Govt harmonises orthographies of four local languages

TO advance the teaching and learning of indigenous languages and to preserve the nation’s culture and heritage, the standardised and harmonised orthographies of four local languages will be effectively used by teachers, researchers and students.

Minister of State for Education, Ezenwo Nyesom Wike, disclosed this during the handover of the harmonised and standardised orthographies of four Nigerian and other related languages at the weekend.

According to him, orthography helps in the preservation of local languages by making them amenable to further improvement through research and documentation.

The Nigerian languages that had their standardised and harmonised orthographies handed over to the Federal Ministry of Education were: Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo and Ijaw.

Wike said: “Societies that have developed written language continued to influence other societies in a manner that ensures the dominance of their culture and languages. The development of harmonised and standardised orthographies in Nigerian languages should be viewed against this background and taken more seriously by all stakeholders if we must curtail the cascading influence of foreign cultures and values on our youths.”

The minister stated that the most practical strategy to check the decline in the study, knowledge and usage of indigenous languages was to have them documented.

He said: “The need to do so as a country is strongly supported by the fact that we are a multi-ethnic nation. Consequently, our national literacy and education models must inevitably reflect the extant linguistic and ethnic pluralism.”