Functional Igbo (Nigeria): Learning

from a Dialect

British Association for Applied Linguistics,Language in Africa Special Interest Group SeminarSOAS, London, January 17, 2014

Françoise UgochukwuOpen University (UK) & CNRS-LLACAN

Igbo, one of Nigeria’s three main languages, was written down in the last years of the 19th century. Since the establishment of a standard orthography in 1961 and the implementation of the federal language policy recommending the use of pupils’ first language in the early years of primary schools and its study as a subject beyond that level, several manuals have been published to support the learning of the language at all levels of education. This paper considers a partly bilingual Functional Igbo manual supported by a DVDROM, directed to primary school teachers, pupils and their families to encourage the revival of Igbo in a diasporic context and combat the downward trend affecting the language and threatening its future, in competition with an ever-growing use of Nigerian English and Pidgin.

The specificity of this manual, written and sponsored by educationists, was that it deliberately chose to privilege the use of dialects (here, Awka/Onitsha), believed to be the best option for young learners in a family setting. The paper considers issues raised by the manual and its potential impact on language skills acquisition.

Language Education in Nigeria:

the Igbo caseThe first recording of Igbo by a native speaker can be found in Equiano’s autobiography, published in English in 1789. Fully written down in the last years of the 19th century, the language, which at the time was used as lingua franca in the whole region, from the Igala territory unto the coastal area, seemed to have a bright future.During the colonial period, initial literacy and early primary school education were conducted in the mother-tongue or a language of immediate community. As early as 1882 however, a British ordinance was enacted to control and direct educational activities of Christian missions in what later became her West African colonies.

The subsequent focus of the British colonial authorities on the enforcing of English language at all levels of education, coupled with the fact that the teaching and writing of English language was then rewarded by educational grants, led to the rapid spread of English language among the populations. This greatly hindered the progress of Nigerian languages, especially Igbo, as acknowledged by an internal Spiritan Bulletin dated March 1880. The situation started changing in 1950 with the founding of the Society for Promoting Igbo language and Culture (SPILC), which played a leading role in the promotion of the language.

In Nigeria, the aim of language education has been shifting over the years. Missionaries studied the Igbo language to facilitate communication and evangelisation. Colonial authorities organised the teaching of English in schools to train the clerks they needed to man administrative posts. Independent Nigeria, while organising the teaching and learning of its main indigenous languages, decided to retain English as its official language and developed its teaching and learning to train the nation’s manpower, reach out to foreign countries and develop international relations. Current efforts to strengthen the Igbo language base correspond to the current federal policy; they equally reveal the south-eastern region’s search for its soul and identity in a difficult political context.

Most books published in the country today are primarily meant for school use, and books that sell are those considered ‘useful’, those that help pass examinations or promise a rapid success. This traditional view has led University lecturers to write for schools, and those teaching Igbo have publicly acknowledged that they write and publish primarily for their students. The fact is that there is a definite market for publications in Igbo, since this language is the means of instruction in lower primary schools before becoming a school subject in upper primary and secondary schools; the country’s adult education programmes on the other hand are entirely delivered in Nigerian languages.

Using African languages as medium of instruction

Most African countries share the Nigerian linguistic experience, with their indigenous languages relegated to the home by the forceful introduction of European languages in both education and administration. Yet, there is a record of early experiments involving African primary schools and aiming to introduce African languages as media of instruction: the one launched in Ghana in the 1930s, and similar pilot projects later initiated by international bodies such as the French ACCT (Agence de cooperation culturelle et technique) and UNESCO. Those revealed that children who had learnt to read and write in their local languages ended up mastering English/French better than others.

More recent linguistic and psychology studies and projects confirm the positive impact that using pupils’ L1 in the classroom has on children’s cognitive development (Abolou 2008). According to the report on languages of instruction published by the Canada-based International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in 1997 and based on studies carried out in six African countries including Nigeria, “language of instruction approaches […] based on mother-tongue instruction in the early years of basic education result in faster and improved capacity for the acquisition of knowledge by pupils” (Prah 2005). This finding is shared by most experts in the field. In Nigeria, the Ife pilot project, a six-year primary school project launched in the 1970s, was “an experiment in medium of instruction involving a comparison of the traditional three-year Yoruba medium plus three-year English medium with a six-year Yoruba medium in primary schools.”

