Eleena who was only exposed to the use of English and Yoruba languages at home and in school. To the poor girl, however, her grandmother’s language is simply meaningless and a noise.

Although Eleena’s parents are both Igbos resident in Lagos, it is only her father that travels to their home town whenever the need arise.

At their residence, English is the only language in use but Eleena and her brother are able to have a smattering competence in Yoruba language use via their interaction with school mates and other kids in the neighbourhood.

However, Eleena’s inability to speak and comprehend Igbo, her parents’ mother tongue, became obvious when she accompanied her parents on a visit to their home town and she was exposed to the rather “strange’’ language for the first time ever.

Eleena’s experience is just a reflection of the dilemma of many other young Nigerians who are residing in communities outside their places of origin, as many of the youngsters are glaringly unable to speak their indigenous languages.

The development has been a source of concern to many citizens, particularly linguists and communication experts, who lament that due to socio-economic factors, among others, many young Nigerians are unable to communicate in their native languages.

“This is harmful and it could be a serious source of concern in the future when its effects begin to reflect in the character and lifestyles of our children,’’ says Dr. Fred Odutola, the Chief Executive Officer of the Bible Society of Nigeria (BSN).

“This is because the death of a language means the death of a culture and the languages some Nigerians are teaching their children lack the basic qualities of our cultures,’’ he says.

From all indications, many other citizens share Odutola’s sentiments, as the language problem is gradually becoming more serious nowadays.

For instance, Onyeukwu Okeoha, a Lagos-based Igbo man, had a shocking experience that made him to realise some costly mistakes he made in the upbringing of his children.

Okeoha says that he became unhappy when he realised that his daughter, who scored an “A’’ grade in Yoruba in WASC, could not make a correct statement in Igbo language.

“One of my daughters even told me that she hates Igbo and the others are not speaking the language. At best, they only speak ‘adulterated’ Igbo and this is shameful to me for I am a chief in my village,’’ he says.

Okeoha’s mistake is that English was the language of communication at home, while his children never accompanied him to the village during his occasional visits for “security reasons’’.

The retired civil servant later came to realise that he had unwittingly injured his children’s lifestyles since they have massively “borrowed’’ from other people’s cultures, while continuing to be ‘aliens’’ in their own cultural setting.

Okeoha’s plight tend to reinforce the worry of many observers that if care is not taken, some of the country’s local languages may soon go into extinction.

Fabumi Temitope, a Lagos-based teacher, says that going by the way the young Nigerians now speak English and other alien languages, some of the indigenous languages may be forced to go into extinction soon.

“Even parents, who are supposed to be promoting the use of the local languages in their homes, are even speaking English to their children,’’ he says.

“The children do not even think or act in our ways anymore; whenever they speak our local languages, they only superimpose the structures of the borrowed languages on them, thus producing laughable language constructions,’’ she says.

Temitope insists that the situation does not augur well with plans to develop and standardise the country’s local languages, adding that this will also affect national development.

“Although I am a Yoruba woman living in an urban setting, I still want us to go back to the old times when we used to have moonlight story-telling sessions which then deepened the youths’ knowledge of our cultures and languages.

“Language and culture are interwoven. So, if we have the people who don’t understand our languages, we would also have people who don’t understand our cultures. We must promptly act to revive our cultures and our languages.

“If it means engaging old people in the villages to teach our young children, we should do so. If we lose our languages, we will consequently lose our cultures and we would become a cultureless society with the attendant negative consequences,’’ Temitope says.

Sharing similar sentiments, Yemi Babalola, a journalist, insists that culture and language are intertwined.

“And these days, we Nigerians are eager to imbibe foreign cultures and languages, forgetting our roots and the fact that we are different and unique.

“You can hardly find any home nowadays where parents do not speak English language to their children; that is very bad.

“Some parents cannot even speak their mother tongue, not to talk of teaching their children the language and this means that the use of local languages is fast fading out,’’ she says.

Babalola says that due emphasis should be placed on the children’s mastery of local languages as their mother tongue before their exposure to foreign languages.

“It is when the children have mastered their mother tongue very well that they will find it easy to pick up and speak other languages better,” she adds.

