Global Issues
2023 International Mother Language Day: Any Prospect? -By Reuben Omotayo Hopo
The concept of “endangered language” to the Englishman given his worldview sees a situation of a possible loss, death or language disappearance. What a Yoruba person sees from his worldview compresses the various synonyms together by just one word “death” of a language and this guides his usage.
The United Nations set aside February 21 annually to re-awaken people’s consciousness, especially the African continent due to its multi-language diversity, to look inward and promote their mother-tongue to strengthen individual identity, culture, belief and the possibility of relating with their environment in a world that is increasingly becoming a global village.
The 2023 celebration which falls on Tuesday (today) as championed by its affiliate agency, the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in its earlier publication with the theme: “Born To Learn” discovered that “one out of five children only” are thought in their mother-tongue in and the learning outcomes have shown that only one pupil out of the five masters the basics of reading, writing and mathematics after the completion of primary education.
The international day celebration serves a timely warning to safeguard indigenous languages from extinction, as available data confirms that at least forty percent of world languages ate endangered due to lack of speakers. To combat the incident, UNESCO has rolled out a ten year action plan (2022-2032) to project attention to the imminent loss of many indigenous languages which affects global learning of school children from their early childhood, and recommended that multilingual education be built as a school based curriculum.
This approach no doubt would solve the perennial problems encounter during translation among different indigenous language users in their contact with different indigenous languages which subconsciously create the tendency of one language interfering with others in conversation, writing and translation. Only language learners are quick to observe this deficiency among indigenous language users.
It is not accidental that many adults missed the opportunity to acquire indigenous languages during their childhood, and the fault is neither may not be personal, but a combined effects of globalization, inordinate preference for language of a majority speakers and the influence of the political class are some of the cases that endangered indigenous languages of minority speakers who ought to raise their level of language use above the hook, line and sinker to preserve posterity.
In Nigeria, translation is a common activity among the citizens because of the multiplicity of the environment and the need to promote shared understand among one another is constantly required to attain a common goal beneficial to everyone in all communities and to maintain peaceful and secure communities across a state or nation. Hence, the importance of a people’s world view is a learning process that is gradually acquired by the learners of multi-language education to understand the imperative of usage across communities. Below are some examples.
The concept of “endangered language” to the Englishman given his worldview sees a situation of a possible loss, death or language disappearance. What a Yoruba person sees from his worldview compresses the various synonyms together by just one word “death” of a language and this guides his usage. Going further, the Ogu speaker (fondly mispronounced as Egun) due to his worldview in the mastery of usage of the older generation only sees the last part of the three synonyms, “disappear” and express this belief as heard from thorough bred speakers to guide appropriate usage without any form of interference from other language(s) in contact.
Further popular belief in Yoruba land held about death reveals that, only the man or woman who is survived by a biological child/ren truly attained a parenthood (Eni omo sin, lo bi ‘mo.) Whereas, the belief of the Ogu speaking community has a different way of expressing the same meaning. This community as seen in its culture believes that a biological child/ren are more promising on the burial day of their deceased parents (Thoyigbe, ‘vi noyon te).
Early exposure to linguistic and culture diversity and multilingual education are necessary to curb errors of translation between two or more languages in contact and so, the 2023 international mother language day is calling for a more determined effort by different stakeholders to increase the knowledge of indigenous speakers in the use of either Awori, Ogu, Egba, Oyo, Ife, Anago, Ijebu, Ijesha, Ekiti, Igbo, Efik, Ibibio, Fulani, Hausa, Kanuri, egede, Ebira, Igala, Tiv and whole lots of others.
The Lagos State Government has made frantic efforts to achieve balancing between indigenous languages and other languages of international prestige in the curriculum of its public schools to ensure that every student learn at least one indigenous language of his or her choice to forestall a situation where children are completely alien to their environment as they grow up. The State’s policy is committed to impacting multi-language education on students and the effort has yielded more results with the creation of a multi-language center to deepen the use of indigenous languages in the State and two community’s newspapers version for translating the Alausa Alert Newspaper (a monthly publication of the State Government) to “Iroyin Igberiko” and “Linlin Miton” to further the use of indigenous languages by indigenes of the State.
Parents, community groups, traditional rulers NGOs, religious organizations and governments should heed the alarm of UNESCO in preserving the linguistic diversity as an essential cultural element for solving the current global learning crisis. UNESCO urges governments to embrace multilingual education based on the mother tongue from the early years of schooling is affirmative in its conviction, “we know it works-there is empirical evidence to prove it helps children to learn.”
Therefore, children with opportunity of multi-language education will be more exposed to understand the importance of cultural element that makes meaning contextual as a guide for translating the proper usage when interpreting an indigenous language by being at home from the standpoint of a particular culture. The likelihood of many indigenous languages losing a sizable number of lexicon as observed with one indigenous language is visible to warrant unnecessary borrowing by users of minority language to always make transfer from their closest neighbour in the use of their mother tongue.
Reuben Omotayo Hopo studies linguistics and communication
