The Ecology of Nigerian Languages: Themes and Applications for the Bible Translation Movement Russell Norton, TCNN and SIL International TCNN Research Day, 30 November 2018

© SIL International, 2018 This paper is released under the following licence: Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 See https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 for more details.

1. What is Language Ecology? In an ecological approach to language such as that of Salikoko Mufwene, a Congolese linguist, a language is viewed by analogy to a living species, and its speakers are the creatures of that species. Like a species, a language exists in an ecological context in which it either thrives or declines, and in some cases becomes extinct. From time to time, alarm is expressed by members of tribes, media, government, or academics that languages spoken in today may become extinct. However, this possibility belongs within a wider analysis of language ecology, and this ecology is also part of the context in which Bible translations are made and used. The ecology of each language includes any other languages used by its speakers, the cultural and economic networks that its speakers participate in when they use the language, and even the geography that distinguishes its use from the use of other languages. Languages that have a sustainable ecology of this kind will continue to be used, whereas a language whose ecology is disappearing will tend to decline and become extinct, as its speakers and their children shift to other languages spoken in their environment.1 The goal of this paper, therefore, is to propose themes for an analysis of the ecology of Nigerian languages, and to draw implications for the Bible translation movement in Nigeria.

2. Themes for an analysis of the ecology of Nigerian languages I would like to propose the following themes for understanding the ecology of Nigeria’s languages: the trilingual structure of many societies in sub-Saharan Africa, the association of languages with different human lifestyle categories, and the association of languages with different religions, which leads to competition between languages in religious domains.

2.1 Trilingual society in sub-Saharan Africa In many sub-Saharan African countries, three languages are used regularly: a language of immediate community (LIC) and two languages of wider communication (LWC) for communicating with people from beyond the immediate community, a language of wider communication of African origin and a language of wider communication of European origin. This trilingual pattern is followed in the of Nigeria, where the LICs are the Middle Belt languages spoken in their own communities, the LWC of African origin is Hausa, and the LWC of European origin is English. LWCs of African origin across the continent include Hausa, Yoruba, Efik, Pidgin,2 Wolof, Sango, Berber, Kiswahili, Lingala, Kikong-Kituba, Chichewa, Setswana, Beti-Fang.

1 No human community has ever been found by missions or by anthropological research that uses no language at all. The only question is which language or languages we use from those spoken in the environment that we live in. 2 Pidgin is an interesting case in this list because it has been Africanised. 1

Mufwene points out the contrast between languages of wider communication of European origin that are spread by formal schooling, and languages of wider communication of African origin that emerged informally from successful competition with other African languages for trade and other interactions that go beyond one ethnic group. There are of course some individuals who use less than three languages, and some individuals who use more than three. When someone migrates to a new area, perhaps due to intermarriage, they may start using a second LIC. On the other hand, some people have no reason to use the language of wider communication of European origin after they leave school. According to a UN survey of language use in Nigeria in 1997 cited by Crozier and Dettweiler, 60% of Nigerians used two languages, 30% used three languages, and 10% used four or more languages. Clearly there are far more people using less than three languages than there are using more than three. This can be explained by a general inertia against using more languages for diminishing benefit. For example, languages of European origin like English are not very useful in rural societies, and large city populations tend towards two languages, the most successful language of African origin together with the language of European origin. These factors supplement, and thus reinforce, the basic trilingual structure of society, with some individuals using less than three languages, or (more rarely) more than three languages, depending on their circumstances.

2.2 The association of languages with different human lifestyle categories Nigerian languages can also be associated with the major lifestyle categories in human history: hunter-gatherers, subsistence farmers, animal herders, and complex society. In the first three lifestyles of hunter-gatherers, subsistence farmers and animal herders, the lives of most people in the society are very similar, but in complex society people take many different roles including traders, businesspeople, teachers, soldiers, police, government workers, ministers of religion, agricultural farmers, bankers, and so on. In Nigeria today, there are no hunter-gatherer languages,3 herders use Fulfulde, farmers use many languages, and participants in complex society use a limited number of languages including English, Hausa, and Pidgin. The languages of complex society are generally the same as the languages of wider communication used by farmers and herders, such as Hausa and English. However, the children of those who no longer farm or herd can be expected to take the languages of complex society as their first language, as ties with their parents’ former communities are replaced by the social and economic networks of complex society. However, in practice the newer networks of complex society are often unreliable for various reasons, and therefore the need for family food production and ethnic support networks remains. As a result, the languages of immediate community associated with these needs will continue to be used among those who continue to herd or farm.

