The future of Nigerian languages

A friend just sent me this piece, and I’ve read it. Sentimental claptrap if you ask me.

It’s time we understood something — if your language is not a trade route language or a language of science, it will die. I don’t think it is something we should be sentimental about. My kids know a few words of Igbo (my language), and even more Yoruba words (their Mum’s language). The sentimental part of me would love them to learn more, but it doesn’t change the direction the wave is going.

Our local languages (first tier ones at any rate), face two pressures — foreign and domestic. The foreign pressure is the obvious one, these languages, except for Hausa, lose their utility when you step outside the shores of Nigeria. The speakers of these languages outside of Nigeria are overwhelmingly native Nigerians who speak the languages amongst themselves. Added to that is that because of the soft-power of the American variety of English, these languages, including Hausa, are increasingly being diluted. Hence in the Igbo language as an example, some words have been completely supplanted by their English equivalents.

It is increasingly difficult to hear someone say “biko nye m ngaji.” What you’re more likely to hear is “biko nye m spoon.”

I see that pattern albeit at a slower rate in Yoruba, and even slower in Hausa, but it is happening. In our lifetimes, many of the third tier local languages will simply cease to exist, while the second tier languages in even their current form, will be unrecognisable to speakers from two generations ago. The three big ones, Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba are headed inexorably, in that direction.

The domestic pressures the languages face are twofold — first, unless you have a Republic of Oduduwa for example, attempts to enforce Yoruba as a national language will face stiff opposition. Same applies for Igbo. Both can at best be regional languages, and because of Nigeria’s current atmosphere of mistrust, will remain so, and will, as I pointed out earlier, inevitably shrink as the pressure of English continues. For Hausa the very thing that made it an international language is working in an opposing direction now, which is movement of people to the Hausa speaking heartland.

Think about it, there are fewer people from outside of Northern Nigeria, who are going to make their lives in the region. The result is that the number of young outsiders who grew up speaking Hausa has shrunk significantly. This means that a generation or two after Igbo and Yoruba, Hausa would have become a regional language, and will begin its decline as well.

Now, is this a bad thing?

I don’t necessarily think so. Languages come and go, and to my knowledge, only two languages, Czech and Hebrew, have ever made a comeback from extinction. In the larger geopolitical calculus, one of the reasons that our environment missed out on the rise of nation-states is because we did not have a common tongue linking the man from Apongbon to the man from Ikorodu (Yoruba as we know it is a recent invention, as is Igbo), and so they did not feel the need to unite as one. Summary of my argument is this, for what it’s worth, if it is still worth anything, for Nigeria to survive and thrive, most of our local languages will have to die.

Edit: I’ll expand on this for one of my newspaper columns.

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