This project, supervised by the Institute of Education, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, at a time the country was pursuing a reflection on its educational framework, involved rural primary schools in the neighbourhood of the university. By the end of the project, the pilot schools’ academic and cognitive performance proved better than that of other schools in the region (Bamgbose 2005 & Abolou 2008). Today, the Nigerian national language policy assigns Igbo the status of a national language, alongside Yoruba and Hausa. Recognised as a mother-tongue (L1) and/or language of immediate community (LIC), Igbo serves as language of early literacy in its relevant domain, from pre-primary to junior primary levels, and non-formal education as well as L2.

The Functional Igbo manualUbosi’s manual can be considered as representative of the highly individual and creative Igbo spirit of enterprise, with its ‘just do it’ attitude, brushing aside every objection, be it financial or intellectual, to launch a new initiative and improve it on the go. Sponsored by the cultural association ‘Out Ndi Igbo’ in line with one of their “cardinal objectives of preserving and promoting Igbo culture”, it targets parents and teachers, particularly those of the diaspora, within Nigeria and beyond. The foreword is written by Chinyere Ohiri-Aniche, Professor of Igbo Language Education and former Head, Dept. of Arts and Social Sciences, Faculty of Education, University of Lagos, who assisted the author in ensuring that the text conformed “as much as possible” to the official orthography. She highlights the aim of the manual - to support the learning of the language by children of Igbo parentage (p.iii).

A native from Nibo in Awka South (Anambra State), Ubosi chose to write her manual in a mix of Awka and Onitsha dialects, both belonging to the East Niger group of dialects/ENGD (Nwaozuzu 2008), the variety of Igbo used within her family, saying she wanted to facilitate her grand-children’s learning by reinforcing the Igbo dialect they were used to hearing at home. The writing of the manual was triggered by a seemingly trivial event narrated by the author: “the difficulties I have communicating with my grand-children”. The preface pre-empts any scholarly criticism by insisting that this, although a potential school text, is first and foremost a home venture “from the heart of a grandma”, which should not trigger any “academic heat or controversy” (p.iv).

The manual has adopted the common practice found in the local edition, of not indicating the tone-making, a practice justified by Ugorji who explained that “Igbo language is tonal; but the convention requires tones to be indicated in written prose only when doing so disambiguates a form.” The progression adopted throughout follows a traditional pattern, no doubt inspired by those which have been in use for decades. Pupils are first presented with the standard alphabet (pp.3-5), whose every letter is attached to a word and supported by an illustration. Then come the numerals (1-100). The third part starts the bilingual pattern adopted in most of the book. It covers family relationships and greetings, highlighting the importance of these greetings in the culture. Regrettably, some of the greetings listed, such as ‘ututu oma’ (‘good morning’), are creations directly translated from the English equivalent instead of the commonly used words.

From there on, the author presents first the English wordings before their Igbo translation, each word being then used in a dialogue. Each dialogue is introduced with a title in English: “Obi and Adaora welcome their mother home’, ‘Obi welcomes his father home’, etc. The content of the various dialogues, pictures and illustrations introduces the children to a contemporary, yet traditional view of Igbo family life, whose members, dressed in traditional attire, gravitate between the work place/school, church and home. Both parents are working but the mother is in charge of cooking. Children welcome their parents back home, the daughter serves food to her Dad, and the grand-parents are very present. The subjects treated are described as those used in “everyday situations/activities in the home, school or such like places”, echoing Ugorji’s comments that in the family, there is “a shared strong feeling of solidarity, but social roles are taken seriously” (2009).

Another section offers a list of common instructions, with frequently asked questions and answers. Next, we are introduced to the basic colours - it is only at that point that tones are mentioned, with the classical example of the word agwa (colour/character/bean) p.31. This section offers an additional dialogue in Igbo without any translation. The next section is about food and fruits and progresses along the same pattern, with some more untranslated Igbo text, tongue-twisters, less illustrations and more tips about the relationship between tone and meaning. Then come the household items – words, then dialogues. The rest of the manual introduces more vocabulary: activities around the home, parts of the body, accessories and clothing, cosmetics and personal hygiene, animals and birds, means of transport and types of buildings. This part is the first to list common verbs and prepositions. The last page provides a longer, untranslated Igbo text on the subject of market activities. 

