Formal Writing and the Promotion of Indigenous Languages

By

Obododimma Oha

So many scholars and organisations have eloquently advocated the promotion of indigenous languages. It is no longer an unusual thing to join in this call. It is now obvious that our promotion and suppression of some languages in society have some politics attached to those; that some people gain in the process and some people lose and continue to lose! The dimension that this short essay is interested in is the committing  of indigenous languages to serious formal writing in continuation of that project of promoting them.

Sometimes when those of us in academics carry out projects and make recommendations, it is as if we are just addressing nobody, that the recommendations we are making are not meant to be implemented. With regard to  the promotion of indigenous languages that are struggling for survival, are we not the means of that survival? Are we not, as people who are literate, not supposed to continue from where the White men who worked hard and committed these indigenous languages into writing stopped, and use the languages in various contexts of serious formal writing?

Who says that indigenous languages cannot be used in writing letters of application?

Who says that the indigenous languages cannot be  used in writing minutes of meetings, where all the  members of the meeting come from the same linguistic group?

Why write the minutes of meetings in (bad) English and then interpret to the audience in the indigenous language?

Who says that experiments cannot be reported or narrated in the local language for better comprehension? Is the experiment only for the English-speaking world?

Who says that metalanguages cannot be developed for serious writing in these indigenous languages?

Who says that if you have not taken the learning of the indigenous language seriously in your junior schools in those days that you or other deficient fellows can no longer learn the right things?

Who says that the colonization of your society has not been subtly handed over to you to execute through language, and that the way that you look down on your own local systems is same way your indigenous language to you means no future?

I allege that the continuation of colonization today is intensely being executed in various ways by the educated elite. This uprooted elite as the “house slave” would insist that English represents the only future and would do nothing serious to promote the local language or the local ways. Ah, has Chatham House approved? The colonized elite is the new colonial weapon against self, and not looking for ways of committing the indigenous language to serious formal  writing is just one of the strategies.

I am aware of some experiments with indigenous languages as the languages of instruction in schools. Yes; there are excuses or  obstacles  about diversity that we are even looking for!

I am aware of some projects towards the development  of indigenous language keyboards and softwaring. Yes; there are  such projects. But are they not being promoted from the outside for the benefit of the outside, just as the outside committed many of these indigenous languages into writing in the first place for  evangelization, commerce, and other continuation of colonization efforts? Are some makers of computers not struggling to include many large-market languages on their lists, encouraging language configurations other than English? Is the language of my HP computer not even configured to write Igbo?

When I attend local gatherings and see people struggling to read  badly written texts in English  to the local audience, to  some members of the audience who are not even literate, I feel terrible. When my father died some years ago, some people expected tough university English from his son who is a professor, I disappointed many by writing the entire programme and his oration in Igbo. Didn’t some attend his funeral, just  to be entertained, which included being entertained in big English in which he trained his son? But I disappointed them by writing the texts of the funeral in Igbo!. Imagine! Useless local language understandable to many! Was it not more entertaining to write and read what many did not understand or had to consult a good dictionary?

So, you see; the educated elite are part of the problem! They are not literate in these indigenous languages or do not have the will to promote them. They are clearly on the other side. Only pretending. Talking about the promotion of these languages, but leaving the real thing to somebody else! To a fictional character!