How can my children speak Yoruba or Igbo?

Written by Niran Adedokun

Niran Adedokun

I have lately begun to worry about the inability of my children to speak Yoruba, the only language that I speak apart from English. Someone said to me that it is not such a deal, that in this new age, I should be more concerned about my children speaking French and Spanish and Chinese over and above any indigenous language over which I am brooding.

I have stopped discussing with fellows like this because years of association have shown me that nothing that would make people like this friend of mine see the sense in deliberately making our children speak our languages.

So I decided to start to take positive steps towards achieving my aim. While I do not mind and would indeed encourage my children to speak as many languages as they desire, nothing would make me happy as to see them speak Yoruba, my mother tongue and I am committed to doing my best to see this happen.

Before the end of this last summer holidays, an old friend of mine, Feyikemi Niyi-Olayinka announced a two-week Yoruba summer school opportunity for people like me to bring their children and get them introduced to the language. I chose to explore the noble opportunity.

So I reported with the candidates. On arrival at the venue, volunteer teachers, determined not to speak English to any of the children, asked my six year old daughter "kini oruko e" meaning "what is your name" she drew a blank! For what looked like an eternity, my child looked up at the ceiling like she expected some answer to drop into her arms but the heavens lent no hand, she then turned her glance to me after which I told the teachers that the young lady had no idea what they were saying to her.

I am sure you are beginning to blame me for the girl's situation. True I should take some blame; after all, I am her father and teaching a child in her mother tongue is more of the responsibility of a parent than any other person or institution. If my daughter couldn't decipher a question about her identity therefore, I should be blamed. 

And this is exactly where the issue is. You see, we do not speak Yoruba at home. And it is not entirely my fault. While I speak Yoruba, my wife speaks Igbo and so, the mode of communication in our home is English in spite of efforts that both of us have made to grasp as much of the other person's tongue as much possible over the years. So you see that our situation is fairly understandable even if it is I symptomatic of the general situation with our indigenous languages.

Over the past few decades, the desire of our people to pass down our indigenous languages have progressively waned such that anyone who insists on having his child speak the mother tongue is treated with disdain by a lot of our compatriots.

Before now, those who looked down at the need to speak our local languages used to be members of the elite. Until now, the growing elite and middle class found a medium of expressing the superiority of their class and taste in the English Language and that was the greatest threat to the survival and development of languages that are native, in my opinion.

But, now things have changed! The corruption of our values has caught up with the lower class such that we have all embraced that sub-culture which reduces everything that belongs to us, including the languages that our forebears spoke and handed over to us.

We all, irrespective of our posts in life are hostages of the mentality that sees spoken English as the credential of our individual dignity. As a result, you will see barely literate men and women speak English to their children at home, apparently as a way of suspending the disbelief of their station in life and position their children with those of the elite who speak English with assorted accents. Sometimes, these parents worsen their children's situation because they do not even speak good English!

More than that, experts say that there are more opportunities for children of the poor or anyone for that matter, to do better in their education if they were exposed to their native languages earlier.

Jim Cummin, a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto discovered in some of his studies that children who come to school with a strong foundation in their mother tongues develop stronger literacy abilities in the language used at school. He advises parents to develop the knowledge of children's mother tongue.

Psychologists also say that a child's first comprehension of the world around him, the learning of concepts and skills, and his perception of existence, starts with the mother tongue. As a result, the mother language is important to framing our thinking, emotions and spiritual world, because the most important stage of our life, childhood, is spent in its imprints.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation whose general conference proclaimed the annual International Mother Language Day in 1999 also encourages the use of the mother tongue in the instruction of children at the early stage.

A onetime Assistant Director-General for Education at UNESCO wrote in one of the organisation's newsletters as follows: "Years of research have shown that children who begin their education in their mother tongue make a better start, and continue to perform better, than those for whom school starts with a new language. The same applies to adults seeking to become literate...."

This is why I think that the problem in Nigeria is bit more severe. If mother tongue is defined as the language that is first spoken to a child by his mother, or parents as the case may be, it seems like a lot of us Nigerians are beginning to adopt the English language as the mother tongue for children since it is the thing that most parents speak to their children from the very early stage.

This is at a time when UNESCO and a lot of other countries are advocating the adoption of indigenous languages as the language of instruction in early education. One of those passionate about this point is Angelina Kioko, a professor of English and Linguistics at the United States International University, Nairobi, Kenya. Kioko says that adopting the indigenous languages for instruction would be a veritable way of increasing the level of literacy. This is because as a lot of children in the rural areas would have a better understanding of the curriculum and develop a more positive attitude toward school which would ultimately make it easy for them to understand and speak the English Language better.

More important however is that the gradual erosion of the primacy of indigenous languages in any society signifies the eventual extinction of that language and the erosion of the cultures of the people.

The truth is that a language not only expresses a people's identity, it is also their historical treasure. A Welsh proverb says that "a nation without language is a nation without a heart." Our cultural values, spiritual essence and cultural treasures can be easily discernable through the proverbs and idioms and thoughts in our native tongues. Our indigenous languages are the archival for history.

One thing I also discovered from my own children's enthusiasm to learn the Yoruba language and even their mother's Igbo language is that there is a measure of pride that children attach to their ability to speak their language. My conviction is that it adds to the sense of self-worth of children, no wonder the legendary Nelson Mandela said: "If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language that goes to his heart." Teaching our children to speak and understand our languages would not just help them to become confident adults, it is also the only way by which we can maintain our identity. We all need to pay a bit more attention.