By Muhsin Ibrahim
Language is one of the most amazing things in the world. We often overlook its influence in our lives because it is mundane. We all use a language, verbally or non-verbally, daily. We acquire language, i.e., we grow up speaking effortlessly. Thus, we don’t consider its profound impact on how we interact with others or on how we think about and view the world.
We had international conferences on Africa in Cologne, Germany and San Francisco, United States. This short piece is about something other than the many academic papers presented; it is about how hearing someone speaking our language or a local language we are familiar with in a foreign country attracts our attention.
In both Cologne and San Francisco, I observed a pattern. People speaking the same language form a circle. It does not matter whether you are an ethnic speaker of the language or a non-ethnic speaker. People quickly click, for it is easy to use a language you grew up speaking – or so I feel.
In our case, we forget our differences. I met long-time online friends Nura Abubakar and Dr Hadiza Kere for the first time in San Francisco. Nura was with another friend, an ethnic Hausa speaker from Benin. Then came Kefas Lamak, a Kano-born Christian Hausa speaker. We spent hours and hours conversing.
We also met Umar Sheikh Tahir Bauchi, whose father requires no introduction (he is one of Nigeria’s most distinguished Islamic scholars). Nevertheless, we blended further and moved around. We joked, laughed, and discussed specific local issues and events. It can be challenging to do all this in another language.
The same occurred when we – Prof. Abdalla Uba Adamu, Dr Umma Aliyu Musa, Dr Musa Ibrahim, and I – met in Cologne earlier in the year. Mahmoud, an Egyptian speaker of Hausa, couldn’t find a better company than us.
I love writing in English. Most of us struggle to write or speak Hausa without code-switching or code-mixing. Still, Hausa is the language I am most comfortable with in conversations, especially on non-academic issues.
I will not rehash what several scholars, such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o, say about the relationship between language and identity. What I described above is yet another piece of evidence for that. We are not only Africans or Nigerians but Hausa or Yoruba, Igbos, you name it. Unlike many other speakers, Hausa speakers find it difficult to use any other language when meeting fellow Hausa speakers, unless necessary.
For instance, one of us in the attached picture (Samba Bah) comes from The Gambia and doesn’t speak Hausa. He’s very friendly and understanding, and would like to remain with our company. He even attempted to talk a few Hausa words!
While I don’t squarely blame our use of foreign languages for our setbacks in Africa and other countries of the Global South, I concur that the inclusion of native languages in our school systems would significantly enhance academic performance. Now, students struggle to learn the language a teacher uses and the concepts they are taught. This is “double wahala”. We should think more about this and do more.
I feel the same way whenever I meet a hausa speaker, immediately my brain goes numb and unable to say words in English. Deep down I feel a sense of betrayal trying to speak a foreign colonial language when we can converse in our mother tongue.
ReplyDeleteNothing annoys me most like the way we see foreign language as superior to ours and a measure of intelligence. As hausa speakers we must try and address these issues before we lose our language.
This is a good one
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