Tag: Language activism

The greatest threat to language diversity in the world is the English language as it spreads across the globe in the manner of a plague. Close to a quarter of the world already speaks the language and many more are learning it. Even then, there are probably more Chinese speakers than English speakers but Chinese speakers are restricted to one country and their language does not carry the threat of global domination which is associated with the English language.

The situation with the English language has created a debate within communities, especially in Africa in which the language was established through colonialisation. The acquisition of the language in those countries was at the expense of local languages which were reduced to the status of vernaculars labouring under a massive inferiority complex. English was after all, the language of conquerors who had demonstrated what at the turn of the twentieth century were regarded as signs of superiority to the colonised peoples. If the British had been able to seize all the power within their colonies, it stood to reason that their language was superior to the local languages. This conclusion appeared to be reasonable at the time and as the Yoruba have taken to saying, the world has become the property of the oyinbo people to do with it whatever was their wish. As it happened, the British did not need to belabour this point as the colonised people themselves saw this as a matter of course and regarded the acquisition of English as a desirable exercise. After all, they had been pushed into a position of weakness if not abject subservience. It is interesting to note that unlike the French, the British, at the beginning of their colonisation exercise, did not attempt to force their language on the colonised. This was radically different with the French. You will find that more than fifty years after the end of colonisation, French is still spoken in former French colonies as the language is spoken in France. This is because language transfer was part of the assimilation process which the French imposed on their colonial subjects. The nonchalant attitude of the British has given rise to a situation in which there are Nigerian Englishes, that is, English spoken with various local flavours. It appears that we have been able to domesticate the English language and clothed it in locally fabricated robes. The history of the English language lends itself to this treatment. The propagation of French in the French colonies was both methodical and rigidly controlled so that there was very little danger of the development of African varieties of French. The difference between the two colonial powers was historical.

READ ALSO: Benin Republic demons

The original inhabitants of Britain spoke various Gaelic and Celtic languages, at least until Anglo-Saxon tribes arrived from parts of present-day Germany. They brought with them their Germanic language, a version of the language which, because of its simplicity, was regarded as low Dutch. It was controlled with only rudiments of a grammatical structure and looking back now, it is clear that this grew in time to be the major strength of the language as it aided its spread within the British isles. This being the case, it pushed the earlier indigenous languages into the fringes of what is now Wales, parts of Scotland and across the Irish sea into Ireland.

The new Brits or English had hardly settled down in their new island home when they started receiving unwelcome visits from their Scandinavian cousins from across the North sea. Better known in history as Vikings, they were sea faring brigands who swept in from time to time to pillage seaside towns from which they were also not averse to kidnapping the odd young maiden after killing the men of course. So great was their menace that the locals also thought it wise to pay some indemnity to their tormentors so as to be left in peace or, at least some semblance of peace. Known as danegeld, this payment bought peace for certain parts of England until the Danish king decided to incorporate the ransom paying parts into his kingdom. This shows the wisdom of not negotiating with terrorists! In the meantime, many words of Scandinavian origin were incorporated into the expanding English lexicon.

At the time that the Danish king was casting his awful shadow on parts of England, other Vikings were menacing Ireland and parts of France. Thoroughly intimidated and beaten down, the Vikings who were called Normans in France were given a large portion of land adjacent to the English Channel. They therefore became the owners of Normandy and settled down as rulers of the place and began to cast covetous eyes across the English Channel. After all, the place was part of the Danish empire at one time, they saw conquering and incorporating it into Normandy could only be considered logical. It fell to William the conqueror, also known as William the bastard to fulfil this enterprise. On October 12th 1066, William crossed the English Channel accompanied by an army under the command of 21 noblemen and by evening of that day had destroyed the English army under King Harold and became the ruler of all England. He distributed the kingdom to his generals whose descendants still own the lands gifted to their forebears in 1066.

The Normans settled in Normandy and rather than continue to speak their own Scandinavian language, they switched over to French, the language of their reluctant hosts. The Normans brought the French language with them and for more than three centuries made it the language of the English court. It was not until those three hundred years had passed that English was promoted to be used in official documents. By the sixteenth century however, English had become the only official language of the realm.

As with all the other conquerors who had darkened the shores of Britain before them, the Normans came over with their own version of their adopted French language. And, as with all the languages that came before, the English refused to adopt the language of the conquerors. What they did was to incorporate the French language into English. They did it so well that up to 40% of English as it is spoken today is either French or French derived. This has enriched English to such an extent that if those French words did not exist within it, it would not be English. For example, a live cow is cow in English, meat from the dead animal is called beef in modern English and it is French derived. In the case of deer, the borrowed word is venison. There are thousands of other examples which give a roundness to the English language, a roundness which you are not likely to find in other languages from other parts of the world. There are also almost as many Latin words in English as are French. So, what you have is a Germanic language that is almost as Romance in character as it is Germanic. There is no language that is half as promiscuous as the English language. It went to North America and came away with a multitude of words including tomato, chilli, tobacco, lacrosse, tomahawk and very many more. From the other side of the world in India, the English picked up a slew of words such as verandah, bungalow, thug, loot, calico and many more.

When I suggested that we should be able to teach science subjects in Yoruba to a friend he just could not wrap it around his head. How would you say Chemistry or Biology in Yoruba? What he did not know is that Chemistry is an Arabic word, so is Algebra. We talk of algorithms these days but how many of us know that it is of Arabic extraction. Many of the words we encounter in science are also derived from Greek and Latin. Consult a modern English dictionary and you will find that japa, okada and other Nigerian origin words have been admitted into the English language. Strip English of all those stolen and borrowed words and just what do you have left?

