The Director, Centre for Igbo Studies, CIS, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, UNN, Prof. Chris Agbedo, has disclosed that Igbo Language is presently at the 8th stage of language endangerment.
He explained that this stage is characterized by a break in the intergenerational transmission of a language from one generation to another.
He made the disclosure during an interview with Obinwannem Media at the University town of Nsukka Local Government Area of Enugu State on Wednesday.
Agbedo, who is a professor of Linguistics at UNN, berated parents and school teachers who discourage the use of Igbo Language at homes and classrooms.
“The only way to save Igbo Language is to start mother tongue education, there is no two ways about it. It will save our language from extinction and it would equally facilitate learning. If you are teaching a child quadratic equation with English Language, the child has to understand English Language first before understanding the equation you are teaching, in that case, he has to break two linguistic codes. If he is deficient in English Language, he will never understand the equation you are teaching, but if the equation is taught using the mother tongue, the only language code the child will break is that of the equation and it would be easier for him to do that.
“You may want to ask yourself why developed nations are making progress in sciences and technologies, but in our case, it seems as we are going backwards. My simple answer to that is that it is a linguistic problem. In a book I published in 2019 titled ‘Multi-lingualism and National Development: Issues and Challenges’ which was sponsored by TETFund, I noted that Nigeria’s problem is fundamentally linguistic. The thesis I pursued in the book is saying that the national development problem Nigeria is facing is fundamentally linguistic. Any country that fails to plan her languages, is planning to fail in all aspects of national life.
“There is what we call language endangerment and most African languages are facing various degrees of endangerment. There are 11 stages of language endangerment and from what I have discovered, Igbo Language is at the 8th stage. This 8th stage is when the husband and wife use a language but the children do not use it. Once there is a break in the intergenerational transmission of a language, the language will suffer grave stage of endangerment and that is what is already happening to Igbo Language. You will find out that most children, especially, in literate families do not speak Igbo Language at their homes. Some parents go to the extent of warning people not to speak Igbo Language to their children, this for me is foolishness. In schools too, there used to be a law which prohibits speaking Igbo Language in classrooms and defaulters are punished through flogging and manual labour. This attitude makes one see those who are proficient in Igbo Language as unintelligent, but this should not be so.
“The notion that speaking Igbo Language to a child at his formative stage will impede his ability to learn English Language is very wrong. A child can speak any language he comes in contact with effortlessly at his formative stage because his brain is like a plastic ready to bend to accept information.
“I am a professor but any time I have an opportunity to speak Igbo Language, I do that because I know that it doesn’t make me less educated or less intelligent. It is pitiable that a typical Igbo man prefers another culture to his own. This can be shown in the way most of us dress, and the names we bear. Even when we bear Igbo names, most of us prefer writing them as English names,” he said.
Report by Chibuike Ezekwesili
