HOW AFRICAN INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES CAN “SERVE AN ACTUAL NEED” IN CONTEMPORARY TIMES

Abstract

In this essay, I contend that African indigenous languages can “serve an actual need” in our contemporary time by being careful to intellectualize and internationalize their ideas, concepts and terminologies by African language developers to make them appreciable like other mainland foreign languages. I observed that African indigenous languages are grossly neglected by her users like students, lecturers, parents and the government; who ordinarily should enforce policies that would promote them. This poses a serious threat to most of these languages and leaves them in danger of abandonment and the possibility of going into extinction. I observed also that these predicaments are as a result of negative attitudinal perception of indigenous languages and multilingualism in African as a result of arbitrary partitioning of Africa by the colonial powers.  I contend that African languages have the same prospects like their foreign counterparts in terms of richness of ideas, terminologies and concepts. I conclude that African languages are treasures yet to be explored and their potentials are yet to be maximized to the fullest. This is why intellectualization and internationalization of African languages will expose these latent potentials and standardize them for international exploration.