A professor of Yoruba and Linguistics, Prof. Akinloye Ojo, on Saturday urged the Federal Government to document the indigenous languages in the country in order to boost the chances of their survival in future.
Ojo, who is of the University of Georgia, United States, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos that about 5,000 Nigerian indigenous languages were presently threatened.
He said that the affected languages were from the North-East Zone of the country where only the aged and adults speak the languages.
The don, who said that though the languages were threatened, they were not necessarily nearing extinction because there were few speakers.
He, however, said that some languages have less than 50,000 speakers.
The don said documenting various indigenous languages in writing, video and audio would promote their chances of survival.
He canvassed that government should empower languages as well as their speakers to become inventive.
“Languages in Nigeria, according to the linguistics associations, are more threatened than in North America.
“Whereas, some languages are considered threatened they still have thousands of speakers,’’ he said.
Ojo said that some languages were “ struggling’’ because speakers were being lost while children were no longer speaking them.
“Some languages are, however, empowered daily, particularly the national languages like Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo.
“People always worry about what they are going to be doing with indigenous languages as a course in tertiary institutions.
‘‘I think part of the things government can do is to encourage university students irrespective of their majors to take one or two semesters on Yoruba.
“A lot of people in different parts of the world where most invention comes from stumble upon a need.
“Maybe someday, somebody will take Yoruba at UNILAG or LASU and develop application that will teach our children in indigenous languages,’’ he said.
Ojo also said that if government could reward proficiency in English, it should also reward proficiency in indigenous languages.