To some people, the warning by UNESCO
that Igbo language could go extinct in 50 years sounds far-fetched. To
others, it is a possibility. But the question is: What language will the
Igbo people speak if their language goes extinct? Will it be English, Naijana (derogatorily called Pidgin English) or Ngiligbo (a mixture of English and Igbo)?
There are factors that work against the
Igbo language. One is the proclivity of Igbo people to travel in large
number out of their hometowns. Most Igbo people believe that for them to
succeed in life, they need to move to somewhere away from home.
Sometimes, this relocation is not out of Igboland. For example, Onitsha
is the largest commercial city of Igboland, but while Igbo people move
from other Igbo towns to live in Onitsha, there are indigenes of Onitsha
who have left Onitsha to settle in Enugu or Aba to do business. Even
though Nnewi has the largest motor and motorcycle parts market in
Igboland, there are Nnewi indigenes who have moved to Obosi to transact
the same auto parts business. The same goes for Aba or Ngwa indigenes
who leave the big market in Aba to settle in Okigwe or Umuahia for
clothing or footwear business.
In the same vein, there are those who relocate to other parts of Nigeria, while others travel out of the country.
Continue reading after the cut....
While these migrations are going on,
especially outside Igboland, the children born away from home don’t have
much opportunity to speak Igbo. The parents who should teach them Igbo
feel that the language is not an “international language” that will give
the child an advantage in life. To them, English is more useful and
classier. Some parents, especially those who did not attend a
university, even take the extreme measure of barring their children from
speaking Igbo on the erroneous belief that it will hamper their
learning of English. They feel that having missed the opportunity to
learn how to speak and write good English, their children should not
face the same disadvantage. So, they end up speaking Naijana (the so-called Pidgin English)
to their children, believing that they are speaking English to the
children. You hear expressions like: “Junior, wetin dey do you? I go
beat you now!”
There are also Igbo people who are not proud of their Igboness.
But the greatest threat to Igbo language
is the lack of a conscious effort to make it grow in vocabulary. It is
true that English is very popular globally because two world powers (the
United States and the United Kingdom) speak it, but English owes its
strength to its dynamism. Constantly and consistently, new words are
officially added to the English language, either coined or borrowed from
other languages.
It is not so for Igbo language. The early
missionaries of Anglicans, Methodists, Presbyterians, etc, who
translated the Bible into Igbo, did the Igbo a world of good. It is in
the Igbo Bible that you see that a word like flag or banner is called okoloto. That is where you learn that, contrary to the confusion among many young Igbo people today, the leopard is agu, while the lion is odum.
Regrettably, the translators of the Igbo
Bible did not create names for everyday items like “table” and “window.”
They rather chose to Igbonise them as tebulu and windo, but that does not sound so good. If they had created names for them, by now such names would have stuck, just like mahadum has stuck for university and ekwe-nti has stuck for phone.
In the same vein, the translators of the
Igbo Bible also failed to translate some Bible books like Genesis,
Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, choosing rather to Igbonise them. But
interestingly, they translated Chronicles to Ihe Emere n’ubochi Ndi Eze, shortened as Ihe Emere. I have always wondered, if they could translate Exodus and Numbers as Opupu and Onu Ogugu respectively, why did they not translate Genesis to Mmalite or Mbido,
since Genesis means “beginning”? No Bible book should be Igbonised
except those that are named after people, like Matthew, Mark, Job, Joel
etc.
The Igbo bishops of the Anglican Church
and Methodist Church (and denominations who use the Igbo Bible) should
see the continuous upgrade of the Igbo Bible as an ecclesiastical duty
they owe the Igbo in line with the injunction that the gospel should be
preached to the people in the language they understand. Even though my
grandmothers did not go to school, they read the Igbo Bible and Igbo
hymn book (Ekpere na Abu) perfectly, because they were groomed in the church in Igbo.
Igbonisation of words is a lazy approach to language development. One hears things like computer being Igbonised as komputa. That is not acceptable. Proper names like Facebook and Twitter can be Igbonised as Fesibuku and Tuwita,
but common names should be given Igbo names. There should be an Igbo
body whose duty should be to constantly create names for all known items
in the world. It is only when the brain fails to find a name that such a
name can be Igbonised.
One nagging question I have had for long is why the months and days (except Sunday called Ubochi uka:
Church Day) don’t have Igbo names all these years. Rather, they are all
lazily Igbonised. As my contribution to the growth of Igbo language, I
have decided to give names to the days and months, following a simple
pattern. For the days, I have chosen the root word “izu” (week), since
they are “days of the week.” So, I have named Sunday – Soizu; Monday – Moizu; Tuesday – Tuizu; Wednesday – Nweizu; Thursday – Toizu; Friday – Furaizu; Saturday – Satizu.
In the same vein, I have chosen to name
the months using “aro” (year) as the root word, since they are “months
of the year.” So, I name January – Jenaro; February – Febuaro; March – Maaro; April – Eparo/Epraro; May – Mearo; June – Junaro; July – Jularo; August – Agaro; September – Seputaro; October – Oktaro; November – Novaro; December – Disaro.
Even to me, when I coined the names they
sounded ridiculous, but that is how every new thing sounds. The first
time I heard someone use ekwe-nti on radio for mobile phone, I
could not stop laughing, because ekwe is a musical instrument in Igbo.
But today, in the absence of any other name for telephone or mobile
phone, ekwe-nti has become the Igbo name for phone. Mahadum for university also sounded funny because it was coined from mara ha dum (know them all).
In the same vein, I have decided to name some items like cheetah agu-oso (speed leopard), because it is the fastest land animal; while I name tiger agu-ukwu (big leopard), because it is the largest of the Big Cats.
Igbonisation is better when the Igbonised
word is different in sound from the English name. If not, non-Igbo
speakers would understand almost all your discussion. For example, a
court messenger in the colonial days was called kotuma by the people, and it stuck. A train was called ugbo oloko: coined from locomotive engine. It stuck. But if you fill your speech with Igbonised words like komputa, tebulu, windo, etc, even an English man will easily understand your Igbo discussion, and that is not cool.
Children can learn as many as five
languages while growing up without mixing them up. Almost every European
country has its own language, and no country believes that the
languages of its neighbours are better than its. Therefore, European
children are taught many languages in school, so that they can
communicate with their neighbours in English, French, German, Spanish,
etc. The brain is an extraordinary machine.
Therefore, parents should insist on
speaking Igbo to their children at home, because they will naturally
learn English at school. Those whose parents are alive should also send
their children to their hometowns to spend some weeks of holidays, so as
to learn the language.
Nollywood started in Igbo. Producing films in Igbo should be resuscitated too.
My vow is that Igbo will not die in my
era. But even if others allow it to die, my family and I will speak it
among ourselves until we join our ancestors.
- Azuka Onwuka
Share your thoughts....thanks!
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