The Importance of Preserving Indigenous Languages: A Focus On Igbo

Since around 2017, I have made it my mission to dedicate my life to revival of the Igbo language. Some time ago, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultlural Organization (UNESCO) predicted that the Igbo language would go extinct by the year 2050. According to the paper Global predictors of language endangerment and the future of linguistic diversity by Lindell Bromham, et al. in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, some of the factors that contribute to languages dying include:

• population movement
• lack of use of language in science and technology
• lack of proper documentation of the language
• lack of legal recognition of the language
• socioeconomic indicators

In my opinion, we neeed to preserve indigenous languages, because it makes the human race stronger, nature's secrets are hidden in some of these indigenous languages and preserving indigenous languages allows the human race to continue to express a multitude of ideas. I will explain these thoughts further.

Diversity of languages allows us to express a multitude of ideas - Diversity of languages allows for diversity of thought. If all we had was latin based languages in the world, we would not know how to…