NaijaPositive.com

admin · Site Admin Joined: 25 May 2007 Posts: 5404

Native Language

It really is a saddening but growing lifestyle that some people have embraced, thinking that it is a pride to announce that their offsprings canNOT or do NOT speak their native language.

One may not be proficient in his native language, let alone their dialect, but I still agree that it is important that parents raise their offsprings to have at the very least an understanding of their own language. Such goof-ups result in parents making eye contacts/signals to their children in the presence of visitors only for such kids to respond, by asking if their parents have something in their eyes.

Some of us may not have had the opportunity to master the reading and writing of our native languages, because they weren't offered or were discontinued in our school curriculum, but most people I know that I schooled with all learnt at the very least how to speak our native languages from our parents.

Presently, native languages are being included in the school curriculum beginning at elementary level, enabling today's children to have a better master of the native tongues of Nigeria in addition to the Queen's language which is the lingua franca of Nigeria, and I find this very commendable.

It's embarrassing when my 7 year old niece can read even the Yoruba language better than I can, and knows simple words like window, etc, which I simply assumed to be 'findow', because I probably heard it on the street somewhere when I was younger. I cringed and reflected on how much of my language I truly can teach my own offsprings, considering I'm only good at speaking it, and get away with writing at times, by the mere fact that Nigerian languages share the use of the same alphabets as the English language.

For those who think or make the excuse that it would be confusing for their kids to learn an additional language, I think that's simply BULL.
Growing up we had the OPTION of learning and speaking up to 3 languages, which consisted of our native languages, spoken in our homes, the Queen's English which we were taught both at home and in school, and a foreign language, usually French, which we were taught in school. Some people who attended schools where a native language was an option, sometimes chose that over French.

The bottom line is NONE of us grew up confused, most of us mastered, the Queen's English because it is the lingua Franca, and at the very least learnt to understand and speak the other 2 languages, even if we weren't proficient at reading or writing them. Some of us even picked up the pidgin language as well as a little of other languages, be it Ibo, Yoruba or Hausa from our neighbours and friends. I don't think that our ability to understand up to 6 or 7 languages has confused us, even though we may not be proficient at reading or writing all the languages.

Those of us who migrated to the U.S. have even learnt to pick up Spanish, as a 4th (or 7 or 8th) language, despite the fact that we may not necessarily be proficient in it, so what basis is there for the EXCUSE that learning to speak your native language will be confusing.

I think it's nothing but 'colo' if a parent thinks it's HIP or they're closer to being accepted in the Western world, by not teaching their children their native tongues.
After all, most of us in the Diaspora were raised in Nigeria, mastered the Queen's English while growing up and schooling in NIGERIA, and till today read, write and speak better English than most of our Caucasian counterparts who were schooled only in English.
Moreover, despite the fact that some Nigerians have deeper accents and may SOUND different, it does not detract from the fact that we do speak better grammatically than some of our American or other foreign counterparts. Everyone has an accent, regardless, because any intonation different and distinct to what one is used to hearing is what determines an accent foreign to them.

I too have some relatives whose children were raised to speak English only, although most understand their native language, and although I respect the choices of their parents and whatever their reasoning may be, I still think it's a disservice to their offsprings, especially when their cousins are speaking in the native language and they cannot communicate with them, or fully understand what the conversation is about.

Generally, I also don't believe it's excusable regardless of where the children were raised, in or out of Nigeria, because there are kids who were raised in the Diaspora, some of whom have never been to Nigeria, who not only understand, but also speak their native language, and embrace their customs and cultures, because their parents took the time to make the effort to teach them.

Children raised in Nigeria who cannot speak the Nigerian language have been shortchanged, by their parents. While it may be the school's desire or responsibility to make sure students master the lingua franca, it is not their responsibility to teach a child to master his/her native language except they offer it on their curriculum and the child has chosen to value that opportunity.

Most people that grew up in Lagos may have missed the opportunity to learn their dialect, but at the same time gained from the multicultural environment because it provides the opportunity to learn several other languages in addition to one's native language as opposed to having grown up in one's native hometown.

