Preserving Our Languages for Posterity

Being a paper presented by Dr. (Mrs.) Elizabeth Oghenekome Agbada

at 12^TH year anniversary of Isoko Mirror on the Newsstand and 5^th edition of Heroes/Heroines of Development Awards on April 15 2017

at Jubilee Retreat and Conference Centre, Effrun Delta State.

PRESERVING OUR LANGUAGE FOR POSTERITY: ISOKO AS A FOCUS

The three key words in this topic will be looked at to enable us understand what we want to discuss.

PRESERVE

According to chambers 21^st Century Dictionary, to preserve is to save something from loss, damage, decay or deterioration. To keep safe from danger or death.

LANGUAGE

The same dictionary defines language as “any formalized system of communication, especially one that uses sounds or written symbols which the majority of a particular community will readily understand”. It is the speech and writing of a particular nation or social group. Urua and Udoh (2014) added that, language is a human system of communication used by a community or country, an extremely important aspect of a community, an important index of identity, used for all communicative functions that a community requires, serve as a repository of a people’s culture, history, exploits etc. Language is an embodiment, distillation and codification of human value. A meaningful contemplation of the human existence is impossible without bringing language into the picture. Language is a distinctive and invaluable human heritage.

POSTERITY

It is defined by the same dictionary as “future generation”. Every language has a homeland from where it can spread to other areas. Each generation comes in to existence to find a ready-made language for its community which they internalize (Yul-Ifode 2001:1).

Linguistically, all language are equal but due to economic, political, educational and aesthetic reasons, some people tend to attribute different statuses to them. In terms of prestige, power and social class, a language may thus be regarded as being lower than, equal to, or higher than another.

No language is superior or inferior to the other. No language is more complete than the other, richer than the other (…) all languages are therefore good, adequate and complete for all the purpose for which they are required by their indigenous speakers (Yul-Ifode 2001:14).

New expressions come into a language as society develops and people interact with others, people get new experiences and exposed to cultures outside their own, and to concepts foreign to them. Words that are needed for those expressions are borrowed from the languages with those concepts for communication purposes. With time, because society is dynamic, language is bound to change. The change can be gradual or enhanced by such conditions as war, urbanization, natural disaster, colonialism, mixed marriage and migration.

ISOKO MAP

THE PRESENT SITUATION OF ISOKO LANGUAGE

NOTE

But there are factors militating against the survival of the language. These include the negative attitude of the people, lack of patriotism and lack of government support for the minority languages.

NEGATIVE ATTITUDE OF ISOKO SPEAKER

An average Isoko man sees Isoko Language as a language that cannot be used to contribute meaningfully to modernity, globalization and upward mobility-socially, politically, economically, technologically, or scientifically. As a result, the language is treated with disrespect, it is rejected and neglected. A well-known leader of Isoko Development Union once said, his children do not need the Isoko language to make it in life as they would travel to foreign countries for their studies. This shows how our people treat the language.

According to Aziza 2015, this type of treatment is regarding the language as a liability. And this leads to language shift and attrition among the young population. The implication is language endangerment and its eventual death or extinction. Based on the vitality/ endangerment research carried out by Agbada and Okedi in 2016 on four Delta Language namely: Isoko, Urhobo, Isekiri and Izon, none of them is healthy. The youth population in Delta State is shifting to Pidgin and English at a terrific rate. In places like Effurun, Sapele and Warri which are urban centers, pidgin has a community of native speakers whose primary language is pidgin (Elugbe and Omamor, 1991, Aziza 2003, 2005, 2013, Mowarin 2010 among others).

According to Yul-Ifode, as long as a language remains in use and new experiences are encountered from time to time, language will continue to change in the direction of the development of its users. Where a language is not in use and for some reasons the original users shift to some other languages, the former may die (…) some languages or dialects are known to have died or dying” (Yul-Ifode 2001:11).

As one language dies, a chapter of human culture and history closes. For a language is not only the main instrument for human verbal communication, it also expresses the world view of those who speak or use it.

Centre for endangered language puts it thus: language is the key to the heart of a people. If we lose the key, we lose the people. A lost language is a lost tribe, a lost tribe is a lost culture, a lost culture is a lost civilization. A lost civilization is invaluable knowledge lost (…) will be consigned to oblivion (in Emenanjo 1999:83).

According to crystal, there is agreement among linguists who have considered the situation that over half of the world’s languages are moribund, i.e. not effectively being passed on to the next generation. We, and our children, then are living at the point in human history where, within perhaps two generations, most languages in their world will die out (Foundation for Endangered Languages1995).

There is this shift to Pidgin or English because of lack of intergenerational transmission from parents to children. The ‘modern day’ parents are not using their language as home language to communicate with their children in early childhood. They rather use English or Pidgin.

LACK OF PATRIOTISM

The average Isoko Man/Woman does not see any need of spending His/her money on anything that has to do with the Language. The language needs to be documented; teachers are needed to teach the language in primary and junior Secondary schools to enable people read and write it. The Department of Isoko language has been in the college of education Warri for over 20 years. now but a few students come in to study the language every year.

