Towards An Igbo Literary Standard

P.Akujuoobi Nwachukwu

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000448047
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This monograph is a contribution to an ongoing debate. Dated May 1982, so updated in some respects it remains the most accessible and systematic discussion of the various questions concerned with standardization of Igbo. With chapters distinguishing between a written a spoken standard of Igbo, with written being based on the Central dialects and the spoken with the dialects of the Onicha type. Including a surveying of successful examples of Swahili, Hausa, Shona and German; and official existing orthography of Igbo.

Chapter 1The standardising of Igbo

DOI: 10.4324/9781003209553-2

For any language to become an effective medium of communication in a technological age such as ours, an effective medium of instruction in education throughout schools and colleges as well as the subject of serious academic studies, it has to have developed through three stages. These are firstly, the written stage, secondly the standardisation stage and thirdly the modernisation stage. These three processes are essential in language development. To attain their present position of prestige, langguages such as English and French have had to pass through all of these: writing (or 'graphisation' as Ferguson (1958) described it), standardisation and modernisation. Of the three, Igbo could be described as having passed through the first stage only, though even here there are many questions yet to resolve. (I shall return to the outstanding questions of Igbo orthography in chapter 2.) Hence the next important consideration must be standardisation.

Language standardisation

I must begin by making a very important distinction between a literary standard and a spoken standard. This monograph is mainly concerned with the issue of a literary standard Igbo. The question of a spoken standard is only marginal and will not be considered beyond this chapter. In an ideal situation the written (literary) and spoken standards should be the same; but in practice this is seldom the case. The reason is that a literary standard is normative and prescriptive in character and spirit whereas a spoken standard is not; a literary standard is generally consciously propagated through its use in education and the examination system associated with it, in publications and in the media, but a spoken standard is never so propagated. On the contrary, the speech model that a speaker uses will depend on the group or groups with whom he wants to be identified. Le Page (1968) puts forward a hypothesis about the individual's behaviour:

The individual creates his system of verbal behaviour so as to resemble those common to the group or groups with which he wishes from time to time to be identified, to the extent that

1. he is able to identify those groups,
2. his motives are sufficiently clear-cut,
3. his opportunities for learning are adequate,
4. his ability to learn — that is — to change his habits where necessary — is unimpaired.

In other words, verbal behaviour is an act of identity which varies from time to time. But a written standard is something much more permanent, exercising a prescriptive and normative influence on the spoken form. It is because of the gap which normally exists between the two varieties that one sometimes hears the remark that a person 'talks like a textbook', that is, of someone whose spoken form of the language is unusually close to the written form in both style and content.

The distinction between the written and spoken forms of language needs to be emphasised if we are to get our priorities right. Moreover, the two are frequently confused. For example, Emenanjo (1975a) has assumed that the literary and spoken standard must be one and the same thing. Such a situation would be desirable but it is not necessary. His observation that language was first spoken before it was written is true, but that fact does not undermine the importance of writing, for although writing is a secondary stage in language development, it is nevertheless, a very crucial stage through which all the important languages of the world have passed. It is writing that confers on language some form of stability and enables it to be standardised and thus become an authoritative reference point for its users. This is what the eighteenth century grammarians sought to do for the English language in their effort to 'codify the principles of the language and reduce it to rule' (Baugh, 1956, p. 341). In my judgement, the process of standardisation can begin only after a language has been reduced to writing.

Given that Igbo exists in written form (which I will describe in more detail in chapter 2), I would like to discuss in some depth, the question of a standard literary form for Igbo. In my view the operation of standardising a language consists of two basic steps: (i) the creation or choice of a model, and (ii) the promotion of this model over rival models. To begin with the creation or choice of a model in relation to the Igbo language, it seems logical to consider next the status of Central Igbo, today and in the past.

Central Igbo

The term, Central Igbo, came into existence after Ida Ward's linguistic tour of the Igbo country in 1939. Ward (1941, p. 7) set out the aim of her research tour:

The research expedition of 1939 was undertaken to examine a number of Ibo dialects from the point of view of sound usages and constructions in order to find out if there is a dialect which could be used as a literary medium for African writers and for school publications, which would be acceptable over a considerable area of the Ibo country and which might form the basis of a growing 'standard' Ibo; further to investigate in what areas this dialect would be easily understood; and finally collect as much comparative dialect material as possible.

