Nicolas Aubry, though a French national, is so versatile and fluent in Yoruba language that he fascinates and attracts attention wherever he goes. A Ph.D degree holder in African Studies specialising on Yoruba language, he paid a visit to Tribune House recently and spoke with Taiwo Olanrewaju .



Belief about the Yoruba Language

ALTHOUGH of the French stock from Paris, France, 33-year-old Nicolas Aubry believes that the Yoruba language will never go into extinction.


"Ede Yoruba ko nii ku. Yoruba ko le tan. Yoruba ko nii ku. Ao le moo tan", he asserted severally during the interview. Meaning that Yoruba is so broad that no one can know it in its entirety, so it can not go into extinction.


People marvel when they hear Aubry speak Yoruba, not only because he speaks, reads or writes it, but he also has a Ph.D. in it and by October, he will start to lecture Yoruba at the Institute National Des Language Et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO), Paris, France, the school where he learnt Yoruba language.

How his love for Yoruba was aroused:


After his secondary school education, at the age of 18 years, Aubry gained admission to INALCO to study Ethymology, a branch of Anthropology, which deals with the study of people's culture worldwide.


He conducted a research on tradition in Brazil, where he met some Portuguese singing Yoruba songs in their language. They sang the songs with Portuguese phonological sounds, thereby losing a lot of Yoruba sounds in the song.


That experience struck a chord in him and he decided to give the study of Yoruba a trial. "After a year, I loved the lecturers so much that I wanted to learn Yoruba. After two years, I left Anthropology for Yoruba," Aubry volunteered.


On his parents' reaction, he said that his parents were good people and respected his opinion but were quite worried about what he would end up doing with a degree in Yoruba language.


Aubry, however, went all the way, as he did not stop at the first degree, but got masters and doctoral degrees in Yoruba.


According to the Doctor of Yoruba language, he bagged his first degree within three years (2000-2003), his masters within two years (2003-2005) and his Ph.D. after 5 years (2005- 2010).


His doctoral degree, Aubry explained was in the Department of African Studies where he majored in Yoruba out of the 92 African languages studied there.


He said his Ph.D. thesis was on: Bi ede se yipada laarin igba ti ko si akosile ati igba ti ede di kiko sile (1930 - 2009)." meaning how language changed from the time there was no written version to the time it became written. He used a lot of Nigerian Yoruba newspapers which were in circulation between 1930 and 2009, spanning 80 years.


The French national's greatest difficulty in Yoruba as a student was the tonal system because his ears were not used to it. He cited an example: Baba re - Baba e (your father). He has, however, mastered the art. There is hardly any Yoruba word he cannot mark with any of the three tonal marks.


Another area of difficulty for Aubry in his studies was the use of serial verbs which abound in the Yoruba language. He said he doesn't have many examples of that because such construction does not exist in the French language. He cited an example, Bola pa eran je (Bola slaughtered and ate a goat).


The language expert also knows the difference between the Yoruba spoken in Ibadan, Lagos and different parts of Republic of Benin, especially Ketou, where Yoruba is referred to as Inago.


For instance, Omo N Ko (Nigerian Yoruba) is Omo Fe or Omo Hon (Republic of Benin Yoruba), meaning how is your child?


To further strengthen his belief that the Yoruba language will not go into extinction, Aubry urged the Nigerian government to provide the necessary tools, needed to enhance the study of the language.


He noticed that the Yoruba language still lacks a monolingual dictionary to which one could turn to, to check out spellings and meaning of words without necessarily depending on another language for the meaning of Yoruba words.


He said that French and English languages have monolingual dictionaries.


Also, he urged the government to empower radio and television channels to speak Yoruba and do Yoruba programmes while teachers should use Yoruba language to teach their pupils in the class.


He encouraged the youths to desire to know their language and endeavour to be good in both their official language and Yoruba.


Background history:

Nicolas Aubry was born on 11th October, 1977 in Paris, France to Mr. Gerard Aubry, an accounting administrator and Mrs Genevieve Aubry, a real estate agent.


The second of two children, Aubry's elder sister, Valerie, who is married with a child, is a school teacher.


Aubry, who speaks French, Brazilian Portuguese, Yoruba and English, has been to the Republic of Benin, Ibadan, Moro, Ile-Ife and Ilesa in Nigeria.

Aubry, who has a fiancee in Paris, enjoys eating iyan, amala and eba, said," I am proud of Yoruba Language."

The yoruba language will never go extinct because most of us teach it to our children unlike some, *cough* *cough*, Igbo people

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