Is Guosa Nigeria’s
long-awaited indigenous lingua franca?
By IKEOGU
OKE
Sunday,
December 24, 2006
It began like a child’s play in 1965. Forty-one years
later, the dream is within the realms of possibility. Alex Igbineweka, who evolved
the new language, Guosa, believes that there is no need searching for an indigenous
Nigerian Nigeria lingua franca when Guosa has all it takes to be just that.
Before
the first utterance of Guosa was made in 1965, there was an agitation in Nigeria
to have common languages for communication by all the ethnic groups after the
1960 political independence from Britain.
That led to the approval of
nine Nigerian languages, including Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Edo, Fulfude, Efik, Izon,
etc., by the government for media broadcast. As a young boy growing up in Nigeria
then, Igbineweka was fascinated by the variety of languages in the country he
was listening to on the TV. Out of curiosity, he began to acquire the various
vocabulary structures.
An indigene of Edo State with Edo language as his mother tongue, when Igbineweka
migrated to Enugu in the early 1960s, something amazing happened. He was set out
to learn Igbo language, but found himself interlarding it with Edo language.
“I
was unable to speak Igbo fluently, neither could I speak Edo fluently; I was missing
them up,” he told Sunday Sun on recent visit to Nigeria
from his base in the US.
In 1964, he told his family that he would like to be identified as
somebody who would evolve a new language, but they made a jest of him, telling
him to have a better dream. In 1965, when he came to Lagos to settle, his attempt
to learn and speak Yoruba was similar to his experience with Igbo in Enugu. “I
found myself mixing Yoruba with English. That was unusual, because for many people,
it was common to mix Edo with English, but, in my own case, I was mixing Edo with
Yoruba.”
Of course, that was a telltale sign that he was cut out
to evolve a new language. The heartwarming piece of news is that Guosa is now
an international language and has gradually spread its tentacles in international
academic institutions worldwide. The American Heritage University in Southern
California, for example, has adopted it as a subject.
Right now, anybody
can apply to study Guosa language in the university and the university is ready
to endow the language for research. Interestingly, West Contra Costa Unified School
District Adult Education Dept, California, has included the language into its
school syllabus. In both schools, Igbineweka teaches the language to students
and the schools take enrollment fees from the students who study it.
Is
it not surprising that while Guosa is making inroad into America education system,
the reverse is the case in Nigeria? Igbineweka told Sunday Sun that when he first
evolved the language in Nigeria, he tried all his best to get the Ministry of
Education to support it, but instead of commendations, his initiative was criticized
for lacking relevant parts of speech. He was disappointed in the position of the
ministry, because it is not proper to use anglophone language to judge an African
language.
“In the west, once you create something
new, they encourage you, but here, they discourage you,” he lamented, adding
that such a thing contributes to brain drain in the country.
Before travelling
to the United States, he had worked extensively on the structure of the language,
little wonder that he did not find it difficult to get the approval of the American
authorities. What’s more, the language now has a dictionary. It took him
nine years to write the dictionary of Guosa language vocabulary (about forty thousand
words).
One of the problems of Nigeria, he said, is the multiple language we
have, but experience has shown that any country that wants to be formidable and
stay together must have one language. The leading countries of America, Europe
and Asia are examples. Thus, he recommends Guosa language as Nigeria’s lingua
franca.
Already there are indications that language would be acceptable by
Nigerians. On November 23, 2006, it had its first trial in the country at the
Training College, Moson College, Festac Town, Lagos, with thirty students. “The
students were highly motivated,” he enthused.
He is, therefore, calling
on the National Council for Arts and Culture and other relevant agencies to collaborate
with him to realize the dream of having an “ultimate” Nigerian lingua
franca. “If Nigeria will stay together, the new language will be Guosa,”
he emphasized. “I am following the great steps of great people to make my
own innovation. This is my own contribution to Nigeria,” he affirmed.
Below
are the English translations of some Guosa words: àbíncí
(food), gbóntì (hear/listen), in mo ng shìengá (I
am going). The word “Guosa” is derived from Igbineweka’s Edo
middle name, because when he evolved, it he did not want to use the name of any
Nigerian language for it. But he hopes that if it is accepted as Nigeria’s
lingua franca, the name of the language could as well be called Nigerian, just
like in Chinese, German French, among others.
Unlike the aborted Wazobia
language, Guosa language is formulated from both the major languages and other
minority languages in Nigeria. (Photo caption: Guosa Language Train-the-Trainer
Programme at Ikeja Snr. Gram. School, Lagos, recently.) |