2.3 The association of languages with different religions African traditional religions are exclusively expressed using the languages of immediate community in the places where they are practised. Islam is expressed using the sacred language of Arabic, but there is some evidence that Muslim affiliation also correlates with use of Hausa, as many Middle Belt languages known to be moving towards extinction were formerly spoken in Muslim communities. The

3 The Jalaa language, known only by a few elderly speakers in Loojaa, Balanga LGA, Bauchi State, is classified as a language isolate unlike any of the major language phyla of Africa and it has been suggested as a remnant of the languages formerly spoken by hunter-gatherers in Nigeria before the arrival of Benue-Congo-speaking and Chadic-speaking peoples (Kleinewillingöfer). 2

Ethnologue and publications by Blench list Middle Belt languages of Muslim communities that are now only spoken by older people: Dulbu, Geji, Gera, Gurdu-Mbaaru, Izora, Kudu- Camo, Lere, Polci, Reshe, Shau, Sheni and Yangkam. In African Christianity, language use varies over all three languages in the trilingual societies of sub-Saharan Africa: LICs, LWCs of African origin, and LWCs of European origin. This is the case in the Nigerian Middle Belt, where Middle Belt languages, Hausa, and English are all used to varying extents for Christian expression. There is also no comparable pattern of extinction of Middle Belt languages among Christian believers.

3. Competition between languages A language ecology is stable when different languages are used for different purposes, but is unstable when different languages compete with each other in the same domain. In the Nigerian Middle Belt, the LIC, the LWC of African origin and the LWC of European origin often complement each other as they are used for different purposes. However, competition between the languages arises in the context of religion.

3.1 Language competition in Middle Belt Muslim homes Middle Belt languages with only elderly speakers left in Muslim Middle Belt communities have been competing with Hausa across the community and even in homes, as children no longer learn these languages as previous generations once did. In some other communities such as Pyam, Muslims are a percentage of the total Pyam population, and there is a need for research that will quantify the language choices of Muslims, Christians, and traditional religionists in the same community. This will help to establish whether Muslim identity is a predictor of shift to Hausa when other variables are virtually identical. This is significant because in general, identity is not a reliable predictor of language use. That is, we meet people who use Hausa as a second language without claiming the identity associated with that language, and we meet people who identify with a Middle Belt community without speaking the language of that community. In this way, language use only partly overlaps with identity. It would therefore be a significant finding if it could be shown that some identities are in fact predictors of language shift.

3.2 Language competition in the Middle Belt church When we turn to Christianity, we have noted that in the Middle Belt, Hausa (the LWC of African origin), English (the LWC of European origin) and Middle Belt languages (LICs) are all used for Christian expression. At times, however, we can see these languages in competition in Christianity. Citing Turaki, Crozier and Dettweiler list over 70 languages of immediate community used up to 1936 by SIM mission stations to communicate the gospel, but from 1937 this number dropped to 36 languages (52,55). This was the result of a policy change at a missions conference held at Miango in 1935, that following the publication of the Hausa Bible in 1932 this Hausa Bible would be used across the Middle Belt, leading to the spread of Hausa across mission stations of the Middle Belt after 1935. The legacy of this policy is the widespread use of Hausa in Middle Belt churches today. However, this policy decision went ahead even though comprehension of Hausa was not guaranteed throughout the Middle Belt (Crozier and Dettweiler 55). In the Jenjo community, for example, where Hausa was not used before the church arrived, the church held classes for learning Hausa, instead of ministering the gospel in a language already used in the area (Othaniel).4

4 The use of the language of wider communication of African origin to spread Christianity is not unique to the Middle Belt. Mufwene notes that churches in other countries of sub-Saharan Africa have selected the LWC of 3