I've learnt more of my native language in the Diaspora than I mastered during my youth in Nigeria, but the language foundation that was previously laid for me, plus my eagerness to learn, helped me learn faster. I am not ashamed to ask what a word means, because I'll rather be enlightened, than ignorant, faking knowledge.
I'm not interested on pretending to be 'only English speaking' either, because I delight in the richness of my culture, my language and the uniqueness I'm afforded at being a Nigerian and an African.

Cxsm
5th April '04

© Cxsm 2004 All Rights Reserved

_________________
May we be strengthened with the ability, willingness and capabilities to be good ambassadors of Nigeria contributing to its uplifting, rather than its detriment. - Cxsm

admin · Site Admin Joined: 25 May 2007 Posts: 5404

Cxsm,

E ku Se O!!!!!!!!!!!
Do you understand any Nigerian language? (Jokey ....Joke)......... I am equally..... LMAO........O!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cxsm, I totally agree with you. Maybe you should send this message to those knuckle heads in Giddy...Nigeria who think that they have arrived by dis-allowing their children to learn of speak their native tongue.

Anyway shao!!!!!!!!!!!

Austin
11/30/04

admin · Site Admin Joined: 25 May 2007 Posts: 5404

Cxsm,

Amongst the major ethnic groups, only the Yoruba take it as a pride not to speak their language to their kids, to them it is sophistication.

Tayo
11/30/04

admin · Site Admin Joined: 25 May 2007 Posts: 5404

Cxsm, yu be ngbati tribalist

Well said mah dawg.

ciao
The Dreamer
4/9/04

admin · Site Admin Joined: 25 May 2007 Posts: 5404

Kedu? You wan join my tribe?

Cxsm
4/9/04
_________________
May we be strengthened with the ability, willingness and capabilities to be good ambassadors of Nigeria contributing to its uplifting, rather than its detriment. - Cxsm

admin · Site Admin Joined: 25 May 2007 Posts: 5404

Sanu, babu !!! :-)

The Dreamer
4/9/04

admin · Site Admin Joined: 25 May 2007 Posts: 5404

Cxsm!!!

What is wrong?
Why don't you have at least one point I can argue or disagree on with you???
You are making my work extremely difficult!!!

I agree completely with you.
May I add that in some cases, parental negligence or circumstances are responsible for the inability to speak native language.
For instance both parents being commonly conversant only in English.

Btw, "findow" is ferese.

(I sabi pass you)

Do not respond without a bone of contention that we noisily debate.
Happy Easter and my regards to your babalawo!!

N/5n
4/9/04

admin · Site Admin Joined: 25 May 2007 Posts: 5404

n/5n,
Na Jesus be my own O! Babalawo no get chance where Holy Spirit dey operate. How you dey bro. or should I say, "Sannu da aiki! Ina wuni?".
I no go fight you today, na free movie I wan show you, in fact I wan make you be one of the actors, maybe Mrsk. self go be 'extra' for dis my movie.
Now we dey de same page and The Dreamer dey misjive make we discipline am. Na my whole self, wey e dey tell 'babu' after calling me an Ngbati tribalist. Na today we go show am pepper. She you don ready?

The Dreamer, you Swahili speaking Osu boy, who teach you Hausa? Na Chukwu I dey respect wey I no strip you of your uniform. Na my padiman I go call to do coup to comot you.
Haha? The Dreamer, na me you do so? I go close that zoo wey dey behind Aso rock, come feed ya yansh to crocodile. Na for good day, you catch me, when I still dey think say I go beg Spinelli make e no divorce you. Make una beg me quick-quick before I vex O!

Ladyk., I beg, come see how my Main dawg don diss me. Yeh pa! Na me e do so? Next time The Dreamer visit Naija, na Cameroon border e go take enter, e no go pass through Lagos.

The Dreamer, until you kill 5 goat bring come I know go accept your apology. Make you no go steal Waka-waka goat O!
I know say na Easter. You must repent before you go church for Sunday or thunder go strike ya yansh. Sunday sef na de day wey you go divorce all ya harem, God don talk say na one man one wife, na today we go take all ya wives. Repent and be monogamous!!!

