My brother knows Yoruba but he can't speak it.
That doesn't make sense.
My brother knows Yoruba.
I said, I said, I said, I don't know.
My brother knows Yoruba but he can't speak it.
I was trying to say, my brother knows Yoruba but he doesn't speak it.
And that's because he got so upset at how much people made fun of him that he just decided
he was never going to speak it again.
And I just think, I don't fuck with that.
I just don't.
I feel like there is a lot of people that can't speak their language but to varying
extents, like there are people that can speak it but don't have full mastery of it.
And obviously the only way you can get full mastery is to communicate more.
And I just think we place too much importance on how words sound when we still know what
they mean.
So as far as I'm concerned, as long as you understand what someone is saying, then however
they sound can just be qualified as an accent.
Right?
Yes, yes, yes.
And you know, if we go with that, then there are different accents all over the world with
each language.
So it's not really something to shame other people about.
Yeah, it's just like imagine if you went to the US and then you were speaking to, I don't
know, a barista and then you ask them for coffee.
That's what baristas do, right?
They serve coffee.
Am I right?
Yeah, I think so.
Yeah, I hope I'm right.
Like if a person starts making fun of your Nigerian accent, would that be cool?
Like do you think that would be fun?
No, that wouldn't be fun.
That would be a very bad experience.
You know, shaming sucks, right?
I think that people do it because they feel like their language is just closely rooted
to their identity.
Their language is closely rooted to them as people.
And so when they hear something that sounds different or they hear something that just
sounds like it's not exactly them, right?
The way they speak it, the way they were taught to speak it, if there's another pronunciation,
another construction of sentences, they just feel like it is against them because it becomes
different.
They become different.
Yeah.
We're, saying all these things, do you think about sometimes how important is it really
that we're able to speak our mother tongue?
Language is something that is associated with who we are, you know, as two Nigerians, right?
Our languages are so important to who we are.
It also represents, you know, a viewpoint of where we have been throughout history.
Well, the problem with what you're saying now is, okay, we have 530 different languages
in Nigeria, right?
And like, if everything you're saying about language being who we are and being so core
to our identity, right?
If everything that you're saying along those lines is true, then like, we have 530 plus
different people living in one country, like under one set of laws, under one single constitution.
How like, is that good?
Well, obviously, it hasn't worked out very well.
Yeah, not so far.
It hasn't been good, you know.
So, do you know that there was a world mother tongue day?
21st of February.
World mother language slash mother tongue.
Mother language.
Who the hell says mother tongue.
But yeah, world mother tongue day.
21st of February.
Have you ever celebrated?
No, I have not.
You don't just like speak Igbo.
Just go on speaking.
We go on speaking to everybody.
But no, no, no, I haven't.
Actually, I wasn't aware of it till we started, you know, discussing this conversation.
So I think it's cool, but I also, I think that it doesn't really affect us here.
Why?
We have 530 mother tongues.
No, what I mean is our day to day, you know, we're, hold on.
In our day to day, speaking our languages right.
So a day set aside to celebrate the language is not as effective as it would be to children
in the United States.
Or like the UK.
It is not the same.
Because there, it is a remembrance.
Exactly.
There, like it is a commemoration of history.
But here, like it is our present.
Yeah, like it is just our present.
How does language change us?
How does it, I don't think you can actually say language changes us because like we always
always have language, right?
We don't encounter language.
We always grow up with language.
So how does language shape us?
Make us actually is...
Your perception of the world remains, you know, an idea till you speak it out, till
you act on it.
And so because of that language, you know, as a tool for speaking out is very important
because it basically brings us, you know, as a collective, as an individual in that
collective basically brings us to, to life.
I think of things like Ikigai, Japanese.
And I think of how those kinds of concepts are very core to some certain societies, some
certain groups of people, like democracy and the Greeks, which became democracy and everybody
essentially.
But like there are...language is very valuable to informing these ideas.
And it makes me now ask, like how many of these sort of ideas do we have in Nigerian
languages?
Like the concept of Omoluabi, for example, is, you know, can't really be described in English.
Yeah, well that's just one word.
I'm sure there are more.
Like there are definitely many more.
It just feels like the advanced concepts that we use essentially in our lives day to day,
very few of them have Yoruba interpretations and it just seems like we don't have ours
originally either.
But you know, I just think, I think we can consider updating languages, like languages
get updated.
I don't know when this happened, but when somebody thought of the word "conundrum", like
I fuck with that guy.
He just like just said it.
And you can imagine how the people around him were just confused.
Okay, so yeah, like you can see all these different ways English words get formed.
Like some of them are just formed out of the blue.
Some of them are adopted from other languages.
They can form words by like adding prefixes and suffixes to an existing word.
This is crazy.
Port, import, export, transport, portable, deporting, transportation and important.
Okay, the only one that is separate is important.
But like all the other words are related concepts, which is pretty interesting.
We actually took all these stats from people.
I mean, who else do you take stats from?
So 70% of the people we talked to between the age 22 and 25, 19% between the ages of
18 and 21, a few kids, a few 30+ and a few 26 to 29.
I don't know what are they?
They're just people.
They're in their least 20s.