Long after Charles Darwin completed his ground breaking work on the theory of the evolution of species, he kept it under wraps and for good reason. He clearly recognised the explosive nature of that theory and being a rather mild mannered and religious man, he was reluctant to cause a cataclysmic detonation and so, he sat on it. Later on however, he got the inspiration to publish his work because Alfred Wallace working on the other side of the world from Darwin had come to the same conclusion as he had and there was no longer any excuse to maintain radio silence on his seminal work. He went ahead and published his work and created a new intellectual world. The reverberations from that publication are still shaking the world of science with some people standing staunchly with Darwin and others no less implacably opposed to him. It is therefore expedient to point out at this stage that this article is really not about the theory of evolution. It is, however, a convenient starting point for this article about the aspect of language activism that I have been writing about.

Most people have only a vague knowledge about the theory of evolution but virtually everyone with more than a modicum of education will confidently tell you about the law of the  survival of the fittest. This has been used to explain why some people have power, influence and extravagant wealth. They are supposed to hold that position because they have been found out to be the fittest of their kind and deserve to corner all the riches of the world. This thinking has also been used to justify racism and white supremacy. That may indeed be so but nobody has been able to provide any clinching argument to support this. Nobody has been able to do this for the simple reason that Darwin’s work does not lend any support to this contention. Nature in all its vastness does not care about fitness. What it cares about is adaptability. Nature is dynamic and is frequently undergoing fundamental changes and so fitness at any point in time may become a dire liability at the next moment. This is why, it is those that can be adapted to change that will survive and go on to proliferate within any given set of conditions. Mankind in total, has been able to demonstrate great adaptability which is why we have been able to colonise the globe in its entirety. As it is with our species, so it is with the languages we speak. Those languages which can be adapted to changing situations will survive and by the iron laws of nature those that are found wanting in this particular regard, will become extinct in the manner of any plant or animal that is caught in the web of changing environments. No new languages are being formed anywhere in the world at this time and it is clear that the number of languages spoken in the world will be reduced at an increasing rate leading to a corresponding decrease in language diversity thereby going across the grain of evolution. This is because our collective future can only be guaranteed by increasing diversity. To put things in proper perspective, the less diversity we have, the greater the possibility of a massive clear out of a species leading to extinction and that goes against the grain of nature. We encounter this not only in terms of language but also in terms of the foods we eat and the cultures that govern our existence. We must therefore be conservationists in respect of our respective languages. One of the ways that this can be achieved is through multilingualism. The ideal situation is that we should all speak at least three or four different languages, especially since as children, we can effortlessly pick up any number of languages, the only limit being that we would be able to speak only those languages spoken to us in infancy. Whilst it is true that this is desirable from a social point of view, it is also desirable from a purely personal point of view. Ongoing studies suggest that the ability to speak several different languages not only improves individual confidence but also has the capacity to protect the brain from dementia and other such conditions as old age sets in. For the overwhelming majority of educated Nigerians, this is good news as they have at least two languages in their locker. As things stand, they at least speak their local language as well as English.

Read Also: Wanted: legislative action on state/council joint account provision

Our ability to speak English is a fall out of our colonial past. In the nineteenth century as Europeans began their incursion into Africa, it was soon clear that the ability to speak the language of those interlopers was the source of a distinct advantage to those who could speak the newly grafted language. It made it possible for such people to be pulled into the orbit of the colonizers and in doing so becoming intermediaries between the colonizers and the indigenous peoples. At that time, the colonies were sorely dependent on commercial activities. They all provided a source of income and those intermediaries were able to create a profitable niche for themselves sometimes to the detriment of those on the other side of the language barrier. The situation has hardly changed since then and there are no signs of any impending change. On the other hand, many of those who have since gone through the educational system are determined to confer some advantage on their children by restricting them to the mastering of the English language in order for them to land elite jobs and propagate the method of recruitment into the upper classes.

English is the official language of Nigeria as well as more than eighty countries in the world. This is because there was a time when more than a quarter of the world was under British colonial rule. That was a time when it was said that the sun never set on the British empire. Now that the sun has finally set on that empire in every sense of the world, the British have left their language as an unforgettable souvenir in all those countries and more because Rwanda and Burundi which were never colonised by the British have adopted English as their official language. In addition to all those countries which were once British colonies, the United States of America is an English speaking territory but even then it is worth remembering that the original states of the union were English colonies and as they expanded to cover fifty states, the English language also spread to cover all the states and so, of the two billion English speakers all over the world, close to 350 million of them are Americans and it may even be said that the continued influence of the English language is due to the cultural domination of the global space by American institutions. The world is kept entertained and acculturated by films made in Hollywood. The language of American technology which stands increasingly dominant is English and this technology is exploited the world over. We are all in the grip of social media and without a working knowledge of the English language, one is quickly left out of the loop and so, all over the world, people have English as their second language. For a lot of us therefore, having English as a second language as we do expedites the japa syndrome which gives us the valuable option of packing up and going away to another country. One is actually spoilt for choice as to where to relocate to. The one downside is that the situation we are in has become a threat to our local languages and the danger to language diversity all over the world looms increasingly large on the global horizon.