Languages of Nigeria

Among the languages ​​of Nigeria are over 500 indigenous languages ​​and the official language is English.

Official Language

Of the approximately 500 individual languages ​​apply in addition to the official language, which is English since the colonial period, the language Edo, Efik, Adamawa Fulfulde -, Hausa, Idoma, Igbo, Central Kanuri, Yoruba as the national or official languages. French was declared in 1998 by the National Language Policy as the official language, the implementation of this declaration, however, is hardly done.

Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba are in rural Nigeria by more people understood than English. It is official policy to increase the importance of these three indigenous languages ​​of communication, such as by the translation of the so far available only in English constitution of Nigeria in those languages.

The languages ​​with over 10 million speakers ( decamillionaire languages) - Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba (often referred to as the three main languages ​​of Nigeria ) - which are essentially multi-million spokesman languages ​​( multimillion -speaker languages), act as local lingua franca ( traffic languages) as well as regional or national languages ​​in areas where they are spoken as a mother tongue. It is estimated that over 70 percent of Nigerians can speak those languages ​​.

Estimate of numbers of speakers

The lack of a clear figure for the languages ​​of Nigeria is mainly due to the lack of a commonly accepted definition of "language " as opposed to " dialect ", in the second place on constantly changing linguistic classifications. Thus, " the Nigerian languages ​​Atlas " over the 1st edition lists 30 languages ​​more in the 3rd edition of the.

Estimates of numbers of speakers in Nigeria are also complicated by the lack of reliable census data. The figures given in sociolinguistic work as often contradict official figures. Often they are based on the numbers of older censuses, which asked for ethnicity and this was equated with number of speakers. However, spoken language and ethnic group are not always identical. Languages ​​also have different status, which may tempt you to impersonate a specific language for surveys as a speaker, or actually to use in everyday life in a language that is not the language of one's own ethnic group. Since administrative boundaries and thus the distribution of state funds were often related to language distribution, misrepresentation, are seductive for regional administrations. A study of the Nigerian Middle Belt languages ​​reports, therefore, that for 27 languages ​​of the study area, it is the authors were unable to express only speculate on the actual number of speakers - except for the indication that the numbers of speakers probably are "small".

National languages ​​in education

During the colonial period was both in the Protectorate Northern Nigeria as well as in the Protectorate of Southern Nigeria, the focus on learning the languages ​​of the colonizers had been laid. Since the country's independence, however, is discussed on strengthening regional, indigenous languages. For several years there has been an actual change in national education policy in relation to language in the curriculum development and implementation.

The language curriculum, which is currently being used, shall be four groups of languages: The official language is English, other foreign languages ​​and Nigerian languages ​​as their native language and Nigerian languages ​​as a second language. Curricula and teaching materials have been developed for each of these groups. National language policy in Nigeria provides:

A major obstacle is the insufficient number of teachers to teach the four groups of languages. Even where teachers are available, the methods in the teaching of language curricula adopted rely heavily on a traditional grammar approach. There is also a lack of teaching materials for languages. These problems have led to poor performance results and a very low level of communication skills.

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  • Culture ( Nigeria)
  • Linguistic situation of individual areas
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