Week 1: Ikini

Ikini

Greetings

Starting Yoruba has been very exciting. Our first lesson was in greeting other people. A very apt topic for the first lesson I think. Many of us had turned up 30mins early to the lesson because the SOAS timetable had said that it begun at 6pm and not 6.30pm. My Yoruba teacher had said to me before that he would see me at 6.30pm, but you know when you think someone's either mistaken or being a typical African man.

Yeh well, either way he's not entirely a typical African, the class really did start at 6.30pm. And he's a really nice guy. Laughs to himself even when the class doesn't get the joke. It's nice. It's good to have a lighthearted lecturer.

In my class we have many girls. In fact only 2 guys. One's Cameroonian and the other is a Nigerian by descent British lad. Much of the girls are also Nigerian by descent, including myself. Those who aren't are American, Caribbean, Chinese, English and Scandinavian. I would say that's a pretty diverse class really.

It was interesting though to see how many of us were there because I parents didn't teach us when we were young. According to Akin, my teacher that is the most consistent demographic over the years. So, if you've got a little child and you speak a language other than the one they learn at school as part of the nations lingua franca, please, I beg of you teach your child that language. It will first of all give them an edge on others on their CV and second of all help them develop their brains to learn other languages. Before you know it you've a multilingual child being paid by the UN for that very skill.

____________________________________________________________________________

I didn't go to lesson 2 later in the week because I had to play conkers with City boys and rugby lads. So this week I have learned:

E kaaaro, E kaasan, E kaale

Emi ni Charlene

Omo Yoruba

Hello! 

Welcome to my second blog, presently named Lagos by London.

If you're wondering what this is about then I should really start by linking you to my Yoruba or No? post and then the following Yoruba or No?: Yes, Yoruba. post on my other blog.

This blog is an account of my Journey to Learn and Speak Yoruba, my father's language.

My dad is Nigerian and that makes me Nigerian, but my mother is Ghanaian and that makes me Ghanaian. Not only by virtue of being half and half, but by virtue of the customs of identity that each country possesses. In Nigeria a child inherits their father's identity and in Ghana identity is passed through the mother and thus I am both Ghanaian and Nigerian and to confuse things further I am British. British born, British raised, British educated.

So back to the reasons for this blog and why I'm learning Yoruba. My dad learned Twi, my mother's language, because he spoke to her family a lot so growing up, the ease of speaking Twi to my sister and I meant that we didn't learn Yoruba. My mother can also speak Fante (a Twi dialect) and Ga, the main language of Accra Ghana's capital city. Fante is very similar to the dialect of Twi that we learnt as children and so serves my mother no purpose when she wants to mask her conversations. Ga is very obscure in comparison to Twi though so she uses this as her secret language. Yoruba and Ga are very alike, very very alike. My dad has been able to use Yoruba as his secret language. But then along came SOAS offering to teach me as part of my Masters in African Politics and now both my mother's and father's secret languages are at threat.

The best way for me to learn Yoruba is to practice as much as possible and if the demographic of my Yoruba class is anything to go by there are many of you out there hoping to speak the language of your parents. This blog is to help me practice and to help you see how easy or hard this type of journey will be and how to make it easier using all that London has to offer.