My Obsession With Yoruba My obsession with understanding Yoruba properly is due to PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). The things I went through in my childhood due to that language are just under the surface of my skin. The painful memories! Hmmm... You see when I started primary two at Staff School, Unife, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, my classmates were using Iwe Alawiye Book 2 to study Yoruba and since I did not understand one word of Yoruba then, I along with Funke Ojo and another boy whos name I cant remember now were put on Book 1, asked to sit at a corner in the back of the class and had to do that each day Yoruba class was on. Of course children being very mean meant that we were incessantly teased everyday. This repeated itself each year through class five after which I went to High School. Hmmm... there are a few reasons why I could not progress from Iwe Alawiye Kinni throughout my Primary School days. #CoverFace I remember vividly the first Yoruba sentence I tried to learn from that book and the reaction I got at home from my aunties when I tried to read it to them. Oh boy... the torment Auntie Funmilayo and Auntie Toyin my older cousins put me through! It was... ọbọ nfi igi họ idi This is how I read it... orborh nnnnfiiiir ayeghiiir horrr ihhhdeeh Note that I used the up accent on almost all the words. Yoruba letters use three accents: Down, Flat and Up. I used the up accent on most of the letters. Fits of laughter were my reward and the nickname Kobokobo was born! Imagine me going through this throughout my Primary School days! To make matters worse, my sister Lola was flying through those books like a hot knife slices through butter! So you can imagine how much hotter the teasing at home was! I was one big Olodo and I heard the song: Olodo rabata! Oju ęja lo mọọ ję Olodo rabata! Once I understood the meaning of the words, it did me in! I now hated Yoruba with a passion! It was the only subject I was hopeless in. Spelling, my nemesis then as my versions for Soldier (solger), Knife (knive), Friend (frend) and so on prove didnt floor me the way Yoruba did in those days! Finally I escaped to Secondary School and after getting like 2%... Im not joking!, in the compulsory Yoruba class in Form One, I promptly dropped Yoruba as a subject at the first opportunity when I got to Form two! I replaced it with BK... Bible Knowledge. I wasnt alone in that decision so I had company. I went through High School never conversing in Yoruba! However at Church, AFC Ileșa, I was made to read aloud, text from my Yoruba Bible every Sunday. My teachers were very patient with my phonetics that sounded nothing like they should but they kept encouraging me and eventually I got it. God bless them real good. Amen. My ability to read music helped me with knowing where to use the different accents and once I got the difference between e and ę, o and ọ, s and ș, g and gb... I was on to greater things! Still I couldnt speak the language though by the time I started University, I was a very fluent reader. Here comes in my dear friend Esther... Adeliyi Esther. One day she abruptly turned and said to me why do you always answer in English when I talk to you in Yoruba?. I was twenty years old and really embarrassed because the answer to her question was that I only spoke Kobokobo Yoruba! #CoverFace! That was the day I determined to learn how to speak Yoruba properly or die trying! So, I started conversing in Yoruba as often as I could and with anyone that would endure my Kobokobo. I listened to Yoruba radio stations and read my Yoruba Bible aloud to myself as often as I could. Eventually it paid off and the day arrived when I was able to go to a local market, converse with one of the traders there while buying something. I was not laughed at nor mocked. I had arrived! So, I am a student of the language and admire those that are masters of it. I doff my hat to you all.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Nov 2014 13:26:06 +0000
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