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English is 1 of the astir spoken languages successful the world. It has travelled and attached itself to nations, lodging itself successful schools, governments, and planetary businesses. Today, retired of the world’s 7.8 cardinal inhabitants, astir 1.35 cardinal talk English. Yet the bulk are not autochthonal speakers. For these people, English is an further language, spoken alongside their parent tongues. Their children past person the accidental to get 2 languages.
Meanwhile, connection learning and acquisition are a substance of exposure. A kid learns what they perceive astir often. In Nigeria, it is progressively communal to find children who cannot talk their autochthonal languages, adjacent portion their grandparents are fluent. Parents, often with bully intentions, take to emphasise English astatine home. They judge English is the summons to societal mobility, an easier aboriginal successful a satellite that tilts toward the West. And they are not wrong; English does unfastened doors. But it softly closes others.
In connection learning, it is said that our quality to grasp a 2nd connection is tied to the first. As the saying goes, if thing does not beryllium successful your language, it mightiness arsenic good not beryllium astatine all. But, arsenic determination are ever exceptions to rules, determination are respective things that beryllium successful English cultures that bash not autochthonal cultures. So, if children suffer their parent tongue, they suffer much than conscionable a acceptable of words. They suffer the grounding that helps them recognize nuance and meaning.
So, however should non-Western parents, particularly successful Africa, rise their children? With English, oregon with their autochthonal languages?
On 1 hand, English is access. It carries exposure, relevance, and successful galore ways, endurance successful a planetary economy. To contradict a kid fluency successful English whitethorn consciousness similar handicapping them successful a satellite wherever occupation applications, assemblage admittance essays, and adjacent aesculapian consultations are performed successful English. On the different hand, surrendering wholly to English carries its ain risk. Isn’t this a shadiness of assemblage inferiority, that the precise connection of the colonisers present becomes the lone lingua the children tin claim?
Every civilization begins with language. It is the archetypal and astir intimate marker of identity. A Tiv antheral overseas whitethorn not beryllium recognised by his apparel oregon features, but the infinitesimal helium speaks Tiv, helium is instantly seen by his people. Language collapses distance. When children are raised without their autochthonal tongue, they suffer not lone transportation with their elders but besides the instinctive taste codes buried successful proverbs, idioms and histories that are often untranslatable. Or however bash you translate, Igi gogoro ma gunmi loju? from Yoruba to English?
It is understood that children tin turn into both, but it requires intention. The caput tin accommodate 2 languages astatine once, and whichever dominates depends connected deliberate exposure. In practice, this mightiness mean speaking Hausa oregon Ibibio astatine home, portion English takes its earthy spot successful schools. It mightiness mean insisting that children cognize however to greet, commune oregon archer a communicative successful their parent tongue, adjacent portion they constitute their essays successful English.
The bigger representation is that globalisation has already ensured that our children volition larn English, oregon different languages, if you may. It is astir inescapable. But we tin ever find that balance. How? I volition fto you cognize erstwhile I person a child. What I bash cognize is that a kid fluent successful their autochthonal connection carries a portion of history. And if they suffer it, they suffer their identity.
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