The use of dialects as a medium of instruction

There have been many manuals in circulation in Nigeria over the years, most of them approved for use in primary and secondary schools. This latest one is different in two ways: first by its adoption of an almost complete bilingual pattern, seeking to meet the peculiar need of pre-primary and primary school pupils of Igbo parentage growing up outside their parents’ linguistic and cultural area. More interestingly, this manual stands out because of its deliberate use of dialect instead of the prescribed standard widely adopted throughout the South-eastern (Igboland) education sector. We will now consider this second characteristic.

Ubosi’s choice of a variety of Onitsha dialect might have been influenced by the historical and commercial importance of that dialect, initially chosen as standard language by foreign missionaries, as it was the first they encountered where they landed in the region. We know, in addition, that, “irrespective of dialectal differences, the language is mutually intelligible among the speakers” (Nnabuihe 2006). This “high degree of intelligibility among the various dialects” has been confirmed by several scholars including Emenanjo (1975), Ugorji (2005) and Nwaozuzu (2011). One must also understand that this issue remains politically charged, with dialects considered as “markers of self-image and group identity” (Emenanjo 2002) strongly inter-related with local identities and regional political power.  

Among research and development projects carried out since Independence, the most important East of the Niger was the 1970-1972 Rivers Readers Project. Motivated by the pressure to “experiment on African languages as media of teaching and learning in schools” (Bamgbose: 15), it introduced initial literacy in about thirty-four minority languages through their use as media of instruction in the first two to three years of primary education before shifting to an official or a national language. Over 40 publications were produced in 15 languages during the experiment, including primers, readers, teachers’ notes, orthography manuals and dictionaries.Kay Williamson (1935-2005) devoted several years to this project, located in the predominantly Ijo-speaking area of the Rivers State of the Niger Delta. Research on this and the Ife Six Year primary project records them as two of the most successful literacy programmes conducted on MTs in Africa (Orekan 2011).

 

Ubosi’s methodology seems to have been inspired by that of Ugorji in his work on Address Politeness in Igbo Family, whose data were first collated in dialectal form and then adapted into the official orthography “to enable a more faithful representation of forms sourced from regional dialect communities” (2009). Her choice of writing and publishing in dialect, including adding the letter ‘v’ to the standard, in a day and age where standard Igbo governs all media and print production, confirms that “dialect loyalty is real”. It proves that trying to teach standard Igbo to children used to their home dialect has often been felt as “little short of learning another language” (Ugorji 2005). More importantly, her choice can be considered as based on the understanding that the language of immediate community (LIC) should be the variety or dialect that has optimal influence in a given community, not standard Igbo, except in urban cities with larger populations of variant dialect speakers (Ugorji 2005). 

The main advantage of this is that children learn more quickly through their dialect than through an unfamiliar linguistic medium. In the same article, Ugorji advocates that people should be trained to read and write in Igbo and that “dialects should be empowered for participatory literacy by permitting literacy in the dialects” without changing the orthography. He goes on to emphasize that “what is essential for effective integration is to maintain the current Igbo orthography but expand it to include features that distinguish regional dialects (Ugorji 2005).

 

A home remedy in a global setting

Among the factors militating against the development of Nigerian languages, and Igbo in particular, as medium of teaching and learning in pre-primary and primary schools, is the growing number of private nurseries and primary schools springing up throughout Nigeria to cater for a teeming population (Ezeoke 2011, Ani 2012), a trend which extends to secondary school provision, compounded by the recurrent shortage of teachers of Igbo.

Years ago, Bamgbose already warned that the Nigerian Government policy of using “principally the mother-tongue or the language of the immediate community” as the medium of instruction at pre-primary level “[was] not enforceable” because the Government does not own these schools. In addition, “middle class parents who send their children to fee-paying pre-primary schools demand early instruction in English rather than in a Nigerian language”, empowering these schools “to ignore the policy of African language medium in favour of an imported official language” (Bamgbose 2004).

Ubosi’s manual seeks to replace the lack of exposure to Igbo language in schools, and has a distinctive ‘home-made’ feeling about it. The fact that its author has now come up with a standard Igbo version would seem to suggest that sticking to the dialect did not appeal to potential users of the manual after all, and that learning standard Igbo from the start might be considered as a more viable option to support the skills which form part of school curriculum – reading and writing in particular. It remains that “ALL dialects have valid contributions to make to the evolution of a standard Igbo that has a pan-Igbo coverage and patronage” (Emenanjo 1978: xxiii).