₦airaland Forum

It is a pity most homes don't use vernacular while communicating. Parents would proudly scold anyone who trys to speak such to their kids. Atmost,they will happily say(with much ego)na nwa ha anaghi aghota Igbo.
However, am greatly inspired by the words and work of our very own Chimamanda who wrote.
“It’s because I want people to go and learn Igbo. Many of my editors, many of them disapprove of that style, but I refused. I tell them it is because of two reasons: one is because Igbo is a peaceful and beautiful language; and my language matters so much to me, and, also, I am writing about a people who are speaking both languages; another reason is that when I was growing up, I read books where characters speak French –a book in English, and you will see one sentence in French, and nobody explains that.
We were supposed to try and understand. So, if you can do that with French, why not Igbo? Both of them are beautiful languages. So, I don’t take any excuses for that. There are many editors I have quarreled with because of that. I know because, if you read it carefully, you can kind of understand what it is. And, then, if you are really that curious, you can go online and learn it; you can go and learn Igbo. There are Igbo programmes in various universities. It is not that hard.Almost one million people from across the globe read Half of the Yellow Sun, and they understood, and it has Igbo words in it. So, it didn’t bother them. Also, as a writer, I read books with little bits of the languages I don’t understand, but it doesn’t really; in fact, it gives me the flavours of that language, and I like that.
I think the question is a bigger question about the family and our language, because, if I wrote French in a book, I don’t think I would be asked questions about it, because the ideas are French. You can put French in an English book, it’s OK; but because it is Igbo, and we think Igbo doesn’t have that much value, people will get confused. Igbo is as beautiful as any other language.

So, I urge parents to allow their children to speak Igbo language. Some Igbo educated parents don’t allow their children to speak Igbo. It’s a disaster. They should just speak Igbo. Ndi’gbo can’t even read Igbo. It troubles immensely, because we are losing so much. It is very easy to speak Igbo language.
The same Igbo parents, who don’t teach their children Igbo, teach them French. It’s very annoying. I don’t even want to lose my voice talking about it because it is a very sad thing. Even in Igbo land, when you speak Igbo to your fellow Igbo, they will start speaking English in response, because we now think that our language is so low that we have to show that we have arrived by speaking English. It is just terrible.
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