This is an article from the Guardian newspaper of Nigeria ,Wednesday
26th July 2006(yesterday)edition.
It was copied and pasted from Odili.net, here's the url:
http://odili.net/news/source/2006/jul/26/18.html
I believe this may be a dynamic URL, therefore the link/article will
become inaccessible in a few days time.
ciao
Don canvasses promotion of local languages
By Joseph Eshanokpe
EXCEPT something is urgently done to promote or invigorate our
indigenous languages, we may lose them in future. This was the
submission of Prof. Olanrewaju Folorunso at the 27th Inaugural
Lecture of the Lagos State University (LASU) recently.
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Folorunso, who is the first professor of Yoruba Studies, in a
lecture entitled: "The Famished Artist in a Famished Society", took
a cursory look at the use of, specifically, the Yoruba language and
concluded that it has been subjected to various abuses in the past
(and now), even by those who are supposed to know - the
intellectuals.
"What is most disheartening is that African (or is it Yoruba)
intellectuals just sit down theorising and dumping everything that
is indigenous as fetish, barbaric and outdated. They are ignorant of
their own culture and sad still, they are not very familiar with
imported cultures they run after. They are neither here nor there",
he said.
Citing authorities and relying on research materials, Folorunso, who
is also the head of African Languages, Literature and Communication
Arts, noted: "Our language is part of our culture; if we lose our
language, we lose our culture and vice versa. It is very unfortunate
that most of us still believe that most of our heritage is
primitive, including our languages".
He added: "This wrong notion that is borne out of our colonial
mentality is still haunting us today".
Folorunso, who made history as the first professor of Yoruba Studies
in the university, added: "We should not forget that our cultural
heritage is still very relevant, even to the outside world".
He argued that it is possible to use Yoruba as a medium of
expression from the primary school up to the university level. He
cited China and Japan, which abandoned foreign languages for their
mother tongues and have today shone like stars in technology.
Also, citing Prof. Babs Fafunwa's research, which says that pupils
learn best in their mother tongues, Folorunso alluded to the fact
that the "ability to speak one's mother tongue enhances one's
dexterity in foreign languages".
Folorunso also chided some Yoruba parents who refuse to speak the
language to their children in the public, saying that it is
degrading. But he commended their Igbo counterparts who, he said,
according to research, are able to train their children to speak
Igbo even in a different ethnic environment.
Defending Yoruba as a course of study, Folorunso charged parents to
allow their children to study the language as, allaying their fear
from his research, that it could not make one a pagan.
"If a Frenchman could study French in France as a discipline or a
Briton studies English in Britain, then what is wrong with a Yoruba
studying Yoruba in Nigeria?", he asked.
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