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Local
languages: A cultural heritage or vice?
By FILIMON LYOCK GAIYA _____________________________________________________________
The
rate at which nation’s local languages are gradually being subsumed
by the influence of western cultures cannot be quantified. Many
parents just cannot find a simple reason why they should bequeath to
their children their native language as a cultural heritage.
In education
sector, Nigeria has a mother-tongue policy, which requires that
every child be taught in a mother tongue at the pre-primary school
level and during the first three years of primary school.
The policy states
that where the mother tongue cannot be used, the language of the
immediate environment, i.e. the dominant language of the community
which the child already speaks, is recommended.
In some regions
of Nigeria, especially the South-South, Pidgin English has acquired
a mother-tongue status, such that many youths are unable to
communicate in the local languages any more. Language experts or
educationists in time past had advocated for the usage of Nigerian
Pidgin English in teaching, especially in this area. This was the
thinking of the National Commission for Mass Literacy, Adult and
Non-Formal Education in 1992set out to produce literacy materials
in Nigerian Pidgin. Unfortunately the project has since been
suspended.
It is not
uncommon to find parents teaching or communicating in English with
their children without recourse to the necessity of first
bequeathing the native languages to them. This “imported city
practice” has spread colossally to different parts of Nigeria,
especially in the South-East and the South-South areas.
This practice is
quite becoming an acceptable norm for majority of the people, though
it should not be condemned in its totality. But the parents must
ensure that the child as a matter of priority understands the mother
tongue and speaks it, before they (may) decide to change the code
and educate him or her in another language. Civilization does not
presuppose the abandonment of culture or one’s language, rather it
promotes an integrative approach in which such local languages are
developed via the instrumentally of communication in our day-to-day
existence.
In our society
today, thousands of our youths are unable to speak their native
languages, and for this group, it is most likely that their
lineage(s) will be affected seriously because they cannot bequeath
to the generations to come what they don’t know.
That is why many
foreigners who are resident in Nigeria and who are not of the
English stock, such as Indians, Chinese, French, Japanese etc.
appreciate the importance of their mother-tongue and bequeath it to
their children through the process of cultural transmission, before
allowing them to speak any other language. This attitude shows that
Nigerian parents have got it wrong from the start, either due to
ignorance of the workings of civilization as it relates to local
languages or a clear show of apathy due to personal ego and pride
or, put succinctly, they suffer inferiority complexes.
They need to be
educated on the disastrous consequences this portends for the future
of their native language(s) then, they will come to terms with the
need for re-orientation for both the parents and the youths who have
ignorantly accepted this practice as a norm and view local languages
as a vice to be done away with.
The intimacy
between a language and the people who speaks it is deep because a
language lives only so long as there are people who speak and use it
as their mother tongue, and its greatness is only to the extent
given to it by the people.
That is why
classical Latin is a dead language because it’ has not evolved or
change is and not used as a language of public communication. This
practice might have accounted for the death of many local languages
in the South-South today and in no distant future the South-East
will suffer the same fate if the people do not evolve an attitudinal
change towards their culture.
A language is
important because those who speak it are important politically,
economically, culturally. English, French and German are great and
important languages because they are the languages of great and
important people.
If the native or
local languages are not bequeathed to our children; how can our
language(s) evolve over time from this present state of complexities
to a process of progressive simplification in line with
modernization if we don’t bequeath it to our children for easy
understanding and usage? How can it become -the language of great
and important people? How can it preserve our cultural heritage?
Greek for instance is studied in its classical form because of the
great civilization which its literature preserves.
Information and
culture are not matters of leisure. They are life and death issues
in the world of today. We have to defend the culture of the people,
because once the mind is conquered, the body will follow. If we
allow outsiders to colonize us mentally, intellectually and
culturally, then we are just slaves.
This doesn’t mean
that English language is not important, it is an international
language, a language of law, commerce politics, administration, and
of education and most importantly our lingua-Franca, hence, must be
learnt, but not to be used as a substitute for our local languages.
That is why schools as agents of socialization offers this
opportunity for a child to be educated in English while his or her
mental facilities are still alert to language acquisition.
Research and
observations have shown that a child is capable of speaking as many
as different languages; the onus now is on the parents to maximize
these potentialities inherent in the child as it relates to language
acquisition. But by refusing to culturally transmit these local
(native) languages to their wards at their prime in preference to
English alone, it becomes very difficult for these youths to acquire
these native languages when they become adolescents thus the child
is unequipped to communicate using other mediums in a dynamic and
multilingual environment like ours, thus, preparing the native
languages for imminent death.
J. Oswald Sanders
once said that “the eyes that look are common, the eyes that see
are rare. It is neither a mark of wisdom nor of greater knowledge
and understanding for the parents and the youths to continue this
practice. We must begin to see the fate about to befall our local
languages. Our youths are fast losing their cultural heritage due to
neglect of indigenous languages and if nothing is urgently done to
reverse this trend, Nigeria’s culturally heritage and linguistic
diversity would be lost and the nation’s personality subsumed by
other cultural influences.
FILIMON LYOCK GAIYA is of Mass
Communication Department Kaduna Polytechnic, Kaduna
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