Linguistic Identity on the Playground of another Person's Compound : Yuka Versus Facebook on Lamnso Interaction

By

Obododimma Oha

Constantine Yuka is a well-known linguist at University of Benin in Nigeria. Yuka is an authority on Lamnso, a small-population language in Cameroond and Nigeria.

Recently Yuka put up a Facebook update that narrated an interesting encounter with Facebook on Lamnso. The update stated as follows :

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FACEBOOK'S APOLOGY TO ME.

Facebook:

Your Group is back on Facebook.

"After reviewing our decision, we have restored your group. Members will be able to find it again. We are sorry we got it wrong."

You

What happened? I created a page on Facebook which required all posts there in to be only in Lamnso' (an indigenous African language spoken in Bui Division of the North West Region of Cameroon and in Taraba State, Sadauna Local Government Area in Nigeria). 

The Facebook monitoring spirits apparently couldn't figure out the  discussions in our posts. In their ignorance, they did the obvious; shut  down the Group. Trust me, I petitioned them. They came to reason and restored the group; LAMNSO' CA'CA this evening. As the Group's Administrator, I had diligently ensured that all posts respected Facebook regulations.

The big point here is that Africans must begin to assert their identity. If Facebook is a global family, Africans cannot belong to it at the cost of their identity. That identity includes their cultures, their languages, their worldviews etc. If you are unintelligible in the language I opt to interact and engage the world in, the challenge is on you to seek intelligibility in that language (as most Africans have done for European languages). 

A eurocentric worldview stands rejected. As Professor Adams Bodomo puts it, Africans are neither  Anglophones nor Francophones. They are first Afriphones, then Dagaarephones, Lamnso'phones, Swahiliphones, Yorubaphones, Igbophones, Hausaphones etc. Africans have a responsibility to force in their own parameters for value assessment. We cannot continue to allow others set their own agenda, then again turn around and set ours.

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Facebook is an imaginary playground, library, classroom, etc and and it appears unjust to privilege just one language there. So, every person has to use that one language or a variety of it. It appears unjust. It is very ere we sure to see that less-privileged languages are only destined to die and stay in isolation or are being killed through a kind of strategic neglect. These could be African languages, given that many African languages are not developed or are being killed by those who believe that letting a language live is not favorable to colonization.

Very clearly, language could cause isolation on this global playground. Which isolation is as painful as others on the playground being prevented from knowing what that other fellow is saying? Very painful. Are we sure that there is no conspiracy going on? I know that the common response is: if you can't understand that other language, learn it. So, temporarily interaction ceases and Babel takes over. To your huts, oh people of the world. No more global exchange. No more Facebook playgrounding.

In fact, as I suggested cynically to Yuka, his update on group restoration should only be in Lamnso, not English. It is easier to use Lamnso only on Facebook, whether in a group or general platform than  to vote out an African president who has been there for a very long time and probably wants to die as president! Lamnso should unseat English and try to recolonize the world! That life president or life language should be Lamnsophone. 

Yuka is against linguistic imperialism, just like many Afrocentric scholars. His argument is understandable and popular. There is the local battling with the global, not cooperating and fusing to become glocalization. The local needs to replace the global, even when located right in the  global arena.

The replacement of the global by the local is not itself a form of imperialism. It is just a reaction  protest on the playground that belongs to someone somewhere. You don't need to produce an engine before you can build a car or have a presence at the International Space Station before starting a space shuttle. Imperialism is only not daring to dare or having the heart to borrow trillions and still learn from Oliver Twist to want some more. 

Lamnso is not in any way less than any European language and can be used as a group language in a social media and interaction. 

At least, some people that view it as a backyard language can start learning it to know when shady things are said about them. Social media language doesn't have to be open. Some things can be poetic and hidden. Why should social media even force us to be open? Why should things that are supposed to be difficult simple, or hidden exposed? Let us utter the unacceptable on this playground in this compound! 

Yuka could be right. If we can have anglophone, francophone, staying on for life, why not lamnsophone? As stated, the life president is ideally lamnsophone . His life is lamnsophone. His rulership style is lamnsophone. His dying is even lamnsophone. 

In fact, in one country in the nearest galaxy, the  lingua franca is Lamnso! 

Yuka linguistics should not have politics attached to it. Lamnsophone linguistics is apolitical. That monkey hand in the soup should not  be regarded as a human hand.