Tongues

“[This] language, so familiar and so foreign, will always be for me an acquired speech. I have not made or accepted its words. My voice holds them at bay. My soul frets in the shadow of his language.” — Stephan Dedalus, Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man 

1

I am notorious for addressing my course mates by their native names. And in the predominantly Igbo school I attend, by their Igbo names. Often they are surprised, taken aback as their eyes rove, surveying the space for he who calls them by a name only their fathers address them by. I’ve come to wonder why we choose certain names and not others as adults. Why does the girl whose brown skin glimmers go by Juliet and not Uchechi? Why does my tall friend with skin the colour of sandpaper prefer Kingsley and not Offornnabuike?

2

Upon entering the university, I, who had gone by Samuel for most of my life, decided to become Azubuike. I had read Half of a Yellow Sun and There Was a Country. I had some understanding of who I was. There was never really any reason not to — I’d grown up in the east, had acquired Igbo as my first language, visited the village every year. But there comes a time when knowing assumes a consciousness, and meaning takes a concrete form. I found meaning in my given name. I liked how full of intention it was, how in order to articulate it properly one had to be conscious. The characters I connected with — Ezeulu in Arrow of God, Olanna and Odenigbo in Half of a Yellow Sun, Ikem in Anthills of the Savannah — wore their Igbo-ness, their Igbo names, without second thought. Even in cases where one might argue that owing to their upbringing and education they were more English than Igbo. I did not need any further push; it felt right. Just right. 

3

My name was handed down from my father to me as his first-born son. When I interpret it I think of how apt it is, considering my position in the family. But this name cannot mean the same thing for my father, as he is a second son. So why did his father choose to call him a name that means the people behind him are his strength? Was he referring to the people he’d meet in life? Perhaps my father thought of those behind him as his children and not his siblings. Was that why he inconvenienced himself so that my siblings and I may have it better? Why he sometimes spoke to us as though we were equals? Why he lived his dreams through my brothers and I? 

4

Where I come from and in most parts of Igbo land, children are named based on context and circumstances of birth. My first cousin is called Chidimma. God is good. Her brother, the third boy after two boys and two girls in their family, is Chukwudiegwu. The Lord is wonderful! My parents’ sixth and last child is called Obiajulu. Now my heart is at rest. My cousin whose mother had experienced several miscarriages before his birth is called Chiemerie. My God has won. My name, our names, are not just symbols. They are more than identity markers; they are representations of who we are, even before we came to be. They testify to the trials, joys and fears of our parents. They are not just picked but carefully selected, so that one name can connote different things depending on context; as it is for my father and me. But in being Igbo I must be aware, accepting even, of the butchering(s) my name will have to go through. Not in the hands of foreigners but in those of the Igbo, too. To be Igbo is to never fully know what variations people might come up with in the next waking moment. This is not to say that these variations are of a malicious nature; they are innocuous at worst. A lovely friend, Chiamaka, calls me Zúzú, another calls me Zùu, yet another calls me Àzú. I, however, wonder, if beneath that rapport there is something else in this refusal to give Igbo names their full due. I also wonder why I must accept, be forced to accept, this butchering. 

5

It did not matter that I had introduced myself as Azubuike. I became Zubby to my classmates. A name funny but astounding in its banality, in its powerlessness. At first, in those early days, I took to instant corrections. The frequency so stunning I soon began to sound like a broken record. Usually they apologized but would forget in no time, settling for the more easy-to-reach version. A version that is not mine, that does not represent half the things my name means. I did not need to be told I had to get on with it. A pin that pricks but flattens with the passage of time.  

6

In my childhood, in acts of innocence, acts which I now think of as trying to keep up with the times, we shortened our names. Our names assumed new forms, some of which, though rooted in Igbo, took on foreign inflections: Mmesoma became Mmeso. Echezona became Echee. Chukwuebuka became Bukason. Obiọma became Bimbs. Why does it feel different now, this shortening?

