Same emphasis should be placed on both official and immediate environment language

Good evening everyone, I hope we enjoyed our weekends and hope our day was productive🥰.. As a linguist, I have the knowledge that a child acquire the language of his environment unconsciously, and he/she began to grab the words one by one. For example; mummy, daddy, stand up, go, come etc. As a linguist we call the language of the immediate environment L1 as it is the first language of acquisitions. Thereafter as we all know that English is the official language in Nigeria and we call it L2 because it's the second language we learn.

When I was young,, the first apartment we lived at first consist of people of the Igbo tribe and they often make use of English to communicate, so I was influenced although my own parent belong to the Yoruba tribe but for me to feel along they left me. There was no problem untill I had encounter with a strange area where what they use to communicate is Yoruba and I could not communicate using Yoruba.

On this fateful day, I went to school as usual but my mum use to come pick me after school but she stayed long that day and I was the only kid left in school so I left school on my own and kept going towards the area of our house. Meanwhile the route is very far and we use to take motorcycle but I kept trekking. On my way one man saw me and challenged me using Yoruba language, meanwhile I was just five years old then, I was not able to respond.

My parent were already disturbed 🤦 as they could not find me. The man kept me and different people were asking too many questions but I still can't reply them until one man noticed that I did not understand the Yoruba language and he communicated with me using the English language and I respond, everyone was surprised and they get to know where to take me to. On getting to my parent place they told them to please teach me their own native language. My parent learned their lessons in a hard way😭

So I'm advising the parent to place same emphasis on their native language and the official language of their country. It will also be of advantage for the child. Your child will be on the saver's side if she has the knowledge of both language.

It is not a crime to be a bilingual, I am currently learning French in school, but you know when you're learning a language and there is no environment where you put it into practice, you will know it in 5 minutes and thereafter you don't remember anymore because" practice makes perfect". So it's easier to learn a new language where you can communicate with people of like minds so that you get to practice what you have learnt.