When we were in primary school,
the class prefect would write down the names of those who spoke Igbo in class.
Speaking Igbo in class was such a crime. In my house, my father made several
efforts to get us to communicate in English; it didn't just work. In fact, the
first essay I brought home for my dad to read was in Igbo, written by my proud
self. Being a school principal, the man nearly fainted. Not only were we unable
to speak English at home, I was prolific in Igbo. What a disgrace, huh?
I see this repeat in our homes
today. Many mothers would rather die than see their children speak in Igbo. I
notice a particular trend: The mothers/fathers would speak in Igbo to every
other person around; then turn around and speak in English to their oyibo children because God forbid that
those children would speak in Igbo.
Mothers think their children
would seem local if their children spoke in Igbo! Awesome. One actually said
this to me. I told her, "Madam, I speak and write Igbo with perfection but
when I speak or write in English, I make elegant sentences. And it doesn't
remove a thing from my beauty or swag when I speak Igbo; it is my heritage and
I'm proud of it."
Why shouldn't mothers teach
their kids to be proud of who they are and of their Igbo heritage? The only
times kids are reminded they are Igbo is when they are having their Igbo day
celebration in school; then they would come in traditional Igbo attires. When
you hear them greet in Igbo during their presentations in these events, you
would be embarrassed by their accent. Now, we have kids who are growing up in
the East, right in the heart of Igbo land who cannot speak Igbo. These same
kids speak French fluently and probably some other languages I don't know. Some
of the private schools teach the other Nigerian languages like Yoruba and Hausa
but not our shameful Igbo language.
So then, while the school expects the family to teach the kids how to speak
Igbo, the family expects the same (or not) from the school and the child is now left not knowing
how to speak his mother tongue. In Abia state, the current Governor made
learning Igbo language optional. Can you imagine or believe this? A child to
learn his mother tongue optionally?
Consequently, I have a four
year old niece who doesn't understand “noro odu.” When I'm in the taxi and I
say, “tupu gi agbafee, kwusi mu”, everyone turns to look at me. Most of them
have never heard the word tupu in all
their lives and probably do not know the meaning. Sometimes, a passenger will
say this to me, "you are a true daughter of Igbo." And in my mind,
I'll go, "Why not?"
Do you know what I find most
funny in all this? I hardly meet kids who speak good English, including those
who attend expensive schools. Definitely, there would be but for most kids who
are being taught by teachers who do not mind their tenses or their language
construction and raised by parents who speak terrible terrible English, English
speaking "deals" with them all. The one I find most tiring is the use of "I
used to" in all their sentences. "Used to" describes something
you did in the past. But you see kids using it for actions they carry out every
day. The frequency of the use of that phrase in their communication is also
wearying.
The most common ones are:
Water or food is hungrying me.
Cold is catching me.
Sleep is catching me.
She fall me down.
Buy for me biscuit
One day, I heard my nephew say,
"Mommy, heat is doing." I
nearly collapsed. He wanted to say that the weather was hot. I've heard all
manner of badly constructed English sentences and I feel for these kids. They
can't speak good English; they can't speak Igbo. And there's one thing we all
fail to understand: All languages share the same basic structure. If you can
speak one well enough, you can apply the same principles to the other. While we
were growing up, our parents allowed us to speak Igbo at home. It gave us the
strong foundation of learning a language. We also read books like “Things Fall
Apart” and all that those novels in the African Writers Series. I read many
novels in the Mills and Boons series. I loved James Hardley Chase and consumed
his books. I read a lot of books and was an avid reader of newspapers as a kid.
I still do. All of this added to building my strong vocabulary base. Parents
ignore this and would rather play cartoons for their kids. A friend argued this
with me one day. He said he spoke good English because he grew up in a family
where his dad insisted that all spoke in correct sentences. I asked him for the
meaning of a word and asked him where he first encountered the word. He smiled
and told me that it was in a book and that his dad made sure they studied hard.
He also learnt to speak Igbo from home.
Whenever I encounter a child, I
always speak Igbo to him. In my mind I assume I might be his only opportunity
of learning the language. When some of them greet me along the road, I'll
respond and ask them, "ke kwanu"
or "olee otu imere?" Some
do not answer because they don't understand what I said. The others respond in
English. Igbo speaking is so wrong but I keep trying.
Who set the parameter of what a
polished child should sound like?
Who determined that speaking in
English means that your child is polished?
These days, I see the children
of women roasting corn speak in English as they play in the dust and run about
dirty and butt naked while they vomit all manner of bad English. So then, who's
child is local? Mine, I guess. I totally accept that if Igbo speaking means my
child is local. (Local is our way of saying not polished.)
If you think English is
superior to your dialect, so be it. However, note that English is vernacular to
the American child as Igbo is vernacular to the Igbo child.
You also need to know that
Nigeria in all her English speaking is not recognized as an English speaking
country by Britain, the very country that colonized her, that should have given
her that status naturally. The reason is that Nigerians including our leaders
speak very bad English. Instead of forcing ourselves to be what we aren't even
recognized as, why don't we build on and develop our dialects? There are so
many new words in English that we do not have the Igbo equivalent and it breaks
my heart. One day my nephew spoke such bad English and I turned to him andsaid, "You people are the reason they do not recognize Nigeria as an
English speaking country despite the sincere efforts of people like me."
Of course, that was on a light note. I however do my best to teach him on how
to make better sentences every day.
In addition to advocating for
Igbo speaking, I'm also canvassing that parents should encourage and push their
kids to read. Cartoons can never replace good ol' reading but that is a topic
for another day. For today, let us speak Igbo.
Igbokwe Vivian Ijeoma
scriptwriter87@gmail.com
Twitter/Instagram: @club7teen
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