My padimen, I hope you and the rest of the forum, don ready for cinema, 'cos I go whip The Dreamer's yansh till e be like Oyibo man face.

Na today-today we go discuss dis one. I don tear sokoto wear khaki. No bi so dem dey prepare?

The Dreamer before -

The Dreamer after - :shock:

Cxsm before -

Cxsm after -

Cxsm
4/9/04
_________________
May we be strengthened with the ability, willingness and capabilities to be good ambassadors of Nigeria contributing to its uplifting, rather than its detriment. - Cxsm

admin · Site Admin Joined: 25 May 2007 Posts: 5404

Actually, I'm tired of harem wey no dey cook, wey no gi' me do, wey no dey around atall atall. As Bible talk say for old testament, make I talk say "I divorce yu" 3(ce) for divorce, na so I for divorce ma harem.

ATTENTION PLEASE HAREM, "I DIVORCE YOU, I DIVORCE YOU, I DIVORCE YOU !". Harem don pafucate be dat o. Ah go soon create anoda wan, from scratch

Cxsm, apolo-wetin ? Ah go show yu say Saddam Hussein na di President of Iraq ?

Alif, Ba, Ta, Hehi, Kung Heng Fat Choi !!!

Dawggg, at least you speak all the Wazobian languages as well as La Francais !! I only Speak Yoruba, English and Pidgin-. I can just about say hello in Igbo, Edo and Hausa but not much more beyiond that. I know just a few words of Twi. And can just say Bonjour in french, that's it !!! Say I envy your linguistic dexterity.

On the Yoruba tip, check out this link for fonts used for writing Yoruba; it also has a few tips on tone-marking. ( I wrote a couple of articles in the guys published magazine back in the day, but that was aeons ago !! ) www.learnyoruba.com

ciao
The Dreamer
4/10/04

admin · Site Admin Joined: 25 May 2007 Posts: 5404

Watch Your Tongue

Joan C. Akubue

I have a confession to make. I love the Igbo language and I do have an ear for it, but sometimes I do get stuck in the course of a conversation. I usually know what it is I want to say but the delivery of the content becomes amateurish from time to time. My accent is flawed; I don't have that Igbo drawl that separates the wheat from the tares. And to make matters worse I don't have a vocabulary that covers some of the words. I have to smear my own mother tongue with words from a foreign vocabulary. Disgusting!

To those who can speak their local dialect with the fluid ease that makes the rest of us cower in disgrace, I say "please don't weep for me yet. I am concerned enough to work on this deficiency." And no, I am not about to blame my parents. I also do not regret not spending more of my formative years in eastern Nigeria. If anything, I am about to make a hullabaloo about this vernacular thing, if only for the sake of posterity: the countless Nigerians yet unborn.

Imagine it's the year 2082. Nigeria is still in one piece (hopefully), but we find that there is an even bigger problem. Nigerians are speaking Queen's English, French and hard core Pidgin in their homes and workplaces. In the high society weddings we find black men in tuxedos and large hipped beauties in spaghetti strap dresses and ball gowns. There are no 'aso-ebis', no caftans, no cliques rattling on excitably in Igbo, Yoruba and the likes. All we find are Hollywood clones: people who are trying to be the best at what they cannot even do.

In the year 2092, a pupil will probably raise up his hand in geography class to ask 'what does the word 'xyz' mean, teacher?' (In reference to a local parlance) and the down in the dumps tutor would quip in futile retort. "A primeval language our fore-fathers spoke, but which spiralled inadvertently into extinction!"

You see my Igbo may be imperfect, but the really scary part is that I am better off than many of my peers. The progeny of the younger generation can barely communicate in vernacular at all, because modern parents speak only Queen's English to their young children. They keep their indigenous language at bay because they (erroneously) believe that it will flaw their children's delivery of the English language. Talk about a priority scale. Due to a phenomenon known as child language acquisition/CLA, many children can master up to three different languages at a time. If only their parents realised how receptive children are to speech, they would teach them to speak their mother tongue from birth, as this amazing prowess begins to decline at age five.

