Why Nigerian languages are dying

Posted by Felix Okoli on Monday April 14, 2014 at 8:39:48:

Nigeria is a Country made up various major and minor ethnic groups and each ethnic group has its own indigenous language. It is not surprising that Nigeria has over 200 indigenous languages spoken by various ethnic groups. It was colonization that brought these various ethnic groups together under one umbrella to form a country and English language was adopted as the official language after independence. Some major Nigerian indigenous Languages are dying off gradually while some minor languages have even gone into extinction.
First, since English language is the lingua franca or the official language in the country, schools and most organizations use the language to teach school children. As young students and pupils in school are taught with English Language and are only permitted to communicate with classmates with English Language while in school, if there is no place where these children are allowed to communicate with their indigenous language they will be inclined to speech more of English Language and this makes their knowledge of local language to gradually die off.

Most parents find it unnecessary to bring up their children with their indigenous language since some of them believe that it would affect their English accent or that it is just not necessary. Nowadays, you'd see parents communicating in English language to their children and wards at home and since most of them stay in a mixed ethnic environment where English is widely spoken, these children grow up not knowing how to speak their mother language since their parents didn’t teach them the language

It is much easier for a child to learn how to speak its mother's tongue when taught to do so even from the womb. Some parents erroneously feel that children only understand English since they live in an English influenced world and most modern technology encourages the use of English.

I've seen parents who trained their kids in the USA but still taught their kids how to speak Igbo and so there really is no external influence that can stop one from teaching their language to their kids if they really want to. At times, even fro busy parents, employing a babysitter who speaks your language can help your child learn how to speak it. Some parents make the mistake of employing babysitters or nannies outside their tribe and this affects the language your kids would eventually be fluent in.

Migration is also one of the things that is causing many Nigerian languages to keep dying. Most rural families are forced to migrate to rural places where they can find more opportunities to make money and as a resul of these end up living in mixed societies that only discourages the teaching of indigenous languages. This doesn't mean that parents can still teach their kids their langauge but some parents just decide to end up speaking English to their kids.

Nigerian languages won't keep dying from one generation to another if parents start to instruct their kids in their local language from the day they were born. It should be the official languages in every home while your should leave English for the schools to teach.

In cases where one or both parents don't have the time or just find it hard to teach their kids their local language, they can always send their kids to language teaching schools, employ a language teacher or even buy a lot of local language movies that are sub titled. Children find it easy to learn about a language based on what they see on tv and so language based movies can be helpful.