Bilingualism and language use in the Nupe settlement in lbadan

Abstract

Thispaper explores Nupe-Yomba bilingualism and its concomitants in the Nupe settlement in Ibadan. Significantly, it was discovered that prqficiency in Yoruba is negatively correlated with age in the sense that the adolescents tend to be more bilingual in Yoruba and Nupe than their adult counterparts. Furthermore, the language-use pattern here presents a case of language maintenance, in that Nupe is dominant in the home domain whereas Yoruba is employed elsewhere, and this is not restricted to a particular age group. Finally, in terms of attitudes, there is a kind of split commitment to both Nupe and Yoruba in that Nupe is sentimentally preferred, but preference for Yoruba can be said to be instrumentally motivated.

Introduction

“…language shift (Oyetade 1995); in the case of the Sillanko in Burkina Faso, while one group has replaced its language with Fulfulde, the other has maintained its bilingualism without losing the Sillanka language (Kedrebeogo 1995). Thus, not only do different groups react diiferently in a language-contact Situation, the same group may also exhibit the same differential pattern of reaction.…”