Language Health

By Josiah Chijindu Egbilika The word phobia is a Greek word that means “to be afraid of” or “fear of”. In one word, it refers to fear. It could be the fear of a thing, people ,object or language.  Lots of persons globally have one fear or the other. They find it difficult to relate to a particular thing. In some cases, it could cause harm if exposed to that situation. Same way, there are those who have fear for language, “Linguaphobia”. There are also those who have fear for speaking foreign languages “Xenoglossophobia”.  There are people who are afraid of speaking in the public too “Glossophobia”. There are also those who are afraid of speaking their own Indigenous or Native languages. This situation is referred to as “Endoglossophobia”.  The word Endoglossophobia was first dropped on Radio during the #LanguageHealth Show with Sam Oracle Chinedu and Josiah Chijindu Egbilika  Endoglossophobia is a common situation but has been subsumed into linguaphobia. This is not ...

By Josiah Chijindu Egbilika The use of Naija popularly called Nigerian Pidgin has been Advocated by drivers in Port Harcourt the Rivers State capital to be use when carrying out sensitization campaigns by institutions. The call to use Nigerian Pidgin as a communication means for sensitization programmes was made when the Federal Road Safety Corps, Rivers State command carried out a sensitization programme on safe driving and observing Road Safety Rules especially as the raining season intensifies. According to the drivers, the use of pidgin will make them understand the message communicated better.  Federal Road Safety Corps sensitize drivers on road safety in Port Harcourt  This does not negates the fact that they are unable to understand English, which currently serves as the official language in Nigeria but the call is to promote the use of Pidgin in social space. In Nigeria, over 90% of people understand and communicate with Nigerian Pidgin. The once creole language has b...

Pidgin, spoken in Hawaii for decades, is now listed as one of the official languages in the islands.   This comes as  the U.S. Census Bureau in November after a five-year survey was conducted on bilingual speakers  released a list of languages spoken in Hawaii . The census surveyed more than 325,000 Hawaiian residents from 2009 to 2013, asking whether they spoke any language other than English at home. The results revealed a number of Pidgin and Hawaiian Pidgin speakers. Both were added to the census list that included over 100 languages, representative of the islands diversity. Pidgin is a combination of expressions and phrases that are recognizable to those who speak it. To non-Pidgin speakers, it may sound like slang. For example, “dat” means that and “fadda” means father or dad. According to Patrick Wang who has lived in Oahu for over 40 years,   “It’s in their nature. That’s what they know,” Depending on who he is speaking to, Wang said, “I can turn it on a...