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Our Dying Indigenous Languages Beckon By Ademowo Adeyemi Johnson
A lot is happening in the Africa polity today that the African governments are not mindful of. Not because they do not want to, but because many actors in the political circle do not understand the need for holistic approach to the African quest for development. This ignorance is what has sustained the aberration that has made nonsense of the indigenous African languages in the affairs of Africans.
Today in Africa, our indigenous languages, both the politically classified major as well as the minor, are barred from being spoken or taught as subjects in the kindergarten, nursery, primary and secondary/high schools. In fact, the most annoying of the madness, masquerading as sanity, is that many parents endorse the uncritical actions, and inactions, of these schools. I hope none is attempting to make a case for the public schools? I sincerely hope not! How many indigenous languages teachers are there in the pubic schools today? Many have been 'fired', by self-styled culture freak political gladiators, like Chief Bisi Akande, the former Governor of Osun State of Nigeria, who sacked many indigenous languages teachers on the flimsy excuse that "they are required to surplus", or is it for daring to go to the University to study what everyone is speaking in the locality?. For those that are still in the service, it is either they are teaching other subjects to command relevance or merely whipping dead horses, the students, who have been infested with what Prof. Kola Owolabi referred to as Negative Language Prejudice Syndrome (NALPS) or Negative Language Prejudice Virus, the attitude that have help in seeing no good in speaking indigenous languages. The private schools are the worst of all. You can never find any trace of indigenous languages either as an offered subject or as an acceptable means of communication in the syllabi and premises of most of them.
Not only are our indigenous languages disappearing from classrooms, they are also disappearing from our homes. I recently visited a friend, who claimed to be highly educated but when I spoke with his children in our hometown language, Ijebu, they were just looking at me as if I were speaking Latin, or at most Greek. To further confirm what I suspected, I decided not to code-mix my Yoruba with them. I then conversed with them in average Yoruba (that is below that which is spoken in Oyo-Ile), without adding any word in English. This effort turns out to be a disaster. Really, my friend is an educated man indeed, I concluded!
I pray no one gets me wrong. I am not saying learning and speaking the European languages is bad; rather, the crux of my argument is that valuing the European languages over and above our indigenous languages can not, and will not, make us a better person. If there is any benefit of it, it will be that it will further compound our already endemic cultural crisis. J.A. Sofola's African Culture and the African Personality, an expose on what makes an African person African will be a good reading in this regard for those that care to read, I mean read anything about African culture at all.
Today, half of the global languages being threatened by extinction, according to the UNESCO list, are indigenous African, and mostly developing world, languages. Whichever one speaks, be it Hausa, Swahili, Igbo, Ewe, Akan, Ijebu, Zo, or Kuteb, that essentially gives an identity that can never be wished-away. Apart from identity, our languages can also be a vehicle in our development effort. A very good instance on the vital role of language is its use in promoting techno-scientific knowledge. The Japanese have done this before with their Dutch scientists. The possibility of this kind of effort at this 'perilous' time of our search for technological advancement has been underscored by the research conducted by former Nigeria Minister of Education, Prof. Babatunde Fafunwa and a host of others with their University of Ife language research of 1974. Other researches that have confirmed this are Mc Namara Reaserch 1965, University of Bradford Research 1978, Swahili Teaching Research 1981 and the South African Threshold Project of 1994. These researches among others have been conducted to underscore the role of indigenous languages in removing pedagogical barriers in learning.
If our leaders are not myopic and are culturally grounded, they would have understood that ideas which are constructed in specific languages are vital in development policy formulations. And, that, without proper mastery of local cultures to ensure well-intentioned diffusion, we are bound to continue wallowing in our dependent, and crass under-developing, enclave. All the artificial structures being advocated and built by the likes of Mamman Gaddafi of Libya, e.g. African Union, NEPAD, "United States of Africa", etc can never take us to any great, not talking of greater, height of development that we crave for. Not because these ideas are not workable but because there is essential need for cultural renewal that will make interaction and grounding of current developmental efforts possible.
We could start with the revival of our languages, not to compete with the "unifying" western languages like English, French, etc but to ensure that we are not made 'languageless', nay persons with dead cultures, in the coming decades. Languages are carriers of other elements of culture, let's save it; if not for the sake of the other elements like songs, philosophies, folklores, dance, etc that it carries but for the sake of development and of the generations of Africans "that are still raining in heaven" (to borrow an idiom from Yoruba culture), the future generations. Though much rest with our government but as the Yoruba sayings goes, Ajeji owo kan, ko gbeeru dori, meaning our government cannot do it alone; it begins with me and you. Let's save our dying indigenous language by using them!
Yemi Ademowo Johnson, socio-political philosopher, bioethicist, is of the Applied Anthropology Programme, University of Ibadan, Ibadan © 2008
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