MOTHER TONGUE

It was a classroom adventure with JS1 students one lovely morning. The students’ unusual concentration birthed by the teacher’s commendable class control could not but amazingly attract the senior colleague who was on supervision. The supervisor therefore, decidedly gummed to the wall listening discreetly to the teacher’s flow of instruction and the students’ corresponding feedback.

‘What subject are you teaching the students, Sanni?’ he probed appearing from no specific direction. Rather than instantly respond to the rhetoric, my jaws could not avoid being unleashed in laughter; for I was sure the questioner was only being sarcastic.

‘Yoruba, of course,’ I responded reluctantly. ‘How come I never heard you speak Yoruba since I got here observing you secretly?’ he asked in surprise. “I’m sorry about that, sir. I do communicate with them in Yoruba, too, but they understand the subject better in English. Sir, if I do not code-mix or code-switch, the desired results for each topic may not be achieved at all. It is not ideal, though, but that’s the reality, sir. Our students speak and understand English better than Yoruba,” the nail was hit on the head.
“What! You mean you teach Yoruba in English! That’s disastrous!” he exclaimed as he sadly bade me farewell to the next class.

Our situation is as worse as the aforesaid. Our mother-tongue – not only Yoruba but Nigerian languages in general – has apparently gone into extinction beyond a quick remedy. It is no longer spoken at home, neither is it recognised in the neighbourhood. When kids play with friends, the only language of communication today is English. Anyone who considers the mother-tongue an option is regarded uncivilised and even stereotyped, especially if such cannot truly flow in the domineering alien language. Ask such children to briefly introduce themselves in their mother-tongue, the words that will fall off their tongues will not only irritate but disgust good ears. They will speak the language as though they had never stepped a foot on the Nigerian soil. It is tragic that our children act like bastards in their own fatherland.

Parents are the major culprits in this mess. They hardly address their children in their mother-tongue. It is English from dawn to dusk. Even those whose sentences are as messy as faeces equally talk to their children, unfortunately, not just in English, but in “Englishes” – an ignorant concoction and combination of colloquialism and Queen’s English – thereby insensitively turning their children into bad speakers of the language. What calamity!

In my household, the language of communication is Yoruba. It’s a standing order. Yet my children haven’t grasped the fluency. Sometimes they are involuntarily jested given the laughable way they pronounce some words and certain construct sentences. This is so because English is the language at school and with friends in the neighbourhood. Will it not be suicidal if their mother and I equally speak same to them with the very little time they spend with us?

Private elementary and basic schools have practically murdered the mother-tongue. Many of them have eschewed it from their lists of subjects. Unlike in those days when Yoruba was taught to us at that level, the reverse is the case these days. Our own language is practically taken with a pinch of salt, not by foreigners, but by our own people. Are we under spell or we are just being unreasonable? Of what joy is it that our students do excel in all subjects but Yoruba – our own language?

Pupils who were not exposed to the knowledge of the mother-tongue at the elementary stage usually become bottlenecks to us where the subject is mandatory at junior secondary, hence the reason for teaching Yoruba in English, and of course, the factor behind woeful performance in internal and external examinations. A student who was not taught the Yoruba alphabet, how to blend letters to make words and how to read and write would obviously not do well in grammar, essay etc.

The decision recently taken by the Ambode-led administration obligating a Credit in Yoruba for admission into any Lagos State higher institution was a right step in the right direction. It is a corroboration of the House of Assembly’s practice of conducting plenary in Yoruba every Thursday. How I wish all states including the federal government could follow suit. This will not only propel but coerce everyone to do the right thing. Parents who want their children study up to the university will no more take the mother-tongue with a pinch of salt. Schools that want ceaseless patronage for profitable merchandise will not only accord the mother-tongue a consideration in their curricula/syllabi but will unavoidably make it a core subject and its place in the timetable may likely be on the same pedestal with English, Mathematics and Science.

Growing up, my dad would only speak Yoruba with us. But his best friend would rather communicate with his children in English. Each time I was privileged to visit his friend’s house, I was usually envious of the way the children would address one another. Everyone would flow in English. I used to see them as better than me, not knowing they were nowhere near my brilliance. I thought knowledge started and ended with spoken English, not realising that having a grasp of one’s mother-tongue makes one understand other languages better. Today, those guys will obviously kiss my feet when it comes to knowledge of the English language – spoken and written.

The expressions made by our kids including teenagers at secondary are terribly worrisome. They speak nonsense with confidence! This is enough a reason to do the right thing by encouraging them take to the mother-tongue. You would have heard expressions like:

1. Me I used to eat rice everyday
2. I want to go and off the fan
3. Let me on the light
4. Sade, they are calling you
5. What do you buy?
6. What do you say?
7. She is shouting on me