I visited the Goethe Institute in Victoria Island, Lagos, once and saw dozens of young Nigerians trooping in to register for German language tuition: courses which cost as much as a hundred thousand Naira.

"Very admirable," I thought. "This shows that our people are eager to learn, to broaden their horizon." But do we care about our own God-given lingo?

I have friends who run off to French class every week but can only say elementary words like "come" or "go" in their local dialect. In my school days, youngsters who were out of sync with their culture were considered 'cool or chic', whilst those who were in touch with their culture were regarded as 'bush.' Some of us have perfected various foreign accents (nothing wrong with people speaking through their noses either) but don't see the need to dig into our history as a people.

How did we live before Independence? What led to our being merged as a people? Who fought for our independence? What induced the Biafrian war? What are the origins of our distinct traditions? What components of our ethnicity can evolve and what should be discarded? What is our future as a people? Isn't it funny that some of us know so much about Greek mythology and so little about our own affairs? The teenagers I meet these days have memorised the top 100 artists on the US billboard charts, but cannot list the 36 states and their capitals.

Sometime in 1998, a course mate at the University went in for a beauty pageant. She is an attractive person and was doing quite well until the panel of judges asked her who the Vice President of the Country was. She was so clueless that she mentioned the name of a man who was incarcerated at that time for an alleged coup attempt! She emerged as a third runner up in the competition and people couldn't stop sniggering behind her back. It was the talk of the campus for months, but I soon found out that many undergraduates did not know the actual answer either.

Do some ethnic groups fare better than others do in this regard? Random surveys conducted show that certain cultures are more protective of their dialects and yet children, of the new era generally, cannot speak their mother tongue fluently. Most youngsters can decipher simple sentences or phrases yet lack the confidence to express themselves. Many are totally inept. Mastery of the Igbo language is made a bit more difficult by the fact that it has so many dialects and sub-dialects, unlike what obtains in other milieu. But then some of us Igbos would be pleased to find a legitimate pretext wouldn't we?

Whilst editing this critique, my word processor underlined the words that it found utterly indecipherable. It automatically rectifies badly spelt English, but must prompt a full spell check when I key in a word like 'aso-ebi'. When I comply, the closest match that it can recommend is 'amoebae'. To my chagrin, it further remonstrates when I type in alien words like 'Naira', because it is uncertain if I'm trying to spell some other word like 'Maria', 'Nadir', or 'Nora'. I wish that Nigerian IT whiz kids would invent software that complies with our local languages. When I type my Igbo name, I would love to put dots under the letter 'O' and simper when an American asks what that means. Come to think of it, I do have a Computer Science degree.

It would be brilliant if our Embassies and Consulates abroad could set up local language schools. We really should emulate institutions like the British Council and the French cultural Centre. Or do we actually think the governments who invest so much on cultural exchange are imprudent? The secret to the universal appeal of western civilisation is essentially indoctrination. A variety of mass media project western cultures, makes them so accessible that even those who have not left these shores are convinced that they have.

Vernacular has been added to the school curricula. So what? More can be done, unless our culture deserves to run to extinction. Already the process has set in. if you doubt me, listen to people speak Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo on the streets and notice how adulterated those languages are.

Parents should begin to teach their children those values that are crucial to their socio-cultural and moral development. Letting our children know who they are and where they come from is the key to our future. Reminding them that they are Africans even though they own British or American passports and enjoy the privileges that a dual nationality affords them, is the least that a realistic parent can do. We will have worse leaders tomorrow if we do not become better people ourselves and pass on the wisdom we have accrued to our progeny.

True, I may not be the best ambassador for this cause (did I hear you hiss and say "go polish up your Igbo first?"), but the truth is sublime whether it comes from a donkey's mouth or from the lips of a fundamentalist prophet. In fact the more qualified the oracle, the less that people listen. They'll be busy looking for flaws, looking for something to make the preacher look bad. I understand human nature so well that I first stripped myself of all pretence.

Our language culture is declining and it's time we finally do something about it. Don't you think?