At the World Indigenous Language Day in Aba, Abia State, stakeholders made a case for saving Nigeria’s dying tongues. SUNNY NWANKWO reports
In order to prevent some native tongues from dying, the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) ratified February 21 as the International Language Day. Some stakeholders who gathered in Aba, the commercial nerve of the Abia State, to mark the day have suggested ways to keep Nigerian languages from going into extinction.
The event was held at the National Institute for Nigerian Languages (NINLAN).
Over 500 Nigerian languages may die out because people who speak are getting fewer and fewer. Parents are blamed for accelerating the decline of those languages because they raise their children in other tongues rather than their native ones.
The theme of this year’s event was, “Towards Sustainable Future through Multi-Lingual Education”.
Stakeholders called on the Federal Government and the Federal Ministry of Education to make the teaching and learning of Nigerian languages compulsory in both government and private schools in the country.
The Executive Director of NINLAN, Prof. Chinyere Ohiri Aniche, represented by the deputy, Prof. Obiajulu Emejulu said the institute decided to celebrate the day in order to push for the sustenance of indigenous languages and cultural values.
Emejulu said children should be taught in their mother tongue in their first nine years, noting that children who were taught first in their mother tongue do better than their contemporaries who were first introduced to a second language (L2).
“When a language dies, humanity loses a lot of wealth of knowledge and the case of Igbo language, I guess, is the most pathetic in terms of language endangerment/decline because by population, the Igbos are one of the most populous linguistic groups. We run into millions of people who are indigenous to the Igbo language and therefore, our language shouldn’t be in trouble at all. But unfortunately, UNESCO had classified Igbo language as an endangered language with a number of reasons that the middle class parents don’t transfer the language to their children and so, there is a gap where in the next 15 years, we are going to have a generation of Igbo people who don’t speak the language.
“Some of them who can’t speak the language because they don’t even understand cannot also transfer it to their own children and so, if nothing serious was done, we are going to face serious catastrophe for the Igbo language. I am afraid that we may not be able to reproduce the generation of the Achebes, Wole Soyinkas and others who were steeped in their mother tongue and when they were introduced to the English Language were very quick to grasp all the nuances of the English Language, and they did extremely well. We have nothing to lose in exposing our children to our mother tongues, but we have a lot to lose if our children grow up, not being able to speak our mother tongues fluently, they will become hybrid human beings.”
Speaking further, Emejulu said, “It is apt because research has shown that children will thrive in a multi-lingual society as it exposes children to different languages and as they are growing up, they can pick these languages and as such enhance their communication even amongst people that are not of the same tribe with them.
Emejulu while calling for proper funding of the institute in order to achieve the purpose for which it was meant, also called for a review of the education policies of the federal government on the teaching and learning and teaching of mother tongues in various schools and institutions in the country by mass producing teachers with degrees that will be employed in schools to help teach the dying indigenous languages.
HRH Eze Young Nwangwa, the Oko I of Ehere autonomous community, HRH Eze Okey Ananaba, Okahia I of Okahia autonomous community and Eze Onwunali Wilson from Akumaimo Ancient Kingdom regretted the drastic drop in the teaching and learning of mother tongues in schools nowadays.
Eze Okey Ananaba said he and his royal counterparts left their palaces to support the activities of the mother tongue day as a sign of support for what NINLAN is doing to create consciousness amongst the people of the need to promote and speak their respective dialects.
Eze Ananaba said it is good that parents from the cradle introduce foreign language to their kids against the use of their mother tongue at the early stage of their childhood, stressing that it is better to use the mother tongue to raise a child so that when he or she grows, he will not forget the language even when the person learns another language that’s outside the mother tongue.
He said parents should speak their indigenous languages to their childen and inculcate in them the cultural values for which their communities were noted.
