Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Saving Yoruba Language

SIR: Professor Adeboye Babalola's response to my article "The Death of Yoruba Language?" in The Guardian, August 8, was enlightening. It is the tiredless efforts of such Yoruba scholars that have academically placed Yoruba on the world map. Now we have Google in Yoruba as a result of such hardworking scholars! We want to build on this solid foundation that Babalola, Akinwunmi Isola, Oladipupo Yemitan, Adebayo Faleti and so many others have laid.

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In an amended version of the same article I have advanced that all state legislatures in Yorubaland must declare Yoruba as their first language of discourse. Here the legislative terms already worked out in Yoruba, Ibo and Hausa will come into use! Also it should be noted that Yoruba on the World Wide Web is booming. Tiwantiwa, (uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/tiwantiwa), created by Molara Wood in London is protecting the purity of the Yoruba language and should be supported by clicking on and joining its growing membership.

The response to the article has been tremendous from all over the Yoruba World, so I look forward to a soon to be announced Conference on "Saving Yoruba Language" to be held both in Nigeria and the USA. I have talked on the web and in workplaces where I go in Nigeria to many people as a result and have received many suggestions on how we will save Yoruba and other Nigerian languages. One female security guard, after reading the article promptly declared that from that day forward all Yoruba speakers on the staff would be corrected and fined by her to make sure they stopped polluting Yoruba!

Then she proudly corrected herself and addressed me as "Iya" instead of the "Mama" she had minutes before been calling me! One large Lagos company I visited and took time to pass copies of my articles around to read, had the female receptionist organising staff there to a meeting where ogas of each section would be convinced to stop mixing and to issue fines for any mixture to be collected and used for charitable donations!

On the Net I was written to about the heavy assault of "born-again" churches on Yoruba speaking in the church and outside. I replied , as a Christian myself that "righteous " members should organise "Yoruba services" and evangelise so much in the community that these services would become the most attended, a feat which I am embarking on in my own church.

Keep the suggestions flowing and act on solutions that occur to you O Great Nigerians and Yoruba, Urohbo, Ogoja, Ibo, Gwari and all other endangered Nigerian languages will be saved!

Akilimali Funua Olade,
e-mail: yeyeolade@yahoo.com