Anyway, most of them live in Lagos, as you would expect.
It feels like most of Nigeria lives in Lagos.
Yeah, that's what it feels like.
But I assure you, that isn't the case.
So fluency.
Now the thing is 19%.
Okay, well, most of the people that responded are from Lagos.
So we understand that this is like a metropolitan survey.
But 19% of people can neither speak nor understand their mother tongue, which is a lot, right?
I think.
Oh yeah.
19% can understand it perfectly, but can only respond back in English.
Only 26% can speak, but they include English in it.
And 29%, so basically 30%.
Okay, now it's like less than what?
This is like 10% can actually speak read and write.
Have full comprehension.
10%.
It's not a lot.
No, not at all.
I was in my Jim Beglin bag.
Jim Beglin bag.
There was this reason.
This guy says like his dad can't speak his language.
His mom can speak.
No, his dad can't speak his language.
His mom can speak the language fluently.
And because of this difference.
Only English is spoken at home.
That's real.
That's like something I can relate to because my parents settled on English because they
speak different languages.
Yeah.
Communication barrier.
You know.
Like.
Okay, but the good thing is everybody wants to learn their mother tongue.
Yeah, 98.5%.
That's a good sign.
I don't know if it's just me, but that's a lot.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I agree.
But it may just be the two of us.
I think it may be just me.
86.8% of people think that the fact that we speak 530 Nigerian languages is good.
So 13%, 13% think it is bad.
I am a member of that 13%.
Well, I just, I mean, I think it's cool that everybody has their thing, you know, but at
the same time, when you think about it in context of Nigeria, right, it would have been way,
I don't know if it would have been better.
I don't know.
I don't know if it's good or bad.
Easier.
But I know it'll be easier.
I know it'll be easier to communicate.
It's definitely easier.
It'll be easier to aggregate views.
Like there won't be, there won't be any, "Emilokan".
If we all spoke one language.
Yes, like.
Yeah, yeah.
Just pick the best president.
We won't have all these problems
Okay.
So we asked if, like, we asked for extra opinions.
Yeah.
And like, people just wrote in "no's".
Like they were filling up for our response boxes with "no's".
Yeah, but then they said they had nothing else.
Yeah, but also like, you can just leave it blank.
Yeah.
Yeah, but then when Nigerians, we have to give our.
We have to.
give our two cents.
Yes, we always have two cents.
We have.
the most impotant two cents in the world.
Nope with a smiley.
Somebody wrote NA.
Not available.
Do you know how funny that is?
Like nah, not available.
Two people actually.
Like someone says they would really love to learn their language, like they were reiterating.
Like they really, like they felt that question.
Yeah.
Someone said it's never too late to learn.
Someone said he thinks some people are inclined, more inclined to understand because, okay,
he thinks that some people are more inclined to like, learn languages than others.
Yeah, I think that's true.
Yeah, I think there are people that are just predisposed.
Yeah, to learn multiple languages.
Yeah, like my auntie speaks like, I think she speaks all the Nigerian languages.
I'm sorry.
She speaks the major.
the major Nigerain languages.
She does not speak 530 languages.
I assure you.
That would be impressive.
Yeah, it's would be really impressive.
Someone wants to learn Hausa, which is cool, right?
Learn every language you can.
It's also like, I feel like we should also be more actively learning each other's languages.
Yeah, yeah, that would be, you know, it's just, you can just understand context.
You can just get a lot of things.
Yeah.
Change your life really.
Imagine people say, oh, Europeans know all these languages because there's so many languages spoken in Europe, right?
So like how we talk about how Americans are people that only know one language.
Americans and English people, but we're like Germans and other Europeans know at least two languages.
Some of them know three, like Dutch people know.
Most of the Dutch people know three languages, right?
But we're like, okay, because they are Europeans, that's why they know.
Because everybody knows English and they know their language.
But then here, like in the same country, Europe, like Europe is a continent.
Like in this country, Nigeria, we speak 530 different languages, but most people only speak one or two, right?
English and your native language or only your native language.
So it's like within a country.
Like why don't we, you know?
Yeah, learn. Try to learn.
Yeah, that's... I feel like everybody should just knows fou languages in Nigeria.
Yeah, that would be ideal, but then it would be difficult really to learn four languages.
I don't think so.
Language is just like when you're a child, if you're being spoken to with four different languages.
You're going to learn four languages.
You're just going to know four languages.
Okay, well, when you talk about it like that, you know, the way I was seeing it was a like in the present thing.
No, no, no.
You don't just learn four languages.
Please.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel that point. Do I feel that point?
Somebody said we need to ditch English and embrace Pidgin.
Nah, nah, that's really funny because Pidgin is just English.
It's literally...
It's just English.
It's broken English.
I feel like that's such a weird way to describe it.
Yeah, it's broken.
It condemns it. It's so... it's so fucking negative.
Broke English.
Broke... destroyed it.
That's horrible.
Yeah, but that's pretty much it from us.
It's been real.
Yeah, it's been real.
This has been TLDR.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
We never said it.
Yes, TLDR.
And I'm Timilehin.
I'm Oluchukwu.
Cool.
Have a great day.