Very often at these family dos, I’m usually the only non speaker of the Nigerian language common to the South West which most of the family speaks. This, in addition to my Enneagram 5 tendencies, often means that I am on the periphery of conversations. Once in a while, someone might catch themselves, announcing loudly that they are switching to English but old habits die hard.
Being from a small part of a small state in Nigeria, my own mother tongue is currently spoken by less than 30,000 per Wikipedia, a claim which I cannot verify but which seems intuitively right. This raises the very serious spectre of the language dying out soon. This is my one regret, my inability to pass it on to the two Ls.
Being able to read, write and/or understand a language seem like distinct skills. Is being able to recognise a language a skill also?
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