Yoruba Parents Should Encourage Their Kids To Speak The Language – Bimbo Thomas

Bimbo Thomas

Nollywood actress and filmmaker Bimbo Thomas has come out to urge Nigerian parents to be more intentional about teaching their kids indigenous languages.

She recently had her say during an interview with Saturday Beats after the viral appearance of her son, Jayden Olanrewaju, who introduced himself as Ogbeni Ajadi on the popular Yoruba game show, “Masoyinbo,” and fans have been reacting.

According to her, while she regularly speaks Yoruba to her son at home, he also developed a natural passion for speaking the language on his own, and that birthed the fluency he recently flaunted on TV.

She then cautioned Yoruba parents to stop thinking that encouraging their kids to speak the language would make them appear local.

Her words, “I often speak Yoruba to him, and my late mum called him Ajadi. He would always try to speak Yoruba with her, even if it wasn’t perfect. She made him understand the originality of the name, Ajadi. He just developed a natural passion for speaking Yoruba, blending it with the Queen’s English taught in school.

More parents need to be intentional about passing on indigenous languages to their children. Growing up in Lagos Island, some Yoruba parents felt that encouraging their kids to speak Yoruba would make them look local or not classy. But Igbo parents around us always taught their children to speak both English and their mother tongue.

Thanks to ‘Masoyinbo’, his ability to recite numbers and deliver in Yoruba has improved. I was full of joy watching him. I’ve never been prouder.”

WOW.

Nollywood is a sobriquet that originally referred to the Nigerian film industry. The origin of the term dates back to the early 2000s, traced to an article in The New York Times. Due to the history of evolving meanings and contexts, there is no clear or agreed-upon definition for the term, which has made it a subject to several controversies.

The origin of the term “Nollywood” remains unclear; Jonathan Haynes traced the earliest usage of the word to a 2002 article by Matt Steinglass in the New York Times, where it was used to describe Nigerian cinema.

Charles Igwe noted that Norimitsu Onishi also used the name in a September 2002 article he wrote for the New York Times. The term continues to be used in the media to refer to the Nigerian film industry, with its definition later assumed to be a portmanteau of the words “Nigeria” and “Hollywood”, the American major film hub.

Film-making in Nigeria is divided largely along regional, and marginally ethnic and religious lines. Thus, there are distinct film industries – each seeking to portray the concern of the particular section and ethnicity it represents. However, there is the English-language film industry which is a melting pot for filmmaking and filmmakers from most of the regional industries.