OCTAVO: Personally, I was raised by my parents to speak our local dialect from childhood, now I'm an adult and I'm not doing bad at all when it comes to speaking good English.
I wonder what the stress of these new generation parents is all about.
It's now like a competition amongst the Elites to raise their children to speak English thereby preventing these little kids from learning how to speak their local language fluently and efficiently.
This has become a general disease in our present generation and it's spreading too fast!
If we the oldies never learnt our local languages, our local languages would have gone extinct.
Must we now allow our own local languages to fade off just because of modernization?
Now my question is this:
Is there any special importance attached to raising a child to speak English language in Nigeria?

OCTAVO: Personally, I was raised by my parents to speak our local dialect from childhood, now I'm an adult and I'm not doing bad at all when it comes to speaking good English.
I wonder what the stress of these new generation parents is all about.
It's now like a competition amongst the Elites to raise their children to speak English thereby preventing these little kids from learning how to speak their local language fluently and efficiently.
This has become a general disease in our present generation and it's spreading too fast!
If we the oldies never learnt our local languages, our local languages would have gone extinct.
Must we now allow our own local languages to fade off just because of modernization?
Now my question is this:
Is there any special importance attached to raising a child to speak English language in Nigeria?

ckkris: English is both the Scientific and Commercial LANGUAGE of the world today, just as Greek was, in the time of Jesus Christ. St Paul wrote his epistles in Greek, even as he was very fluent in his native Hebrew.

yellowpawpaw: It is very proper. if u don't teach dem,their school will!at home, alternate so dey will learn ur language.children can learn more than five diff lang at a time in a twinkle of an eye unlike adult! Meanwhile,english is our 2nd lang.

ifyalways: Is it proper to train a child to speak Yoruba/Igbo/hausa abroad

alosiby92: @OP: That is a good question...fact is in some way, a huge part of the child's culture (native language) may be lost forever and be hard to regain.....what if it is not taught in school?

greatgod2012: In my own opinion, i think not allowing your children speak your indigeneus language is like telling them, indirectly, that, you are not proud of your tribe and its language, atleast, if you are proud of a thing, you will want people to identify you with that thing, and i notice that its mostly common with we yorubas, you can hardly find an igbo or hausa kids, who will not be proud to speak their indigenous languages, even, in public places, but, we yorubas,......hhhhmmmmm, may God help us.

Well, in my own house, we (hubby and i) ensure that our children understand our language very well, infact, its a rule that........
1. You must know the yoruba meaning of whatever you are talking about, so anytime they see a new thing, which they know its english name, i tell them the yoruba meaning and ask them to address the thing in yoruba for a whole week, except in school.
2. Once i speak to you in yoruba, you must respond in yoruba, and it has helped them a great deal to speak the language fluently.


The mistake our people makes is that, once a child speaks totally in English, it makes the child a brilliant child, which is not true sometimes, or even most times, i remember one of my secondary school mates, who could speak english like mad, but repeated S.S1 three time, and the fourth time, she was advised to withdraw, because it was a laid down rule in my school then, that, once a student repeat a class three times, and she also repeat the fourth time, she would be advised to withdraw, but, you need to know this girl, then, even, oyinbo man could not speak english fluently as she used to, but, gbogbo e.....odo ni.
@all, lets all embrace our indigenous languages, and also encourage our kids to embrace it. teni n teni, takisa ni t'aatan.
May God help us.

yellowpawpaw: Meanwhile,english is our 2nd lang.

Siena:

That's where you're wrong. English is our first language, our native languages come second.

Siena:

That's where you're wrong. English is our first language, our native languages come second.

ziccoit:

No. This depends on how you look at it.


"A first language (also native language, mother tongue, arterial language, or L1) is the language(s) a person has learned from birth or within the critical period, or that a person speaks the best and so is often the basis for sociolinguistic identity. In some countries, the terms native language or mother tongue refer to the language of one's ethnic group rather than one's first language. Sometimes, there can be more than one mother tongue, (for example, when the child's parents speak different languages). Those children are usually called bilingual.
By contrast, a second language is any language that one speaks other than one's first language"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_language

OCTAVO:
It shouldn't be at the detriment of our local languages.

Bibol: Parents should learn to communicate with their children in their native languages, and also encourage them to learn other foreign languages. It will help a whole lot.

TheCongo:

English is the official Language of Nigeria.
Therefore, you can't call it a foreign Language in Nigeria.
French would be a Foreign Language for Nigerians.
This is a very important aspect that shouldn't be neglected.

In my opinion, parents should learn to communicate with their children in English. Let's be real.
If you still believe that English is a foreign language, then change the Nigerian constitution.

slimyem: Its easy to pick up one's native language than to learn English..so no,nothing wrong in bringing up one's child with English language in Nigeria.
They'll unconciously and eventually pick up the native language in that environment.