This low intake of students cut across all the languages being studied in the college. Despite this, other languages like Urhobo, Izon and Isekiri are getting sponsorship from their people to motivate students. An advert for scholarship for Isekiri students was published in Vanguard Newspaper of Monday 27^th of February, 2017. Immediately the advert was out, a department that having just two students in admission list had over 20 students who came in to study Isekiri in the college because of the scholarship. In December, 2014, the lectures in Isoko Department went round our big men in Isoko and warri for sponsorship for our students. The response was not encouraging. The Isoko Development Union (IDU) under the leadership of gen. Omu got interested when we met them in 2014 at the IDU end of the year congress. They responded by paying the tuition fees of five students that responded.  Then, there was change of leadership to High Chief Idu’s team. The lectures also met them, and what they gave could barely go for two students school fees out of six who are in the school because of IDU scholarship.

The lecturers were asked to meet some notable Isoko sons who did not yield any result. So based on the fact that the students came in under the guise of IDU scholarship, they could not pay their fees, the lectures in the department have no other choice than to tax themselves and pay the fees for some students. Presently, the department has no new students which could lead to the closure. Other languages are surviving through the help of their people. Isoko department may not survive if nothing is done by our people. We need Isoko sons and daughters whom God has blessed with resources to raise up to remove this shame and put the language on the same platform with other Delta languages if not higher

LACK OF GOVERNMENT SUPPORT FOR MINORITY LANGUAGES

Our government, through have in the National Policy on Education that the Mother Tongue be used in early years in schools and later be taught as a subject in the high level, this policy is not implemented and the government has not put any measure on ground to ensure the implementation.  In governance, the language of the people is not used for the people. They are happier using foreign languages that the people do not understand because it enables them to keep the majority of the people in the dark for the purpose of exploiting them and keeping them perpetually in a state of want. Since the mother tongue cannot be utilized for serious functions, people are not interested in studying the language. Committing the mother tongue to writing is a key to participating in a wide variety of serious functions, especially education, economic and technological advancement and social mobility. Language development involves three major activities namely, graphization (the development of a writing system), standardization (the development of a norm that overrides regional and social dialects), and modernization, (the development of terminologies which will make it possible to translate materials from other languages into them and enable them participate in discourse about a broad range of topics in language).

Agbad and Okedi in their research on the revitalization of four Deltan Language: Isoko, Izon, Isekiri and Urhobo in 2016 discovered that there is obvious decline in the reading and writing abilities of young people in these languages. Even though, each of them has been committed to writing; they have orthographies recognized by the Nigerian Education Research and Development council (NERDC); they have recognized standard varieties, there is nothing much in terms of modernization apart from some primers, dictionaries/wordlist and translations of the Holy Bible. There are no serious materials with terminologies development for science, mathematics, technology, medicine and health care, linguistics, commerce e.t.c

HOW CAN WE PRESERVE THE LANGUAGE

We have enumerated the challenges Isoko as a language is facing. All we need to do is to address them one by one. As the owners of the language, we should do something. Also let the government rise up to their responsibility. The following are the necessary things we must do to preserve our language.

1.      Proper documentation of the language. A language that has not been reduced to writing cannot be preserved. There is a limit to which oral transmission can go. When the older generation dies, the language dies if it is not passed to the younger generation which is happening now.  Thank God Isoko has passed through the normal process of documentation. We have an approved orthography, some books have been written using the new approved orthography and seminars and workshops has been organized by the IDU and Elona foundation to teach the new teacher the new orthography.

2.      Teaching of the language in schools from primary to tertiary institution will enables the language to be relevant and preserved. Ability to read and write in the language will enhance the use of it in all facets of life-including science and ICT. Teachers are needed to teach this language in our schools. That is why it is important to have a foundation that will give scholarship to student who will like to study the language in higher institutions.

3.      The negative attitude of our people towards, the language must change, especially parents. We must communicate with our children in the language to enable them development interest to study the language as they grow up. Our government, especially at the local level must also change their negative attitude towards their language. They should become accountable to the people by making governance for the people by the people in the language of the people. If as a politician, I know that I cannot be a chairman/counselor in my Local Government area without the knowledge of my language i.e ability to read and write and communicate fluently in the language then I will take it serious right from my childhood as I nurse the ambition.

Our language must be made to have more presence in the mass media, whether electronic or print. In Delta State, for instance, all the Local Languages put together do not receive more than 20% of airtime a day in Delta broadcasting service (DBS), there is no radio or television channel that is dedicated to the use of our languages, neither is there any newspaper or   magazine that publishes materials in the languages. Thank God for the community newspaper Isoko Mirror and the Mail that have brought Isoko name to the newsstand. But even then, they are written entirely in English, except when a column is dedicated to the teaching of the language at times. Other ones have come up too, toeing the same path of writing Isoko news about Isoko people for Isoko people in English. Developed Nigeria languages like Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa have both electronic and print media purely in their language and some other ones like Edo, Ibibio are also coming up.

4.      Government must create good environment that will ensure the availability of good jobs in which these language can be relevant and utilized. If for instance. It becomes a requirement that only people who are competent in Isoko can get the job of liaison officer in oil locations is Isoko community, a lot of young people will rush to study Isoko and many parents will encourage their children to speak, use and study the language because the job prospects are attractive.

Conclusively, for Isoko to be preserved as language that portrays the people and their culture, we should speak it, write it and use it in serious factions.