SAVE OUR INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES!

SAVE OUR INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES!

A child returned home from school one day after listening carefully to her Igbo teacher and greeted her mother: “Nnem Ndewo!” But her English enthusiast mother responded in surprise: Darling, you are welcome; how was school today? The child again shouted her greetings in Igbo. The mother, who was worried at that moment about the sudden change in her child’s behavior kept quiet. Then the child narrated what their Igbo teacher taught them in school and spoke to her mother; “Mum, you people have been deceiving us. We cannot even speak our own language. Our Igbo teacher taught us that English is supposed to be our Ligua Franca which we ought to speak when we find ourselves in a public place where there are people of other tribes. He also told us that those who cannot speak their language came from nowhere, since English is a borrowed language”.

According to May 15, 2017 Press release by Premium Times, The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, said that the country’s indigenous languages are endangered and could go into extinction in no distant future if urgent steps are not taken to reverse the trend. He said that the situation report shows that there is a remarkable decline in the usage of our indigenous languages by our children and youth; and that many of them cannot read or write in their mother tongue.” To buttress his statement, half of the global languages being threatened by extinction, according to the UNESCO list, are indigenous African languages.

The problem is not just that our indigenous languages are disappearing from classrooms; they are also disappearing from our homes. The worst is that some parents don’t even speak it correctly; hence their children will get it wrong, which will eventually affect their ability to learn it correctly when they start school.

During our cultural festivals, the communication is in English. Even in the villages the story is the same. (My father in the village blows grammar like nobody’s business) The probability of losing our indigenous language at the international level is so high that if nothing is done soon, our heritage will be a forgotten issue.

We tend to measure intelligence and wisdom on the basis of the ability to speak or write English language. I have seen those who can rap English like the whites but they cannot come up with a solution to some of the common life challenges. Ability to speak English well does not make a non British or American to become one.  This ignorance, which is our lack of self esteem, is the weakness on our part that the whites have always capitalized on to look down on us and treat us like fools. We tend to value everything about the whites but not ours.

Our fathers even accepted the modification of some of our indigenous names by the whites to enable them pronounce them. If we can pronounce their names with ease, why can’t they pronounce our own indigenous names without having to convert it to align with English? But we encourage them to, because to us, our language is weird to them. But for them, we should be able to speak their language or pronounce their names correctly.

How Can We Save our Indigenous Languages?

During my Youth Service in the Middle Belt of Nigeria, I met an Igbo woman in a salon with her kids. Her children were communicating in Igbo, and in the middle of their conversation, one of them said something funny about the hair dresser and I laughed. I commended their mother for not denying her children the privilege of knowing their language despite the fact that they reside in another tribe of the country. I was thrilled by her response which is “Raising them in their mother tongue is what I owe them because I know that apart from their parents, nobody else will teach them that; English is compulsory in schools, and they are supposed to learn the correct English from their English teacher”. Parents should learn to pass on their indigenous languages to their children.

The following other measures can be adopted to save our indigenous languages from going into extinction.

Ø The government must have perceived that our romance with our Ligua Franca will go this far, that made them gear the education curriculum towards the study of indigenous Nigerian languages. Hence, the Federal Ministry of Education made it compulsory for every student to study and register at least one Nigerian language at senior school examination. This is commendable for the promotion of Nigerian languages and should be encouraged by all.

Ø Writing and speaking competitions in indigenous languages should be organized and sponsored by the government, institutions and individuals; whereby prizes will be awarded to the winners. This is better than some of the needless beauty/handsome contests that promote idleness the more.

Ø The Federal and State Ministries of Culture and National Orientation should promote entertainment and other cultural activities in indigenous languages.

Ø Indigenous novels, poems and drama books should be translated to our indigenous languages.

Ø Government and individuals should encourage, support and sponsor the translation of newspapers in our indigenous languages.

Our indigenous languages remain our identity. A person without an indigenous language has no identity. A Lingua Franca is a second language, and those who own a person’s second language will always see that person as an outsider or second citizen as the case may be, as regards citizenship. Our indigenous language is our pride as a people, and should be valued. If we allow it to die, we will be doing great harm to the future generation.

Written by Olive Chinyere Amajuoyi