After a thorough examination of the comparative dialect material collected, Ward came to the conclusion:

The two types of Ibo dialects which appear to differ most widely are those of the central area of Ibo country and Onitsha, and the differences between them are considerable in the sounds used, in construction and vocabulary. It has been customary to use the terms Owerri Ibo and Onitsha Ibo for these two, but such labels imply that the dialects are more or less co-terminous with the political diversions of the Owerri and Onitsha provinces. This is not so. It has not been sufficiently realised, perhaps, that the geographical extent of them does not by any means coincide with the political boundaries of the two provinces.

The so-called 'Owerri types' in some form or other, must have many more speakers than the Onitsha dialect. Some of the Northern dialects including Nsukka, Eke, Udi, as well as a number of what may be called borderline dialects (which are mainly in the Onitsha province) show more affinity with the central Ibo type than with the Onitsha dialect.

On the strength of the above findings, Ward recommended that Central Igbo should be tried as the literary standard. Thus, although the home of Central Igbo is in the old Owerri province, this dialect group has some affinity with dialects in the old Onitsha province.

I have found it necessary to quote Ida Ward at length in order to effectively comment on the quotations themselves and how they have been greeted with a sneer by certain Igbo scholars. Modern dialectology may question everything about Ida Ward's terms of reference, procedure and eventual conclusion' but it cannot challenge the linguistic facts on which her conclusion is based.

Those facts can be verified or falsified only with evidence from new fieldwork preferably carried out by Igbo mother tongue linguists. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, it would be unfair to criticise her or to insinuate that her conclusion is not borne out by facts (cf. Emenanjȯ, 1975a).

Central Igbo is first and foremost a spoken dialect; 'The suggested Central dialect is as near as can be a consistent whole; it is a spoken, living language with nothing artificial about it'. It started to win recognition as the literary standard immediately after Ida Ward's recommendation of it as the dialect to be tried. According to Ward, Central Igbo closely resembles that used in the publications of the Government Translation Bureau and that form was decided upon in 1930 by an advisory committee including members of the main Missions (Catholic and Protestants). As both Ward, Emenanjȯ and everybody else agree, Central Igbo is the most described of the Igbo dialects. It is consequently evolving as the literary standard, and should be helped by all Igbo enthusiasts to do so.

It would be premature at this stage to assess the success of Central Igbo as the spoken standard. Yet this seems to be what has been done on occasions:

To survive as a spoken medium, Central Igbo must contend with a popular, universally used and dynamic form of Igbo that has been in the making for some time now! Let us call it 'Modern Igbo'.... It is the Igbo of the urban areas (Emenanjȯ 1975a, p. 127).

There is no doubt that Emenanjȯ's 'Modern Igbo' is very akin to the Onicha dialects. The reason for this is not far to seek. For a long time the Onicha group of dialects remained a prestige dialect in all urban centres with a strong civil service population, especially in Enugu, the former East Regional Capital. With our knowledge of educational and political development in former Eastern Nigeria we can understand why this has been the case. What emerges from this brief survey is that the two dialect blocks — Ȯnicha and Central Igbo - have been playing complementary roles: the former is the spoken standard and the latter the written or literary standard.² There is no justifiable reason why anybody should wish to terminate these complementary roles which would amount almost to a diglossia.³

If Central Igbo at the moment lacks a universal acceptance among the Igbo, as Emenanjȯ rightly argues, it is because the educated Igbo have hitherto not shown pride in studying their language, let alone popularising it. The choice of a literary standard is one thing, its popularisation is another; the one is as important as the other. It is no good manufacturing an article without the means of making it available to everybody. Success in language planning depends on establishing channels of communication, that is, mechanisms of popularising the standard. A glance at some other languages and how they have arrived at an acceptable and accepted standard may help to illustrate the point.

Swahili

The standard Swahili of today was originally the dialect of the offshore islands of Zanzibar, Pemba, Mafia, the Comoros and a number of coastal towns. The word 'Swahili' itself is an Arabic word meaning 'coasts' or 'port towns'. According to 1969 estimates the people for whom Swahili is a mother tongue numbered less than one million. But speakers of Swahili as a second language number well over 10 million by the same 1969 estimates. They are mainly found in Tanzania and Kenya; this number does not include other speakers in the Nilotic-speaking areas of Kenya and parts of Zaïre. The supervision of popularisation of the standard language has been the responsibility of a specific government agency set up for that purpose. This was the Inter-Territorial Language (Swahili) Committee, later known simply as the East African Swahili Committee, which has now been incorporated into the Institute of Swahili Research, of the University of Dar es Salaam. As might be expected, the spread of the standard literary dialect has affected other dialects, with the resultant tendency to level up or down to the standard as the case may be. Swahili is today the official language of the Republic of Tanzania, and it is only a matter of time before the governments of Kenya and Uganda adopt it as their official language. It is 'the best known lingua franca in Africa with approximately 50 million speakers in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique and Madagascar', (Turay, 1975). If the OAU (Organisation for African Unity) wants a language of African unity which will cut across the francophone/anglophone divide, the obvious candidate is Swahili.