3.3 Language competition during Bible translation In Bible translation, terms for expressing key Biblical concepts in the local language can be in competition with alternatives taught in languages of wider communication. According to Warren, during the translation of the Berom Bible it was discussed whether to translate ‘prophet’ using the indigenous term (zarap), the term coming from Hausa (anabi), or the term coming from English (profet). In a case like this, competition in Christianity between Middle Belt languages, Hausa and English is seen during the Bible translation process. The more typical situation in Bible translation is to compare various words from the language itself to determine which one captures the meaning of ‘prophet’ in the Bible. As well as zarap, Berom has vwoshon, for a herbalist who also speaks about the future, or rito for a man of powerful speech, for example. However, when the discussion also involves words in circulation in the community that come from other languages, we need more criteria to select among words for the translation that are sourced from different languages. One question is whether the indigenous word should be used on grounds of creating a pure translation. Or, whether the widespread use of code-switching between languages in conversations should mean that a natural translation should be expected to contain words from different origins in the same text. The quality of purity, or the quality of naturalness, may thus be able to justify either choice.5 Should words be eliminated from consideration on religious grounds? On the one hand, local words were generally previously used in African traditional religion, and on other other hand, Hausa religious words like anabi are borrowed from Arabic with perceived association with Islam, although most are used by Arab Christians as well and are in Arabic Bibles. So unless a word has very specific associations that the Bible considers heresy, these concerns do not always eliminate words from consideration. God speaks through Scripture to those who live in existing religious traditions, and the Word of God can transform people from those religious traditions. Perhaps, rather than religion, there are objections to the socio-political identity associated with other languages, as was true for Hausa even at the beginning of its adoption by Middle Belt mission stations in 1935 due to memories of slave raids (Crozier & Dettweiler 55). Or, to flip this around, a translation project may be energised by advocacy for the indigenous identity represented by using indigenous words in the face of more socially dominant languages and identities. However, as we have seen, language only partly overlaps with identity. Note also that the English word ‘prophet’, although it will probably be turned down in a Berom translation as clearly foreign, arouses less heated feelings, because English identity is not an issue in relation to the use of English in Nigeria. A higher priority than representing identity is representing what God has to say to the community. When the issue is, “what is God saying to us?”, then comprehension is essential [so is accuracy]. Is it necessary to use Berom words precisely because there is less comprehension

African origin. This has the advantage of reaching many people, but the disadvantage is that if proficiency in the LWC of African origin varies, then it follows that understanding of the gospel of Christ will also vary, with the attendant risk that the church may demonstrate external observances rather than inner transformation through Christ. A proposal by Grimes is that on the widely-used FSI scale of language proficiency from 0 to 5, where 5 is full native proficiency, it is necessary to have level 4 proficiency in order to understand the Bible in that language. At this level, a person does not have to understand all the nuances of a native speaker, but they will be able to meet all life needs in that language. The question for churches is whether their congregations are at level 4 or above in the language used. 5 Code-switching between languages is usually observed and studied in conversational speech, but is code- switching is also natural in text genres? Research in progress reveals that code-switching occurs in story-telling as well. 4 of the Hausa Bible? Using words of Middle Belt languages to express God’s revelation may advance their role relative to Hausa as a contribution to a more complete understanding of the gospel. This is so because Middle Belt languages are still the first languages of many Christians, as they have not become extinct in more than 80 years after the missions’ decision to use Hausa in Middle Belt churches. On the other hand, is it necessary to use a word from one of the other languages used by the Berom community because the traditional word is no longer known by younger generations? If we use traditional words, will Middle Belt translations actually be used less, because younger people don’t understand the words? Perhaps this is a necessary response in some cases, but the Berom Bible suggests a different answer. The final decision in the Berom Bible was to use zarap for ‘prophet’. According to Warren, the translator Da Barnabas Dusu who selected zarap was over eighty years old and the word was only known by people of his age. It had been traditionally used to describe a type of diviner in the Berom community. But the Berom translator came to the conclusion that the role of zarap had the same features as a Biblical prophet, one who produces inspired speech that interprets the present and predicts the future. This word was able to capture the same meaning as prophet or anabi in other widely used languages. For Berom speakers I have spoken to, seeing or hearing zarap in the Berom Bible was the first time that they encountered this word. It compares with words for disappearing species like ‘elephant’ and ‘lion’ for which words exist in Nigerian languages but are no longer within the experience of Nigerian language communities so these words are likely to be soon forgotten. So re-using zarap in the Bible has the effect of preserving a Berom word that was almost lost, and some Berom speakers will appreciate it for this reason, like the joy of recovering lost things in Jesus’s parables in Luke 15. It is also a sign of vitality of the Berom language that speakers have found ways within the language to express the concepts they need, like Adam in Genesis 2:19 when he named the animals he saw. This includes naming new objects in Berom land such as radios as ‘talking boxes’, but it can also mean taking a word that has virtually fallen out of use and giving it a new lease of life, much like vwoshon that once meant a traditional herbalist witch doctor and is now used for a medical doctor or an academic doctor. This has happened to zarap as well because of the remarkable fact that people who didn’t know zarap before have accepted it as their own, and added it to their Berom vocabulary because it now arises within their Berom community experience, through sermons and in Bible study groups. And since it was already a Berom word, it effortlessly fits the sound structure and the grammar (plural: be-zarap) of the language.6

