My Dorky Yoruba Tongue: The Journey To Cultural Identity

“Ta ba n sun kun, A ma n riran.”

Don’t be deceived, you don’t want to hear me speak what I just wrote in Yoruba. If you don’t understand the language, don’t worry I didn’t insult you, in fact I can still be sold out by my mother and father tongue.

Manny, one of the teenagers in the teens’ Church choir just laughed at me as he said “Aunty, you’re speaking your Yoruba like Igbo”, the others joined him in the laugh and they had that look in their eyes that said ‘Your Yoruba is Dorky’.
No? I’m not angry…Why was I trying to speak the Yoruba sef?  LOL! This was not the first time anyway; I get the social perception of not being Yoruba most times. No matter how I felt I was trying to speak this Yoruba judiciously in the university, I was still accused of not knowing how to speak well or not speaking at all. I was always wise not to try speaking the language to justify myself, even when I was compelled to do so, I’d be shooting myself in the leg if I made that mistake. Doing it consciously for four years and not getting it right? I could hide for only two sentences before I get discovered.

I got home and told my mother I was done with speaking Yoruba (I wish!).

And I’ve always had a good performance in the language as a subject o. In my WAEC and NECO I had B’s in Yoruba, throughout that session in JSS1 I had 100% in Yoruba and got a prize for it, even when I schooled in Osogbo where pupils were normally Yoruba speaking and needed to be fined for vernacular, I topped the class in Yoruba language also. So what on earth was the problem?

I believe I was trained with both English and Yoruba though, my siblings think it was just English first, but I think I liked English better and it’s not like I’m good at it sef.  As I grew, if not my parents, my aunts, uncles and other relatives insisted on my speaking Yoruba, but I had realized my strong will already and refused even if they threatened. Some of them even jokingly called me oyinbo.
No matter the environment, my tongue was stuck on speaking English. Though all of my education was located in the south western Nigeria, I spoke English, till I got to the University.

Something changed, I wanted my cultural identity. No one thought I was Yoruba from my looks (I wonder how they judge by looks) till I told them i was, one of my classmates even called me YorubaIgbo often and if I kept blasting in English language, how would they know? So, I decided to get my identity through speaking my mother tongue and it obviously is not werking.

I do love my ethnic group a lot, the people, the language and its art, the art itself, the culture, the artifacts, the excesses, the behavioural dispositions, the accent, the fashion sense, the good bad and ugly, you name it. The truth is that I really do have my cultural identity; it’s not just in the packaging. LOL!