Hausa

If the Swahili example is too far from home to impress, let us take a brief look at the case of Hausa. The standardisation of Hausa began in 1901 with Hanns Vischer, a Swiss by birth, who was the Director of Education in Nigeria and subsequently the Director of Education in Northern Nigeria under the governorship of Sir Frederick (later Lord) Lugard.⁴ His first contribution to education in Northern Nigeria was an article which appeared in 1912 under the title 'Rules for Hausa Spelling'. This article was followed by the publication of a dictionary (Bargery, 1934) (see also Westermann, 1934). At the same time, the necessary mechanisms for the process of standardisation and the equally important task of spreading the standard were established. In the 1930s a Hausa Translation Bureau was established to be superseded by the North Regional Literature Bureau (NORLA) and in 1955 the Hausa Language Board. 'More recently,' as Paden (1968, p. 202) pointed out the function of standardisation and extension of the Hausa language has been undertaken outside Nigeria, by various Hausa broadcasting services. ... (notably BBC, London and Radio Ghana) and by contact with the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.' Both Swahili and Hausa have been cited to show the type of mechanism necessary to ensure the spread of the standard. But there are two other languages that deserve special mention because in dialect complexity they resemble the Igbo language situation and therefore faced similar problems of stan-dardisation. They are Shona, one of the two main languages of Zimbabwe, and German.

Shona

Shona, which is spoken in Mashonaland by some three and a half million people, is one of the two main African languages of Zimbabwe, the other being Ndebele according to the 1969 population census (p. 27). The standard or common language called Shona does not belong to any speech community; it is a standard created from a number of closely related dialects.

When Professor Clement Doke was charged in 1929 with the difficult task of discovering whether or not it was possible to devise a literary form common to all the dialects of Mashonaland, he started by investigating the four well-known dialect clusters of Zezuru, Kararjga, Manyika and Ndau. But before long, he discovered that the above four dialects along with Korekore and Kalaqga could be grouped together 'as but local exemplifications of one language' sharing the following features:

1. underlying unity of vocabulary,
2. common sharing of particular phonetic features,
3. common sharing of particular grammatical features (1931a, p. 29)

On the strength of the above findings, Doke made the following recommendations among others:

• Recommendation 1
  That there be two official native languages recognised in Southern Rhodesia, one for the main Shona-speaking area, and one for the Ndebele-speaking area.
• Recommendation 2
  That one unified literary language be recognised to serve the main Shona area.
• Recommendation 3
  That the name of the unified language be Shona, and in the vernacular Cisona.
• Recommendation 4
  That a unified grammar be standardised on the basis of Karaqga and Zezuru.
• Recommendation 5
  That a dictionary of Shona be prepared, to be as inclusive as possible of words from Zezuru, Kararjga, Manyika, and Ndau. That for the present, Korekore words be admitted sparingly and that the use of colloquial words from the dialects of Budya, Tauara, Karombe, Danda, Teve, sangwe, etc. be discouraged....

• Recommendation 10
  That the Government language examinations be enlarged in scope and reorganised.
• 1. That they should be more general in their being framed to meet the needs of members of the native department, the native development department, and the police.
  2. That they should be available to members of missionary bodies which do not at present organize their own courses of study and examinations for new members of their staff.
  3. That the examinations should be taken in two parts: the first purely oral examination in the presence of a native representative of the particular dialect for which the candidate presents himself, this to be purely a test of conversational and translational ability.
     The second to be taken at a later date in order to test the candidate's knowledge of the grammar and composition of the unified Shona. That detailed syllabuses and courses of language study should be provided for the guidance of candidates.
  • Recommendation 11
    That the following procedure be followed for the introduction of the new orthography and the unifying of the dialects:
    1. That there be issued immediately a wall-sheet of the new alphabet complete with key-words for hanging up in schools and offices...

From these recommendations it is obvious that the need to keep the grammar of Shona unified was a primary one for Doke, hence Recommentation 4 which he defended on the following grounds:

A comparison of existing grammatical work...