₦airaland Forum

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."

Super Eagles Chidi Odiah Dumps Wife, Baby- Uju
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The joy of a marital life is fulfilled when a man and his wife live together in harmony, building their homes and raising children of their own.


But for Chidi Odiah, a Nigerian professional footballer who currently plays for CSKA Moscow and his wife Uju Uzuegbunam, the story is different. Both of them no longer live together as husband and wife. And what seems to be a blissful period of their lifetime has suddenly become a night-mare.


Speaking to Saturday Vanguard, Uju said their courtship lasted for four years while their marriage lasted for eight months.

However, the marriage produced a bouncing baby boy, Kenzo Chidi-Odiah, who just clocked three months. According to Uju, the baby was two months old when the problem started.

Uju who narrated her story said, "I have known Chidi for four years although we have been married for just eight months. We met at a salon in Port-Harcourt. He was too shy to walk up to me and so, he asked my hair stylist to get him my phone number.


It started off as a normal relationship every couple would want. After a while, he became biased and felt a little bit threatened by my illustrious personality. He became verbally abusive and on couple of times, he smacked me hard on the face during an argument.

I felt it was normal for any man dating an educated and smart lady like myself but it suddenly turned into lots of accusations and harassment. However, before our marriage, we would occasionally have quarrels and take breaks from the relationship which I did not consider such an abnormal occurrence with lovers who are in courtship and getting to know each other.

We were never together. He was in Russia keeping up with his career and I had to go to the United States to stay with my elder brother and his wife for a little vacation after the marriage. Unfortunately, I became so ill during the US visit that I couldn't travel back home.I had our baby boy Kenzo in Portland, United States.

Throughout my stay in the United States, my husband visited us three times. The first time was for a meeting concerning his investment/property which my elder brother helped him to purchase. The second time was the day after our son was born but that was another terrible moment of my life. Instead of the love from a husband and a father, it was harassment at every slightest opportunity.

As if he didn't know that he has a baby boy, he didn't have any sense of responsibility for both the child and I. But, I wasn't moved. I was praying that God would touch his heart. He would come home drunk and for the next few days ,all he did was going shopping for himself.



I cried throughout his stay in America and had a terrible post- partum depression that caused me to take anti depressants. My husband has shown me no love since our marriage and my stay in the States. I didn't know what to do and so two months after Kenzo's birth, I was happy to come back home to Nigeria where I have my family and in-laws waiting to take care of me and our son.

l believed my struggle of being a new and inexperienced mother was over, as I had managed my new born baby alone with my brother's wife who is also inexperienced. I was settling down after my return when 11 days later, in my husband's house in Port Harcourt, my father was invited over by my husband's family members for an impromptu and unusual family meeting. After that meeting, I was asked to leave the house indefinitely with my mother and my two months old baby. They said Chidi instructed them to do so, on the basis that I was rude to him during my pregnancy.

I keep asking myself what Kenzo and I have done to deserve such a treatment from my husband. He hasn't contacted me since our return from US despite efforts I make frequently to get to him and verify issues with him. He wouldn't pick my calls and when he did, all he said was that he wants be alone for now and that he is not enjoying being married to me.

He then threatened that if anything happens to our son, he will teach me a lesson. I still do not understand his reasons for rejecting us (I and Kenzo). If there was a problem, we should have sat down and talked it over like we usually did in the past but instead, he sent his family against me to do his wicked and unfair bidding.

I was made to understand that a man can wake up any day and decide to reject his wife but would want his children and nothing would be done to stop him. My husband has always said he doesn't believe in court marriage and so, we didn't have one.

When asked the kind of marriage they had, she said they only had traditional marriage.

http://news2.onlinenigeria.com/news/general/111189-super-eagles-chidi-odiah-dumps-wife-baby-uju.html

This is actually an argument supporting the value of myths and fables rather than religion.
A problem with religion is that it wraps myth with authority, shielding it from criticism and being automatically valued by its followers.

Atheists do good for no reward, with no instruction from a "higher being" - the religious do so because they're told to and because they expect eternal bliss for it.
It's hard to deny that religion functions on a basis that is childlike and primitive.