Hameed Gado
9/30/2022
FIQWS 10111
Brenna Crowe
Written Language and Literacy Narrative
I was born in Nigeria. My mother is Nigerian and my father is Ghanaian. I lived in Nigeria until I was 4, then moved to Ghana. At a young age, I did not think it would affect the way I communicated with people in school, at home, or just down the street. At home, I would speak broken English with my three older brothers. Broken English was a common language spoken in Lagos, Nigeria Especially in the neighborhood where I lived. My brothers and I were not fluent in our mother’s native language “Yoruba”, reasonably because we spent most of our time with kids in the neighborhood and students from the school who communicated in Broken English more than any other language in Nigeria. However, at home, my mother would speak “Yoruba” her native language to us and we would naturally respond in Broken English. Because of that, my brothers and I were not fluent in Yoruba, so she would switch to broken English, and Viceversa just to keep the balance. The same thing with my father, when he speaks Hausa, he does the same thing my mother does when speaking to us because we would respond in Broken English. But those weren’t the only languages we had to learn growing up.
The Arabic language is the top five hardest languages to learn. As Muslims, my Brothers and I had to attend Arabic school on the weekends to be able to understand and memorize the language. Which was extremely difficult to learn. From a very young age, we moved from Nigeria to Ghana and now I’m surrounded by a school where the students speak a Ghanaian language called “Twi” and I was the only one speaking the “standard English” in class. I was not able to speak the Broken English I speak with my siblings with the students in my school because they would not understand it. I was made fun of because I was the only one speaking Standard English when everyone else spoke “Twi”.
However, I was lucky to have my cousin who was my best friend at the time named “Ibrahim”. He was able to speak English with me. Which allowed me to be more comfortable in class. That was how I started getting along with the students in my school. In a way, I compelled myself to understand and speak “twi” because of the students around me. It was the same thing with them as the teachers in the school also encouraged the students to communicate in English when in class. It got to the point where I was somewhat fluent in “Twi” and I would try to speak it at home too. As a kid at the time, I spent most of my time with my older brothers, especially going out to play soccer. But this time my brothers were the ones making fun of me for speaking a different language at home. I tried communicating with them in “Twi”. Because I knew the more I spoke it, the more I got an understanding of it. So, at this point I was confused and subconsciously as an 8-year-old kid being made fun of, I needed to protect myself from that. So I stopped speaking “Twi” at home. Even at school when I tried to speak it, I was made fun of, so naturally, I stopped speaking it. But I could understand them well.
But then meeting my family from my dad’s side was also a problem because while I was home, I only lived with my mother who spoke Yoruba, and my brothers who spoke broken English with me. My father, however, was in the United States
to make a living for us. So, when I met my family members from my father’s side. They would speak “Hausa”, which I was unable to understand nor speak the language at the time. It took me a couple of years to be able to understand and speak a few words in Twi and Hausa. For some reason, I understand a lot of both languages but I was struggling to speak them. Probably because I was teased by my friends, brothers, and even cousins. It took long enough but I was getting to the point where I was comfortable saying some words in Twi and Hausa. But then we moved to the United States when I was 12 years old, which messed up the progress I was having in Ghana.
In the United States, I was surrounded by people who speak English, so it was natural and easy to communicate. However, when I meet someone from my country, they would always ask “How don’t you speak your language?”. This is the one question I always struggle to answer even though I have been asked it more than a thousand times. To this day, I somewhat understand my native language but I struggle to speak it.