| Firstly, I am a boy of a very humble background that grew up on the street; it would have looked like an exaggeration if I start describing the kind of abject poverty I grew up in. Although this shouldn’t have been an excuse but the kind of people I had around me while growing up was an eye sore. Imagine living in a locality where you have to live with so many illiterates around you, and the worst of all living with your two grand mothers would always be speaking blowing Yoruba language from morning till night. I could remember the lovely Yoruba folklore (evening tales) they tell us all through the night which excites my interest in the sophomore language. It was a really bad experience.
Secondly, environmental influence was also a plus to my English language deficient syndrome. An environ where you wake up to hear the sound of the pepper seller’s commercial grinding machine across the street, followed by children screaming while parents are yelling all over the place in Yoruba language at a time every child is doing his or her early morning prep. (Study) before leaving for school in the morning. It was a terrible experience, having to wake up with so much noise and end up in a noisy public school where over eighty percent of the local teachers blow Yoruba to both their fellow staffs and we students respectively. It was a terrible experience.
Growing up was fun to me then, but if am to recall all my activities now, it was a really bad life I had lived, losing so many opportunities as a result of my inability to understand English language. I lived with a low self esteem. I could remember when I helped a white man in primary school who wanted to take me to the United Kingdom (UK), but lost this golden chance of my life due to my parent’s Ignorance and illiteracy. They thought they were going to lose their only son to serve as a white man’s dog. I thought I was never going to forgive them, but I did when my dad got a job as a Yoruba television presenter on AIT as a kids’ story teller which gave me an opportunity to appreciate and love my mother tongue with passion.
This has being a blessing to me and my family both financially and socially, it was even this opportunity that connected my to the caliber of people that helped me understand the little English language I communicate with, which I also think am seriously improving on, though I have refused to understand it beyond the level of good communication because I don’t want it to alter my mother tongue which has given me so much pride and self esteem.
nn: you can only castigate me
if your english is better than mine
if you hate your mother tongue, and
if don't mix words like abi, aba, nko, etc at the end of your sentence.
AT LEAST, THIS SHOULD PASS FOR A GOOD ESSAY.
|
Show Posts