Prof. Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo of the Department of English, University of Lagos, says that a language reflects the culture of a group of people and the strength of their creativity, adding that the loss of the country’s languages would be tantamount to a loss of its identity and creativity.

She, nonetheless, says that there is still hope in rectifying the precarious situation.

“I do not have any magic formula to solving the problem but I know that people have to make effort. Right now, I am striving to see that my grandchildren speak Igbo language.

“My children speak Igbo very well because I made sure they spoke Igbo when I was bringing them up. Now, the focus is on my grandchildren and it is a tough mission. Everything in life is tough; you just have to make efforts.

“Every Nigerian child should be able to speak at least one Nigerian language. Even if one marries somebody from another ethnic group, the couple should decide on which language the children should speak and they should teach them the language,’’ she says.

Linguists say that a natural mechanism in infants, known as the “Language Acquisition Device’’ (LAD), enables a child to pick up and speak about three languages simultaneously within a specific age-bracket.

Adimora-Ezeigbo says that children can speak up to three languages at the same time before they attain the age of 12, adding that they could, therefore, speak English and any other two languages they are exposed to comfortably.

“Many parents fear that if they speak their mother tongue to their children, the children would not be able to speak English language well but that is a lie because the child can speak more than one language at the same time.

“As an adult, it is so difficult learning a new language but for children it is not so. I have seen some young couples trying to teach their children their mother tongues; it is slow but it is beneficial,’’ she says.

Adimora-Ezeigbo stresses that the people should make concerted efforts to promote the use of local languages, saying: “If we do not pay the price of language revival now, in the next 25 years, some languages will die according to UNESCO. And Igbo language is listed as one of the languages.

“We should make efforts to preserve Nigerian local languages by speaking it others and to our children,’’ she says.

Analysts, nonetheless, insist that schools have a major role to play in ensuring the survival of Nigerian local languages.

Mrs Mary Odukoya, the Principal of High Grade Schools in Dopemu, Lagos, concedes that she is aware of the threat of the looming extinction of some local languages, stressing that her school is making extra efforts to promote the teaching of such languages.

“In the bid to support our cultural development, we have been teaching our students about these cultures and languages and we even have instituted a ‘Nigerian Day’ in the school.

“The ‘Nigerian Day’ was introduced to support efforts to sustain Nigerian languages and cultures; it was also part of our contributions toward saving the languages from going into extinction,’’ she says.

Odukoya says that the National Education Policy requires that students should study at least one local Nigerian language, adding that whenever a child is able to speak a language well, he or she would be in a better position to understand its culture more lucidly.

“To ensure that this policy requirement is met, while the study of Nigerian languages is sustained in the schools, the ministry of education should monitor the policy’s implementation.

“Monitoring will ensure that the policy is working well, while perceived mistakes will also be corrected on time,’’ she says.

Odukoya, nonetheless, insists that parents have pivotal roles to play in efforts to promote the use of local languages because the children are often with them most of the times.

“Ironically, parents are the ones who speak foreign languages to these children, apparently to massage their ego,’’ she says.

“This unwittingly worsens the children’s performance in English language because most of the children often pick up the wrong diction at home and the imperfect language use sticks when they begin to formally learn English at school,’’ she adds.

Besides, Odukoya urges parents to take their children along whenever they travel down to their home towns, so as to ensure that the children do not get alienated from their root, which is reflected in their language and culture.

Mr. Ohi Ojo, Assistant Director (Public Affairs), Nigerian Institute for Cultural Orientation (NICO), concedes that the institute is aware that Nigerian languages are gradually dying out.

“We are also aware that some major languages are swallowing up the ones spoken by smaller groups of people,’’ he says.

However, NICO is striving to mobilise all stakeholders, including youths, parents and government agencies, in efforts to tackle the menace.

Ojo says that the institute, which has six zonal offices across the country, is replicating its language programmes in these zones to ensure that the country’s indigenous languages are saved from extinction.

Odutola, nonetheless, notes that Igbo language faces the greatest risk of extinction, citing the statement of the Bible Society of Nigeria that it has stopped printing Igbo Bibles in large quantities because they are not easily sold.

As part of efforts to promote Igbo language use in urban centres, the “Ndi-Igbo Association’’ in Lagos has since August this year been organising coaching programmes in Igbo language in some selected centres.

Ijendu Ihiaka