Bellarmine Nneji
Every year the world celebrates the International Mother Language Day as marked by UNESCO. This is part of the efforts to ensure the preservation of global heritage which is made fluid through the local languages surrounding them. On the other hand, many of the mother languages are threatened by extinction. Majority of these are in the developing nations especially Africa.
A prognosis indicates that majority of the mother languages across the globe are challenged by what is known as the Macworld culture. The Macworld culture is fast becoming a global malaise and a threat to many cultures and traditions. It is fast becoming a pandemic causing serious cultural strangulations and amnesia wherever its infestations abound. One of the essences of marking the day is to checkmate the onslaught of this Macworld culture on our mother languages.
There is need for societies to ensure the survival of their mother languages. It is one of the socio-cultural rights of humanity. In some cases and instances, this has been taken for granted. Erroneously people believe that a mother language can successfully be preserved by merely speaking it. There must be structures that must be put in place to ensure its preservation. Every mother language that must be preserved must cross the margin of being only a spoken one but a written one with formal structures. Any mother language that has no formal structure by way of being writable is a potential language under threat of extinction.Developing a system of orthography remains fundamental to the survival and propagation of any mother language.
The theme of this year is ‘language without borders’. This is a call to ensure that there are no barriers and limitations to the use of mother languages. Mother languages are signs of the richness of linguistic and cultural diversities. It is a medium towards the preservation of indigenous traditional knowledge and cultures. Cultures and traditions are best transmitted through mother languages as it embeds the cherished values of a community or society. Lack of knowledge of ones mother language creates a big lacuna in one’s social and cultural integration.
In view of the above, one remembers the philosopher of language and an existentialist, Martin Heidegger, who posited that the despication of the mother language in favour of modern languages leads to enframing. Thus a language-enframed individual is no longer in control of the cultural and traditional values attached to his or her mother language. He or she becomes estranged to his or her society. As one author puts it; ‘an enframed individual is no longer in control of himself or herself, such a person is controlled by that which enframed him or her’. This is why we see people with ‘black skin but with white masks’. The person (especially the African) with black skin but can’t speak his or her mother language should be regarded as an anathema. Speaking or being proud of one’s mother language doesn’t make one less human. Man is his language and language makes the man. Language unveils the human being. This is with special reference to the mother language. Language is apophantical, says Heidegger. Mother ‘language without borders’ is also a call to the governments across the globe to ensure that there are policies to ensure the propagation of the mother languages. The governments need to appreciate the fact that children have a right to formal knowledge of their mother language. This makes it justifiable to make the mother language be used as a medium of instruction in the schools.
In the contemporary society today, many millennium parents don’t encourage their children and wards to use the mother language in their various homes. This is one of the serious challenges facing the preservation of the mother languages in majority of the African settings. There is preference of learning international languages over the mother language. Funny enough, some parents use international languages to teach their children their mother language. Many parents frown when their children and wards make mistakes in spoken andwritten international languages but become lack lustre when it comes to their mother language. The millennium parents inadvertently promote language attrition. Many cannot even boast of any idiom or proverb in their mother language.
Mother language without borders implies that every effort to propagate the mother language should be supported by every possible means. That a formal structure is one of the ways need not be overemphasized. The MacWorld culture and technological enframing are serious challenges. Every society must ensure that the formal structure of their mother language is adequately backed up. One of such ways is designing such mother language apps, designing thesaurus of the language and ensuring the availability of other media outlets and outfits for such mother languages. There are many grants and willing sponsors for such projects. There is no gainsaying the fact that UNESCO would be glad to key in into such a noble project for the sake of world heritage. Cultural heritages encompass language expressions and traditions inherited from the ancestors.
Our educational institutions are equally challenged in this cause. They should mark this International Mother Language Day by organizing debates and other programmes to create the needed awareness. This should be at all levels of education across the country. Parents on their own should tell their children fables with mores in their mother languages which portray virtues for the life of the good. Local proverbs and idioms in local languages are equally good ways to go about marking the day.
Any mother language that must survive must have metaphysical, logical and formal aspects and values. It is only through constant usage as a medium of communication and expression that such can be achieved. It has to be noted that our worldviews, spirituality, ideologies are embedded in our mother languages. It helps us appreciate reality. Lack of appreciation of the mother language in most cases leads to the appreciation of reality from the world views of others. This is absurd. This creates inferiority complex. We unfortunately feel superior in another’s language and worldview. We thrive in borrowing foreign ideologies we dont understand their fundamentals. This is one of the problems of democracy and government in Africa. According to Frantz Fanon, ‘a man who has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language’. Thus we possess a foreign and different world from ours when we thrive in a foreign language.The rich traditions and cultures of most developing nations were lost because of this attitude.
Nneji is lecturer at Alvan Ikoku Federal College of Education Owerri, Imo State
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