₦airaland Forum

Obviously I can only speak from experience here in Belgium, but it is a fact that most Nigerians (both men and woman) want to marry a Belgian citizen to obtain a residence permit. In many cases, they just separate once they have the Belgian nationality.

There are a few elements here that make this practice less than admirable:
* a lot of the times we're talking about younger men/women marrying much older women/man (and I shun contacts with these couples, because they make me feel uneasy)
* a lot of these couples are between Nigerians and the less educated part of Belgian society (that's putting it mildly) - what's to ecome of the children
* in most cases it's a contract between unequal (economic, age, education, ...) partners for reasons other than love

That's not to say that all cases are like that, but it gives both parties a very distorted image of each other

First off: I'm white, my wife is Nigerian, we've been married for 7 years and we have 2 childeren. Just to explain where I'm coming from and to point out that it can work.

Second: I really - and I mean really - hate the term 'Jungle Fever'. It's derogatory and it carries very negative connotations. If you've seen the movie by Spike Lee, you will notice that the implicit message is: don't do it, it will never work out, it's just some sort of disease.

Now back on topic.
Is it good or bad... it depends on how strong the love between the two partners is,on how easy/difficult it is to overcome the objections of the environment and how willing the partners are to overcome the cultural differences.

I want to stress that the willingness of both partners to understand and respect each others culture and habits is paramount to the success of the relationship. The differences on how you deal with life, death, having children, the role of the (extended) family, etc are what's going to make or break a relationship. Understanding, acceptance and compromise on these issues is what it needed. That means compromise from both partners and a willingness to go against the opinions of the family if necessary

When there is true love, the problems with the racist attitudes of the environment can be overcome, but working out the cultural differences requires a level of openness, commitment and understanding that is rare in relationships, even between partners of the same race.

In summary, it's not that much of a racial thing as it is a cultural problem

Seun:
....

I'm not such a big believer in cultural identity. Anything that makes me feel that I am different from my brother who is white or who speaks Hausa will eventually lead to racism and tribalism. I prefer to draw my identity from my individuality and humanity.

Cultural uniformity isn't really the answer against racism and tribalism. Ethnocentric and tribal behavior is 'natural' and was vital for our survival as a human race when we were still hunter-gatherers roaming the plains in groups of max. 50 people. We needed to band together for survival.

Now on the other hand, that 'natural', 'instinctal' behavior is not functional anymore in a modern society (and it has caused a lot of suffering in the last milennia), but the illusion that anyone of us cannot be affected by it is that, just an illusion. We should better try to positively express that than just ignoring it.
Anyone will know what repressing you instincts can cause, just look at the behavior of the Roman-catholic clergy

I, as a Belgian, Dutch Speaking, tend to find my language and cultural indentity important and I am secure in my identity, I don't need to be hostile against people of another background, on the contrary, I find their culture and indentity enriching (if not, I would never have married a Nigerian wife)

Being able to communicate in your mother tongue and at the same time being proficient in English are not mutually exclusive. If primary education were in the people's mother tongue, it would be much easier to learn English as a second language and be truly bilingual

You cannot really 'create' a creole out of a pidgin by standardizing it. Basically a creole is a pidgin, but with a 'proper' grammatical structure that comes from children applying their 'language instinct' to a crude communication vehicle and transforming it into a real language.

It appears that only children are capable of 'creolisation' as adults have their grammatical rules already hard wired in their brains. That's also why it is dead easy for young children to learn new, foreign languages, while adults struggle to even Lear the basics of a new language and hardly ever become fluent users of the new language.

An excellent resource on this subject is the book 'The Language Instinct' by Steven Pinker (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140175296/qid=1125993705/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/202-1739926-3627808

Concerning the actual subject of this thread, I do not think it is even feasible to promote pidgin to the status of national language, as it cannot even be considered a language and does not offer the breadth and scope a real language has. It's good enough in day to day conversations, when you are facing the person you are talking with and can extract meaning from the context and non-verbal clues as well, but for formal, let alone legal communications .... I have my doubts

On top of that you are blessed with a multitude of native languages. Why not try to formalise these and use standard English as the cross Nigerian language. Do not forget that language is a big part of your identity. A lot of what some people describe as national character is expressed in the language (e.g. the French tend to be quite verbose and that is very visible in their language ;-)). You would lose a lot of your cultural identity by letting your native languages disappear.

And, as already mentioned by Bibi, Belgium has 3 official languages for only a population of 10 milion people, you really should not limit yourself to 3 languages for Nigeria. You may try to officially promote, codify and standardize all languages that are spoken by more than e.g. 3 milion people

What exactly is your purpose?

I'm employed as Project Management Coach & Project Officer

If you can be a little more specific I may help

I think the problem is exactly that the language used outside the school is not standard English. They have unconsciently incorporated their local language as the standard for correct communication, without being aware of the formal rules that lie behind it.

When they are confronted at school with a 'foreign' language, they then apply the informal grammatical rules of their mother tongue to that language and that makes learning extra hard as they have to:
* learn the structure of a foreign language
* and additionally learn all the other subjects in a language they do not fully comprehend yet

The reasons you mention add to the difficulties precisely because - apart from the most intelligent students - do not feel comfortable in 'standard' English and many won't bother to even try. Starting to teach primary school students in a foreign language (i.e. English) is an unnecessary hurdle the students have got to jump over.

Once you are formally proficient in your own language, learning an new language becomes easier, as you have a solid frame of reference. This is especially true for children under 12, as their brains are still very much capable of 'naturally' learning foreign languages

As for the research papers, it's been a while since I was at the university, and I don't have all my courses anymore. I could look up the references though, but don't expect them shortly. A good starting point for the concept would be the bilingual eduction programmes in California (I'm sure enough information on that can be found on line)

Hi,

This topic made me sign on to this forum a litle quicker than I originaly wanted. I'm Belgian and my wife is Nigerian.
As a Belgian (Dutch speaking), the pivotal role a language has in one's development is extremely important. In my dealings with a lot of Nigerians, I found out that many of them, even though they did have a university education, were struggling with English, especially when it comes to grammar.

At first, I found this rather strange. After thinking it over, the root causes for this seemed obvious. I was drawing a parallel between the situation in Belgium more than fifty years ago and this observation. For a long time the Dutch speaking majority in Belgium was discriminated as French was the only official language and the only way for a Dutch speaker to achieve something, was by assimilating into the French culture of the higher classes. The devlopment of an intellectual class was severely hampered by this and Dutch speakers were 'de facto' second class citizens. There was a political movement that focussed on the emancipation of the Dutch speakers by introducting primary, secundary and later higher education in Dutch. Only after that could 'ordinary' Dutch speakers break through the glass ceiling in society.

Now, to come back to the importance of languages in Nigeria, from what I understand, all formal eduction is done in English, not in the children's mother tongue. Several studies have pointed out that to properly understand the structure of language, it is extremely important to be taught in your mother tongue, especially in primary education. If not the school results will be worse on average. Even the understanding of foreign (non mother tongue) languages fares better when you are educated in your mother tongue.

Only the very best student will be able to overcome this hurdle, especially when you take in consideration larger classes, lack of training materials, the standard of the teachers and the overall cost of eduction (school fees) in relation to the average income.

Having primary education in your mother tongue(s) would greatly raise the average achievements of the students.