Which languages do you speak and how did that impact your life?
When people ask me how many languages I speak, I usually say four: English, Igbo, Nigerian Pidgin, and French. Before any French speakers get offended, let me clarify: I speak English reasonably well, Igbo proudly, Nigerian Pidgin enthusiastically, and French courageously. By “courageously,” I mean I attempt it despite overwhelming evidence that I should not. If languages were characters in a movie, English would be the dependable friend, Igbo would be the wise elder, Nigerian Pidgin would be the hilarious troublemaker, and French would be that classmate whose notes I should have copied in high school but didn’t.
English: The Good 🙂
English has been the language of my education, research, emails, conference presentations, and the countless academic papers I have written while convincing myself that I was “almost done.”
Through English, I have studied, taught students, earned degrees, traveled across countries, and learned the academic skill of using 500 words to explain something my grandmother could summarize in one proverb.
English opened doors for me. It allowed me to move between different worlds—from a town in Nigeria to universities in the United States. It is the language that helped me navigate immigration forms, scholarship applications, and those mysterious emails that start with, “We regret to inform you…”
Igbo: The Better ☺️
Igbo is different. English taught me how to write academic papers. Igbo taught me how to think and understand people.
In Igbo, wisdom does not always come in paragraphs. Sometimes it arrives in a proverb, a folktale, or an elderly relative looking at you for three seconds before delivering a sentence that changes your life.
Through Igbo, I learned stories about tortoises, spirits, ancestors, stubborn humans, and the complicated relationship between people and the world around them.
Many of the research questions I ask today were born in conversations I had long before I knew what “research” even meant. Like, why does the tortoise always act selfishly and greedily, or why is the donkey depicted as foolish in folktales?
Igbo is not just a language I speak. It is one of the reasons I became a folklorist.
French: The Bad 😒
Technically, I studied French in high school. Unfortunately, studying and paying attention are not always the same. While my teachers explained verb conjugations, I was busy doing what many teenagers do best: thinking about absolutely everything except the lesson. As a result, my French exists in a strange state between life and death years later. If you greet me with “Bonjour,” I will confidently reply, “Bonjour.” If you continue speaking, however, things may quickly become unclear. I can recognize some words. I can guess others. And sometimes I stare at the speaker with the confidence of someone who understands everything while understanding nothing.
My French vocabulary mostly consists of classroom survivals: bonjour, merci, au revoir, un peu, and a collection of random phrases that remain in my mind while useful information disappears.
NIGERIAN PIDGIN: THE UGLY 🥴
Uhm, I don’t want to talk about this one. In short, Nigerian Pidgin is like when a cat and a dog give birth to a parrot.
The Unexpected Impact of Languages
Knowing English and Igbo has allowed me to move between different worlds. English helped me become an academic. Igbo helped me remember where I came from. French taught me an entirely different lesson: “If you do not pay attention in class, your future self may eventually write a blog confessing it to the entire internet.” That may be the most important language lesson of all. Nigerian Pidgin is the gangster of all combined.
Final Thoughts
Languages are more than tools for communication. They shape how we see the world. Nigerian Pidgin serves me in the streets of West Africa or when conversing with another English-speaking West African in diaspora. English gave me opportunities. Igbo gave me identity. French gave me humility. And now and then, humility is useful—especially when a French speaker approaches, and I suddenly realize that my only strongest language will be to smile politely. I speak bits of Hausa, Ibibio, Yoruba, and several other languages and dialects.
