This was the question raised by Roland Ogbonnaya, the Feature Editor of THISDAY in the Friday, December 9, 2011 edition of the tabloid. Thanks to Roland for bringing to fore, this vital issue.



It's the in-thing in Nigerian families now to adopt the "English only" rule for their children and a trip to the village will see the parents assume the role of an interpreter as the children cannot respond to greetings made in the mother tongue/dialect by old folks. You hear something like, "Junior, Grandpa's saying good morning". The boy will stare back and reply an incoherent "good morning" back to Grandpa.



It's saddening to see that some schools and families thought it "fashionable" to even forbid the pupils/students to speak indigenous languages. In such schools, you see a sign, "SPEAK ENGLISH ONLY" or DON'T SPEAK VERNACULAR". To them, speaking English will show the difference between their wards whom they sent to private schools and pay expensively to educate and the "less fortunate" children that attends the public schools. Status symbol of a sort, you will say!



How fortunate was I to have grown up in a family like ours- learned and exposed! We attended the best private private schools yet, we kept our traditional values and cultures.



I am a Yoruba of Ijesa extraction. I speak my dialect as if "tomorrow no dey". I do my thinking in Ijesa. The Ijesa dialect to me, is like breathing air, drinking water and winking the eyes. I know the "big grammar' of my dialect , the proverbs, the cliches, the "dos" and "don'ts" of my people, the political structure, their history and their linguistic intricacies and evolutions. In fact, I speak it undiluted, quintessentially!



If you are in the same age group as me, "silver spoon-fed", "buttered" and raised in a family that prioritized English over the indigenous language, your craftiness with English may still not be as good as mine. I doubt if your command of English is in anyway near mine. My knowledge of Ijesa is the key!I have native intelligence. It gives me the edge over you and makes that your most prized English very, very easy for me to understand and so are other foreign languages.



I will pass down this heritage to my children when I start a family. My children will be non-pariel among peers to have had me bequeathed Ijesa and a dozen other languages to them.



If you have fallen into the category of the "strictly English" either out of ignorance or of vain pride and you now see that speaking your mother tongue will actually make your life fulfilling, it's still never too late for you.



Follow these simple but important steps:



i) Accept that you've erred by relegating your mother tongue to the backdoor.



ii) Purpose in your mind not to make the same mistake with your children.



iii) Immerse yourself in the study of this language/dialect under the tutelage of a custom and tradition-keeping kinsman.



iv) Read useful articles in your mother tongue i.e AKEDE AGBAYE and ALAROYE if you are a Yoruba



YOUR MISTAKES ARE FORGIVEN, GO AND ERR NO MORE!

i understand it better than i can speak it.

#nolongtalking.

I can speak and understand it perfectly. Im not that good at writing it though.