Language

A couple of days ago, I came across this otherwise exhilarating piece of news. For the umpteenth time, a body of lawmakers in Nigeria have passed a law to teach local languages in secondary schools in the state of Lagos. Good news, yay… sort of!

I teach English language in a high school in Lagos, Nigeria, and I’ve complained for a while about the removal of languages from the syllabus of schools in response to a federal mandate. I have also taught Yoruba abroad at the university level, so I know and appreciate the enthusiastic response of other people far away to these languages that we had held in so much disrespect. So, from afar, this looks like a timely intervention in a negative trend that has kept Nigerian languages in the back burner while foreign languages (like French, German, Spanish) have enjoyed tremendous prominence and priority in our educational institutions.

An “urging” isn’t what it takes

From up close however, the piece of news is not only late, it is empty. Rather than actually demand that syllabi be changed across the state to make the local language compulsory, and funds made available to make this a reality, the news reports that the legislative body only “urged that the language should be introduced in both public and private primary schools in the state.” To most people who care about the matter, an “urging” certainly is the least expected outcome.

For over a year now, a federal mandate from the Ministry of Education has ensured that most secondary schools around the country remove the local language element from the syllabus in order to accommodate new compulsory subjects (like Computer, and Civic Education). Though not particularly problematic as subjects themselves, since at least one of them is important in today’s global learning environment, the mandate has ignored the terrible unintended consequence: teaching local languages has now become an optional expense which most secondary schools have become comfortable enough to avoid, satisfied with meeting the criteria of any other nine WAEC subjects. For a typical student, this includes Math, English, Civics, Computer, Economics, and four other elective subjects that are NOT Yoruba, Igbo or Hausa, or even History.

“I don’t speak my dialect”, they proudly say

What this has meant for interested observers is the sad reality that the most formative years of a Nigerian child’s life today are spent learning everything but the most important information about his/her history, language, or culture; and doing this in English, a global language that not only helps in ensuring the eventual extinction of our own medium of thought, but that has not accepted us enough as authentic or, if you will, native speakers capable of generating norms in the language. (Hint: it will probably never happen).

What this future portends is bleak: a generation bred in a comatose vat of a tepid growth in either direction of thought or language competence. When a fourteen year-old responds to an inquiry on his language use, with pride, as “I don’t speak my dialect” when he actually means “I don’t speak my language”, what is problematic there is way beyond just a mere issue of language loss, even though that’s what jumps out at first. This child has mastered not only the apathy of his immediate environment, but he has mastered it with an ignorance that equates “dialect” with “language”.

When you ask “Why don’t you speak your language?” one of the more common responses point to either the absence of a speaking parent, the lack of encouragement by society, the total disillusionment about the need, usefulness, or value of such a skill at all in today’s “global” world, or a personal apathy: “I don’t think it’s important. It doesn’t matter. Everyone speaks English anyway, and I intend to travel abroad soon for my college education. Why would I need Igbo/Hausa/Yoruba then?” I’ve often followed up my question with another one: “You do realise that Britain/America have people who already speak English as a first language, who would never be any more impressed by your use of it as they are of anyone else from Jamaica or Ghana. Is there anything else you bring to the table other than this language that – as you said – is already spoken by everyone else in the world?” Also: “Do you realise that you’d never be competent enough as to be referred to as a native speaker of English, no matter how hard you try?” Even more: “Have you prepared for your TOEFL exam yet? Do you know why you have to write it?” And this: “Do you know how much these countries spend every year to have their own citizens learn these languages that you have treated with apathy?”

Penalised for speaking “vernacular”

This apathy was not manufactured by the children. This “problem” being “solved” by a body of elected officials is also not a new one. Way back in the eighties, we were penalised in school for speaking what our Ghanaian teachers – employed particularly because of our parents’ preference for their English accents – called the “vernacular”. Today, colleagues of mine in a high school will frown at conversations between teachers conducted in any other Nigerian language, yet have no problems with ones done in French, or Spanish. I thought back to my primary school days in the hands of the Ghanaian teachers and found no resistance, among the school authority heads, for the Twi conversations among those same teachers, and for all the times we were called kwasia (as my memory remembers it) for some class behaviour. The fact is that over time, we have sold ourselves to the idea that a foreign language is superior to ours, and that we need it to survive in the world, even if our own languages die out of disuse. Most secondary schools in the country that dropped Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, etc from their syllabi in response to the federal mandate, have not dropped French, and when asked will probably see no problem whatsoever in that behaviour.

I am happy for the new rule (or “urging”) by the Lagos State legislators, and hope that similar and more enforceable rules spring up in other states in the country, backed by state resources, to keep our languages alive. However, the biggest effort to stem the erosion of our indigenous language future will come from the home, and from our minds. As the musician rightly said, “None but ourselves can free our minds.” The question is: do we know how bound it currently is?

Meanwhile, FG is sending Nigerian teachers to teach Yoruba in Brazil.