World Mother Tongue Day; My thoughts

The 21^st day of February every year has been designated the world mother language day by the Unite Nations. It is a great move aimed at helping various peoples and groups to resuscitate and promote their local languages and shield them from going into extinction.

That is the much this world body can do to show that they understand the importance of preserving all languages of the world. They know the place of a people’s language in their development and growth. However, we all know that the preservation and projection of a language goes beyond observing one day out of the three hundred and sixty five (or six) in a year as world mother language day.

The various peoples and groups must take necessary actions to show their commitment to the growth of their own languages.  Nobody can include English language, French, Japanese, German and so on in the list of endangered languages. Why? The owners of these languages started early to position them for dominance among world languages. They used every imaginable strategy to give a lot of stamina to these languages. The truth is that a language must be guarded jealously if it must not drown in the competition for survival.

World mother language day is an effort by the United Nations to protect the weaker languages of the world. It is not primarily for the stronger languages but ironically, it is these strong languages that take advantage of such a day to further strengthen their languages.

Most Nigerian languages fall into the category of weak languages of the world. The most worrisome thing about this is that they do not see anything wrong in this situation. Adult members of the various language groups feverishly desire that their children learn foreign languages, which guarantees the good life for them. Thus the local language is consigned to the wasteland. In reality, no one should blame the adults who do this. They are simply responding to a situation in the best commonsensical way they can. This is where the Nigerian government must come in.

Everyone agrees that the structure of this country is faulty.  There is nothing wrong in re-structuring the country to make it work better for all of us. If federating units are carved out along language lines, the regions or zones will see the need, and have the opportunity to develop their languages.

The world mother language day has been on for some years but I cannot point to any event organized in my own part of the country to mark the day. We will just get to know about the day, maybe on social media, hear a news talk on radio or television about the need to promote our mother tongue and that is it.

Have you ever heard of any state governor doing a broadcast on such a day in his mother tongue as a way to inspire or motivate his people to promote their language? What about organizing debates, quizzes, recitations and concerts in the local language on such a day? Will it be out of place for the different state houses of assembly to do all their legislative businesses in the local language on such a day? Can you imagine the impact it will have on the younger generation if the governor decides to have an interactive forum with school children on such a day at the end of which prizes are given to the best users of their language?

Such a day can be used to bring together all those who have made the effort to write and publish books in the local language and encourage them to do more through various gestures.

The promotion of a local language is easy when the people love their land, their people and their ways of life. Everything should be done to inspire such patriotism that will drive people to protect and preserve what they value.

A twist of fate happened to us during the colonial era and misplaced our priorities. We have seen that every one that went through the kind of education we received feels a compulsive loyalty towards the language of his or her education.

We feel that we cannot but love and promote this surrogate mother tongue. In fact, I have met a young man who said that the only mother tongue he knows is English language because that was the language his mother spoke to him as a child. This situation makes it somewhat complex. How does such a person who is Igbo by birth, but feels no single allegiance or attachment to the Igbo language begin to get the passion and love required to work for the preservation of his mother language?

The same applies to other languages. While we may feel free to apportion blames to parents who commit this unpardonable act of misleading their children, this is a problem we must solve before our local languages can be rescued from the clutches of death. The reality is that we now have mothers who do not know how to speak, read or write in their local languages and definitely, cannot give what they do not have.

I believe that various language groups should begin to build institutions that will address these very important issues. The government at various levels should have a budget for the development and growth of the languages in their territories. There should be NGOs springing up in the area of language promotion.

Some people still wonder why we should invest in languages. After all, is it not about communication? Well, you need to think again if you are like this. Can you imagine the use of German as the language of instruction in a Japanese school? It will not happen, unless the subject is German. They are jealous of their languages because they know the implication of language in commerce and industry, diplomatic relations, international trade, world economics and so much more. It is only in under-developed countries of the world that you can see a foreign language given more prominence than the local language. Nigerian societies will gain a lot by putting an end to this backward trend.

I will expect that in the next season of campaigns, Nigerians should ask those vying to lead or represent them in various capacities the strategies they will  put in place to promote the local languages and whittle down the over bearing influence of the English, French and Arabic languages that have benched the various languages native to Nigeria.

 

Nnenna Ihebom