4. The exceptional scale of Nigerian languages Using every language to represent key Biblical concepts can be seen as a rediscovery of the principle of allowing God to speak to every context. In Nigeria, of course, this has implications of exceptional scale, as Nigeria has the third highest number of languages in the world, and the highest number of languages in Africa. But this too has an ecological basis. Recall that Nigeria’s languages are associated with different human lifestyles. While there are no hunter-gatherer languages in Nigeria today, and comparatively few languages spoken by herders or by participants in complex society, hundreds of languages are spoken by farming communities, making up nearly all of Nigeria’s vast language total.

6 Warren: “In the NT, we always had mwat yis na ha yi na Dagwi, “person coming out with speech from God”. Such long explicative terms were all revised when we did the OT (a common scenario in BT – by the time the whole Bible comes out, we no longer need long explications).” 5

There is therefore some dynamic present in farming that has produced a far greater increase in languages than any other lifestyle. The increase in farmers’ languages has been nearly all internal to Nigeria, not by hundreds of migrations into Nigeria. Herders migrate over large distances, not farmers. Farmers’ belong in language families such as Benue-Congo and Chadic, where all Benue-Congo communities show resemblances in basic vocabulary and are distantly related, and the same for Chadic communities. Farmers’ languages have therefore increased as ancient [Benue-Congo and Chadic] farming populations grew and spread out over Nigeria, a fulfilment of the God-given mandate to fill the earth in Genesis 1:28. More and more farming communities were established that were locally self-sufficient and therefore formed separate speech communities. In these separate speech communities, languages slowly changed in different ways until they were no longer fully intelligible to each other and constituted different languages. For farming to successfully expand into hundreds of relatively self-contained and self-sufficient language communities throughout the south and the Middle Belt, there must have been highly favourable conditions for farming: high rainfall (already proposed by Nettle) and also high nutritional value of the plant and animal species available before now. Expansions have produced what Lewis & Stalder call “clusters” of languages with many of the same grammatical properties. Hence, similar materials can be developed in similar languages. This is illustrated by comparing grammar in two language clusters where the author has facilitated language booklets. In the four DAWN languages which are Benue-Congo languages spoken in southern , each has six personal pronouns ‘I’ for the speaker, ‘you’ for the hearer, ‘he or she’ for another person, and ‘we’, ‘you (plural)’ and ‘they’. No language in the cluster differs from the others in this respect. But this cluster then contrasts with the Talodi cluster, spoken in the Republic of Sudan and distantly related to the DAWN languages, where each language in the Talodi cluster has eight personal pronouns, the six already mentioned plus two others, one that means two people ‘you and I’ and one that means ‘you all and I’. Once again, no language in the cluster differs from the others: if we find a pronoun in one language, we also find it in the other languages of the cluster.

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DAWN cluster: pronouns Language: Duya Ashe Waci Nyankpa I umum ime ima ema you (sg.) ungo iŋo iwa emu he/she unga iye iwan eni we umɛn inte hide embi you (pl.) umbi inyime hibe emi they umbɔ imbɔɔ hibɔ embe

Talodi cluster: pronouns Language: Lumun Acheron Tocho Dagik I ɔʊn ɔɪŋ wɪŋ aŋɪ you (sg.) ɔʊŋ ɔʊŋ ŋʊŋ aŋa you (sg.) and I ɔɾɪt ɔssɪk ɔɾɪk aŋɔɾɪ he/she ɔɔk ɔŋɔk ŋɔk aŋɔ we ɔnin ɔniŋ ŋiŋ aŋɔni you (pl.) ɔnɔn ɔnɔŋ ŋɔŋ aŋɔnɔ you (pl.) and I ɔɾɔn ɔssɔŋ ɔttɔŋ aŋɔɾɪnnɔ they ɔkɪn ɔɡɛŋ ŋɛŋ aŋɛ

In the same way, the four Talodi languages all have adjectives and verbs among their parts of speech, but the four DAWN languages all have a supercategory of verbs that includes words that translate to adjectives in languages like English. In Talodi languages (and English) property words are adjectives because they come after a verb ‘is’, but in DAWN languages property words do not come after a verb; they are the verb.

