Ileke-IdI:

amala meeting?

Follow the accents: ámá - àlà but you have to say it without a pause.

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No language will be 'global' forever, just look at how only one country has Latin as an official language, and the country isn't even that much of a country in practice.

Please, some people should remember countries like Japan and China where they have their indigenous languages as official and people there rarely speak English, yet their people 'rule' (after Nigerians) in US schools. People are talking about removing the Latin script self, talk less of English as the official language.

I agree that if Nigeria was split into its 'natural' cultural areas, to make the dominant language there official will greatly maintain the language. Official as in court (of course all these can be translated) and in swearing in of a president/prime minister, constitution, government owned channel, replacing the English languages prominence in schools with Igbo and making English secondary, etc.

Let's try and remember that the English language will not fly out of someone's head in a free, 'connected' country even if every aspect of the country was in a different language, because at the end of the day there's still movies, music, the internet (which, when used technically, can only be used in American English), social networks, etc.

Oh, and I forgot. With an official African language, people can ask you if you speak _____*insert the term for the countries inhabitants*_______ and you can give them an answer that is not an essay on the complexity of colonial made countries. With that, there will also be more exposure to the language because people will see it as important. With the current situation in Nigeria, when someone asks you what language you speak you will say Igbo, or if they ask you if you speak Nigerian you'll correct them to Igbo, and also tell them that there are other Nigerian languages, because of this people will feel Igbo is an unimportant secondary language that only a section of the country understands and speaks. . . . . oh, wait, it is. . . . . . . . .

For example, if someone says they speak Bakongo, but there are other languages in the DRC, you probably won't pay any attention to the language because you'll feel it would be a waste to spend time learning an 'unimportant' language, but if someone tells you that they speak Twi and it is the official language of Ghana (I know it isn't) you'll be more interested.

Who's heard of the Society for Promoting Igbo Language and Culture? Imagine if their activities -- or at least, their attitudes -- were much more common, it would be beautiful. I, for one, can understand Igbo spoken in the Ngwa dialect (which, I shouldn't think, is much different from the dialect spoken across Abia State) and I used to speak it very fluently as a child. But 1997 was just a bad year for my sisters and I, and that was when we really began to forget it.

Within the last two years, though, I've really wanted to get back to speaking Igbo. I want to learn the other dialects so I can say, look, we really are one people, and I wholeheartedly agree with asha80. A language of thought and learning is a great way to preserve a language (look at Latin), but the parents should do more to instill the drive in the children, because it's the social utilization of that same language that keeps it vibrant.

@tpic: I doubt it...

Who is 'this woman' you speak of?