DELSU Language Professor, Macaulay Mowarin, Advocates Urhobo As Language Of Intra-Ethnic Communication In Urhoboland

A Professor of Syntax and Contact Linguistics, Professor Macaulay Mowarin, has advocated the use of Urhobo as language of intra-ethnic communication in Urhoboland.

Delivering the 105th in the series of Inaugural Lectures of Delta State University, Abraka, at the 750 Lecture Theatre A, in Site III of the University, on Thursday, March 28, 2024, Professor Mowarin in his lecture entitled RAMIFICATIONS OF NEW ENGLISHES ON NIGERIAN LANGUAGES: URHOBO AS CASE STUDY, called on the Urhobos to save the Urhobo language from going into extinction.

According to Professor Mowarin, there are over six thousand languages in the world and Nigeria is placed 3rd with 517 languages after Papua New Guinea (840) and Indonesia (711).

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Like every living thing, the Language Professor said ‘language is born, matures and dies’ giving Latin as a typical example of a dying language now mainly existing in liturgies used by Roman Catholic Priests.

English Language, which he said ‘is native to the Anglo-Saxon group of Germanic family of languages’, is a language spoken by over 1.5 billion people all over the world, including Nigeria, and it metamorphoses as it comes into contact with speakers of other native languages.

The English variant known in Nigeria today as Nigerian English is influenced by ‘code switched forms of English and Nigerian Pidgin’ which depending on how, when, where and why it is used has resulted in the new Englishes in Nigeria.

Professor Mowarin said it is the ‘salubrious and deleterious relationships between new Englishes and the plethora of about five hundred indigenous languages spoken in Nigeria’s complex multilingual and multicultural speech community’ that prompted his delivery of the Inaugural lecture on The Ramifications of New Englishes on Nigerian Languages with Urhobo as case study.

Historically and by definition, new Englishes are Englishes spoken in former colonies of Great Britain, mainly Asia and Africa. In Africa, East and West Africa are the main regions where new Englishes are spoken and in West Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone and Liberia are the hub. In Nigeria, Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba are the major languages while Urhobo and other Languages are regarded as minority languages. It therefore means that for people from these diverse language groups to communicate with each other, a language must evolve and that is where the Nigerian pidgin comes in to bridge the gap. Between the Nigerian English and Nigerian Pidgin there is another form of English resulting from code switching from Nigerian English to Nigerian Pidgin and vice versa; and there is yet another language, the social media English which the youths use to communicate on platforms like WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and others.

In all of these Englishes, Professor Mowarin said that Nigeria’s official language is Nigerian English because ‘it is the language of administration, education, interviews and examinations…upward socio-economic and political mobility in Nigeria.’

Speaking on the effects of new Englishes on Urhobo language, a language spoken only in Delta State and part of Bayelsa State, he said that ‘any Urhobo person not adept in Nigerian English is socio-economically and politically disadvantaged’ and to overcome this handicap and break the barrier of exclusion, he recommended that ‘Urhobo speakers should be balanced multilingual in Nigerian English, Nigerian Pidgin and Urhobo’ because a monolingual is considered an illiterate in the 21st century.

A second effect which Professor Mowarin found more critical ‘is the Language shift from Urhobo to new Englishes’.

According to him, this has resulted in the endangerment of the three languages spoken in Urhobo land…and has caused a decrease in the number of Urhobo speakers’.

To reverse the trend, he advocated that Urhobo should be the language of intra-ethnic communication in Urhoboland, stressing that it should be the language used in the family.

The Language Professor who has served as external examiner to many Universities within and outside the country and has supervised over 30 Master’s students and 4 Ph.D students, was described by the Vice Chancellor of Delta State University, Professor Andy Ogochukwu Egwunyenga, as ‘a complete gentleman, who is dedicated to his official duties and family responsibilities and has no time for frivolities’.

Having successfully delivered his Inaugural Lecture therefore, setting himself apart from Professors who are yet to do so, the Vice Chancellor decorated him with DELSU Distinguished Honorary Medal and formally welcomed him to the league of Senior Professors.