Raising a Bilingual

I realised early enough in the life of my now two and a half year-old child that my desire to raise him as a monolingual Yorùbá speaker from home was an impossible dream. For one, his mother (though also ethnically Yorùbá) was raised to adulthood in the United States, with English being her dominant tongue. Also, more challenging was the reality that everything around us, even though we’d relocated to Lagos, Nigeria, to live and raise him, happened in English. Television, radio, newspapers, schools, etc. The housekeepers we’ve had (because they came from different ethnic groups) spoke English to us and to him. So did neighbours, and others, even those who were capable of speaking Yorùbá, believing — perhaps, as most did — that all children raised in Nigeria today speak English as a first language.

That certainly wasn’t the case while living in Ibadan, a city 120km northeast of Lagos where my wife and I spent our childhood, and where almost everything was in Yorùbá, except for most street signs. Radio news broadcasts were in Yorùbá (though they were then followed — or preceded — by English translations), parents and neighbours spoke in the language. The language of play and of the streets was Yorùbá, and so also was the language of politics and governance. The only place we were bound to encounter English continuously was in the newspapers, and in the classroom. But even those two had notable exceptions. There was a number newspapers published in the local languge (Atọ́ka, Gbohùngbohùn, Ọ̀kín Ọlọ́jà). There were also many schools in which Yorùbá was the medium of instruction, though parents tried not to send their children there if they could help it.

A stranger in alien waters: A Yorùbá mask seen on exhibition in St. Louis, Missouri

In short, the experience of Ibadan (and, I’ve realised, most other Yorùbá cities in Nigeria, except for Lagos) did not sufficiently prepare me for the metropolitan monolingualism of Lagos. In America cities at least, one could make excuses for the insularity and attempt to sabotage it in whatever way possible by speaking the language alone among relevant company, writing poems in it, seeking opportunities to use it around campus, or starting an online campaign to force twitter to allow the platform to be translated into it. In Lagos, the opportunities reduce. Everyone is English — or is forced to be, however imperfectly.

A sign on my street in Lekki, a neighbourhood of educated middle class Lagosians.

My idea for raising my son monolingual from home wasn’t a rejection of English. He was going to learn that at school anyway, and on radio, and television, and everywhere else he turns. It was a respect for the primacy of the mother tongue as the most accessible medium of learning, an acceptance of countless research justifying mother tongue education above all others as a helpful start to children’s educational journey, and a homage to what I’ve experienced in my own upbringing, and in countless other countries who have now returned to mother tongue medium of instruction even when English is available.

But I couldn’t do it. Not as efficiently as I wanted anyway. I was swimming in waters with currents stronger than my however tenacious arms. I realise now how how harder it is to achieve individually without the support of society. The renaissance of Welsh-medium in Cardiff is supported by the country, with funds and assistance from the elected officials. Results from such experiments have also given parents more reason to support them over English-medium schools. When I visited a Welsh-medium class in Wales last February, and asked students what languages they rather learn in, even students from English-only homes said “Welsh”. I wrote about the trip here. In Nigeria, there haven’t been sufficient experiments of mother-tongue medium in recent times (or, frankly, a strong desire by those in office) to change public policy. And when we still deny students admission to universities because of a lack of English language competence alone, then we still have a long way to go. Literacy is the ability to read and write, and not the ability to read and write in English.

So what I’ve done, on my own, is to swim against the tide when possible, accepting the compromise of a bilingual upbringing from the home, supported by a private school that is aware of my preferences for my child’s educational needs, and insisting on monolingual lessons wherever possible, in songs, rhymes, and speech. In practical terms, I am also realising that the tendency of language towards simplification offers an easy guide: jo-jo (from Yorùbá) is a better cautionary term for “that’s gonna burn your fingers” than it’s hot!. But so also is poo-poo way easier to memorize than yàgbẹ́ (or maybe not. He knows both). I’ve found children capable of acquiring certain types of words or expressions better in both languages than others. My son may not know how to pronounce pa ilẹ̀kùn dé but he goes ahead and closes the door whenever I say it, just as fast as he does when his mom says “close the door.” He can count one to ten in both languages (though he gets to twenty with English. School, you know). He knows his body parts in Yorùbá. He calls me Bàbá and his mother Màmá, something that his teachers have now gotten comfortable with after their initial surprise. He can also say “ẹ ṣé” as confidently as he says “thank you”, though his production of the latter is quite laughable. I still speak Yorùbá to him primarily, and accept the other input from the society that I can’t always control. I say “p’àtẹ́wọ́ fún’ra ẹ” and he applauds himself. And when you sneeze around him, he says “pẹ̀lẹ́” involuntarily.

It might turn out in the end that the first language of children born in all parts of Nigeria will be English for time to come, strongly influenced in phonology and syntax by Nigerian languages of the area where spoken. Or maybe that will be limited to only metropolitan places like Lagos. But until the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) is no longer mandatory for Nigerian applicants in foreign universities, that day is still very far off. And maybe that’s for the best, giving us more imperative to teach and learn our mother tongues, but most importantly to also learn in them. We may have an opportunity to chart our own path to national development. It may be hard, but the children will be better off for it.