By David Onwuchekwa
The recent home-coming of many Igbo families living in the diaspora during the just-ended festive period has revealed an unsettling truth about the state of the Igbo language.
What should ordinarily have been a season of cultural reconnection has instead exposed how dangerously close Igbo, both in its various dialects and in its standardized form, is to gradual extinction. The evidence was not hidden; it was audible in conversations, family interactions, and casual boasts by returnees.
A striking number of these returnees for Christmas and the New Year celebrations preferred to address their children in pidgin English or poorly constructed English, even while standing on Igbo soil. More disturbing is the pride with which some parents declare, “ọ dịghị anụ Igbo,” meaning that their child neither understands the local dialect nor the Igbo language at all.
This statement, often delivered jokingly, is in fact a confession of cultural failure. It is difficult to understand how a parent can wear such an admission as a badge of honour.
What this pride communicates to the home community is not sophistication but loss. Other than hear fluent exchanges between parents and children in Igbo, people are treated to awkward pidgin instructions and broken English: phrases that carry neither linguistic elegance nor cultural depth. In trying to appear modern or international, these families unintentionally showcase a deeper problem, alienation from their own roots.
This attitude has placed the Igbo language and culture in a critical condition. Language is the primary vessel through which culture survives. It carries values, moral codes, humour, history, proverbs, and indigenous knowledge.
When a language is abandoned in everyday life, culture becomes hollow and performative, reduced to festivals, attire, and slogans without substance. A child who cannot speak or understand Igbo cannot fully access what it means to be Igbo beyond the surface.
The danger here is not limited to children born abroad. The message being sent back home is equally destructive. When returnees are admired despite their children’s inability to speak Igbo, local families begin to associate cultural loss with success.
Over time, this reinforces the false idea that speaking Igbo is a limitation, while abandoning it is a sign of advancement.
This mindset accelerates the decline of the language even among those who still live within Igbo communities.
There is also the silent but painful consequence of broken intergenerational communication. Grandparents, elders, and extended family members often communicate primarily in Igbo. When children cannot understand them, family bonds weaken.
Wisdom that should pass naturally from one generation to another is blocked, and elders are gradually rendered irrelevant in their own families.
The roots of this problem lie in long-standing linguistic insecurity. English, a colonial inheritance, has been elevated beyond its functional value and mistaken for intelligence, class, and success. Igbo, on the other hand, has been unfairly treated as inferior or unnecessary in a globalized world.
This belief ignores the reality that multilingualism strengthens cognitive ability and cultural confidence. It is not Igbo that limits children; it is the absence of grounding.
If this trend continues, the future of the Igbo language is bleak. Dialects will vanish first, spoken only by aging populations, followed by the gradual weakening of standard Igbo. What remains will be an identity claimed in name but empty in practice, a people who remember who they are but can no longer speak it.
Reversing this decline requires intentional action. The home must once again become the primary space for learning and using Igbo. Parents must speak the language consistently, regardless of accent or imperfection. Communities must stop celebrating linguistic ignorance and begin to question it.
Cultural organizations, churches, schools, and town unions must actively promote the use of Igbo in their activities. Children learning the language must be encouraged, not ridiculed, because fluency grows through use, not avoidance.
The extinction of the Igbo language will not come through prohibition or force; it will come through neglect and misplaced pride.
What is at stake is not merely the survival of words and sounds, but the continuity of Igbo identity itself. If the present generation chooses convenience over responsibility, future generations may inherit an Igbo identity they can no longer fully understand or express.
