THE STATUS OF MINORITY LANGUAGES IN NIGERIA: A STUDY OF TIV, EDO, MBUBE, BASSA-NGE AND BASSA-KWOMU LANGUAGES

Abstract

Language is a tool of social definition and development. This owes to the fact that no society understands its views and hopes without language and no society with different languages can develop without solving her linguistic problems. However, some countries have not been able to understand this fact and tackle linguistic challenges properly. Nigeria is an example, as much of Nigeria’s languages which help majority of Nigerians understand Nigeria’s ideologies and goals better when spoken in their varying tongues remain underused and underdeveloped. This paper thus, adopts the sociolinguistic principles by William Labov to enquire into the status of Tiv, Edo, Mbube, Bassa-Nge and Bassa-Kwomu languages among the numerous Nigerian minority languages. The paper observes thatTiv language has high level of acceptance among its speakers, but has no standard orthography yet, it gains some institutional support to aid its development and enjoys wide extent of usage though limited to the environment of its native speakers. Edo language which is better referred to as Benin language following arguments by other language speakers equally share similar status as Tiv in its speech community. Mbube language has good acceptability with no orthography nor institutional support and is confined to extremely informal usage while Bassa-Nge and Bassa-Kwomu which do not enjoy much acceptance among their speakers, have no standard orthography nor institutional support and their usage are equally limited to informal situations. Finally, the paper recommends that people express strong commitment to their respective indigenous languages.