Talodi cluster: example verb Language: Lumun Acheron Tocho Dagik eat! ɔɽɡ-ʊ ɔrəɡ-ʊ ɔrəɡ-ɪ rəɡ-ʊ ate p-ɔɽɡɔ-t b-ɔrəɡɔ-k p-ɔrəɡɔ-k pɔ-rəɡɔ will eat p-a-ɽɡɔ b-ɪya-rəɡɔ p-ad̪ -ɔrəɡɔ panta rəɡɔ property adjective after verb Language: Lumun Acheron Tocho Dagik be strong! ɔɡa pɔnt̪ ɔmat ɔɡa-ʊ bɔbɔrɔk ɔnt̪ ɔɡa pɔbɔrɔk kaɡ-ɪ pɔsʊrək was strong p-ɔɡa-t pɔnt̪ ɔmat b-ɔɡa-k bɔbɔrɔk p-ɔnt̪ ɔɡa-k pɔbɔrɔk pɔ-kaɡa pɔsʊrək will be strong p-a-ɡa pɔnt̪ɔmat b-ɪya-ɡa bɔbɔrɔk p-ad̪ -ɔnt̪ ɔɡa pɔbɔrɔk panta kaɡa pɔsʊrək

DAWN cluster: example verb Language: Duya Ashe Waci Nyankpa comes a-ba a-ba a-ba a-ba just came a-ni-ba a-shé-ba a-ra-ba a-na-ba will come a-wuri-ba a-ne-ba a-naga-ba áá-ba property verb Language: Duya Ashe Waci Nyankpa is strong a-ker a-cer a-cira a-coro was just strong a-ni-ker a-ne-ceta a-ra-cira a-na-coro will be strong a-wuri-kera a-shé-ceta a-naga-cira áá-coro

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In conclusion, there can be competition between languages in religious contexts, but I propose as a response the principle of allowing God to speak in every context, which leads us to seek to represent key Biblical concepts in every language. Moreover, although there are hundreds of these languages in Nigeria, the history of expansion of farming means they are found in clusters with similar sounds and grammars, as well as similar discipleship needs. Farming communities can then be served efficiently by creating similar materials for related communities. Grammar can be documented in simple booklets for a cluster of languages in 14 days. Scripture, and farmers’ discipleship materials, can also be developed over related languages.

Works Cited Blench, Roger. “The status of the languages of Central Nigeria.” Matthias Brenzinger. Ed. Endangered Languages in Africa. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe, 1998. 187–206. Blench, Roger. “Nominal affixing in the Kainji languages of northwestern and central Nigeria”. John Watters. Ed. East Benue-Congo: Nouns, Pronouns and Verbs. Berlin: Language Science Press, 2018. 59-106. Crozier, David and Stephen Dettweiler. Keys to Language Development and Bible Translation. Bukuru: Africa Christian Textbooks, 2011. Grimes, Barbara. “Language skills required of a disciple.” Notes on Scripture in Use 9 (1986): 19-23. Kleinewillingöfer, Ulrich. “Jalaa - an almost forgotten language of northeastern Nigeria: a language isolate?” Derek Nurse. Ed. Historical Language Contact in Africa. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe, 2001. 239-71. Mufwene, Salikoko. The Ecology of Language Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Mufwene, Salikoko. “What Africa can contribute to understanding language vitality, endangerment and loss. Matthias Brenzinger and Anne-Marie Fehn. Eds. Proceedings of the 6th World Congress of African Linguistics, Cologne, 17-21 August 2009. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe, 2012. 69–80. Nettle, Daniel. “Language diversity in West Africa: an ecological approach” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 15.4 (December 1996): 403-438. Othaniel, Nlabephee. Class, LLL531 Language Maintenance and Shift, TCNN. November 2017. Warren, Andy. Personal interview. 4 May 2017. Warren, Andy. Email communication. 26 November 2018. Lewis, M. Paul & Jürg Stalder. “Clustering: a conceptual framework and its implications.” 2010. Typescript. SIL International.

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