Knowing your native language

Hello read dot cashers. How are you all doing. It has been a while since I last came in here. Three days to be precise. There was a heavy thunderstorm last week that caused a disruption in our power supply. I haven't been able to charge my phone since then. They have carried out the necessary repairs and now we have light. Well I was surprised that they were able to restore the light within 4 days because when such things happen usually stay for a month without any power supply.

By the way Nigeria celebrated her 62nd independence anniversary on October 1st. I am so happy for her. We have gone a long way. Even in the eyes of adversity. Even though we have faced times of violence and peace, threatening separation and unity, retrogression and progress, we still stand strong as one country. God surely sees us through.

Today I wanted to share my experience I have had write your primary school into secondary school. it is the experience of the Prohibition of native language speaking in schools. I don't know if this was ever a rule in other countries, but as a Nigerian who attended both his primary and secondary education in Nigeria, speaking native language in class comes with penalty. It was either you speak English or you just keep quiet. English was not a language we were conversant with, so there were lots of defaulter. The punishment for defaulting was usually a few painful strokes of cane or even weeding tell school compound.

I remember one time, two of my classmates were involved in a fight. One of them was good in English while we other was new to the school and didn't know how to speak English. The guy who wasn't good in English was Modestus. The class liked to make fun of his name. He never reacted to us because he couldn't speak English and didn't want to be punished for speaking his native language. Modestus had thrown the first punch after one of the students called him 'monday-tools' repeatedly. When the teacher canme to separate them, they were asked to explain what caused the fight. Modestus who couldn't speak English was forced to piece together the little he knew. He just said, "that boy was call my name and embarrassment". It was a day of laughter for us. He was still punished by the teacher for not speaking correct English.

So one thing we were tasked to do was not to know how to speak English but to be fluent in it. These teachers forgot that our native language is also important. We were allowed to not know our native language but are forced to know that foreign one. Even some parents are not left out in this training. They force their children to speak and know only English. I had a friend in my childhood days that was not allowed to speak Igbo by her parents. If she defaults, there would be no meat in her soup.

It is true that one needs to know the accepted general language of his country, but I do not support that being at the expense of his native language. How else are we supposed to recognize ourselves if we travel out of the country if not through our native language. How can you even preserve your culture if you do not even know the basic thing about yourself which is your language.

I feel like it is an eyesore to see a full grown adult struggle to learn how to speak his language when he has parents that are fluent in it. What happened to childhood days? Why wasn't he taught? It baffles me to see parents who think that because they are well educated, native language is too old fashioned for their children to learn.

It doesn't matter if my children will be born in Europe or Asia or America or any part of the world, they must know their native language. I'll be sure to speak that to them because I believe that it is from knowing your language that you begin to appreciate the content of your culture.

Are you a supporter of knowingbones native language?