One aspect of Pam MacLean's contribution has intrigued, and alarmed, me:
> 1) In Oke-Ogun letters are often written by an intermediary on behalf of
> an illiterate person, often by hand, not necessarily typewritten. The
> process is made additionally complicated by the fact that letters often
> need to be written in English, although most illiterate people speak
> Yoruba (This is one reason for people being illiterate - they never
> mastered English well enough to read and write it). I understand that
> after having a letter written it is usual to then take it to a different
> intermediary who will read it back so that the sender can check if the
> meaning is close enough to what was intended. Letters are often sent by
> hand rather than by post. Travellers commonly carry letters.
Why are these letters written in English? According to Douglas
Pulleybank writing in Bernard Comrie's book on the languages of Africa,
Yoruba has had a writing system since around 1830 based on the Roman
alphabet, with much of the work in stabalising the orthography done
around the 1850s with a key person being the freed slave Samuel
Crowther. While a significant level of illiteracy is to be expected
related to economic factors - the UN put literacy in Nigeria at 59% in
1997, I don't have more recent figures - I would have expected literacy
to be in Yoruba in the first instance.
Pam, is there something else going on here - perhaps the language
policies of Nigeria have led to the education system favouring English?
I have seen this in Nepal, where a liberalisation away from a policy
which insisted on all education being in the national language Nepali to
there being a free choice to enable education in minority languages
paradoxically led to an upsurge of schools offering education in
English.
The nice thing about speech communication as in telephones and the
voice-letters suggested by Vickram is that the technology does not
favour any one language and literacy is not a prerequisite to the use of
the technology.
Pat
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Professor Pat Hall, Computing Department, Open University,
Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, United Kingdom
tel: 01908 652694 (work at OU), 01825 71 2661 (home and work)
07813 603376 (mobile)
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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