7

Even before you assume an Igbo identity in naming, language and worldview, you have an Igbo accent, for by virtue of acquiring Igbo as a first language you are Igbo accented. Accents testify to the presence of a first language, but in the context of today’s world — even if we refuse to accept it — some languages are considered superior. Hence some accents are sexy, others crass. Some accents give its speakers pizzazz, a leeway to be more than one thing, while others must be stifled.

8

I remember cowering in shame after being told that my accent was the reason I could not properly intone a sound in a Spoken English class. The lecturer, an Igbo man who made painstaking effort to pronounce his English words with all the right intonations, was giving a lecture on consonants: the parts that sounded alike, and others likely to confuse in transcription. I kept turning the word ‘ice’ on my tongue. Others kept realizing it as ais, and I just couldn’t bear it any longer. So I stood up, and asked if the word was ais or aiz as I kept intoning. I was told the appropriate pronunciation. I kept trying but it kept coming off with the z sound. Someone blurted out that my “accent” was the reason I could not get it right. I had laughed it off, a laugh couched in embarrassment. But why was I embarrassed? 

9

Another lecturer on the same course, a stout man with a honeyed voice, would tell my class of young impressionable first-year students that he had to “bury” his Igbo tongue when he was an undergraduate because of the unending interference. It was then I realized that my mother-tongue was a thing pliable, bending and shifting to accommodate “superior” languages. I learnt that in my pursuit of proficiency in a language that is not mine a core part of me would have to bear the burden — first with my name, then my tongue. For the very first time I truly wondered if I could devote this amount of time to studying and understanding my own language. And if I couldn’t, could I make peace with my inability to do so? Later, I would look back and think, wistfully, if an English man would devote this amount of time to learning my own language, and if he would be met with laughter at his trying.

10

Some of the funniest memories from my childhood are of my siblings and I making bets on not speaking Igbo the whole day. I remember us failing blatantly at it, being unable to speak for considerable lengths of time without an Igbo word dangling off our lips: a biko here, a nna eh there. Often we’d take the pedestrian route of sitting silent. With less humour, I remember the Christmas when, in awe, we looked upon folks who lived in Lagos and Abuja, who barely spoke any Igbo, their English sparkling, nothing like that which we rattled off in Onitsha, even with all the private education. I remember gazing at them and proclaiming that my children would bear names such as Chelsea, Michelle, Lynette — like theirs, and perhaps, inherit tongues like theirs.

11

An ebullient female lecturer would talk offhandedly about the need to familiarize ourselves with foreign ways: “You can’t be speaking English and be behaving like Onye Igbo,” she had said. That statement made me realize the ways I was beginning to assimilate, however unconsciously: the way I now often read out loud so I could hear my intonation and be sure the edges of the sounds were not “Igbotic”; the conscious articulation of my quotidian speech; the ditching of my familiar man spread as I now crossed my legs more often than usual. I had not thought of this before. Or I had, but I had not given language to this change that was quietly erupting within me, upending everything I thought I knew about the things that made me me. Her voicing that out gave new color to my actions: was my wilful speaking of Igbo more often than I usually did the outcome of guilt? Was choosing Igbo and not French in an elective an act of restitution? Was choosing to go by my Igbo name in preparation for this shrinking? Why does it now feel like Igbo is slipping away from me?

12

In Dream Count, Omelogor tells her friend, named Jideofor Thomas Okeke, to change his name to Jide Thomas. This he does, and reapplies to a job he had hitherto been rejected for. He gets accepted this time. Reading this that cold morning in June made me wonder how many more concessions I may have to make for my name in the future; if in the future others wouldn’t shorten my name for ease, rather I should do it myself. That perhaps I will think of becoming someone else in order to pave my path. Might my name be a stumbling block to securing a seat at tables I deserve to be invited to? If I bend in the future, do I become any less Igbo? Does Jideofor’s new name make him any less Igbo? Does the butchering of my name make me any less? Does choosing to professionally study a language that was thrust upon my father’s father make me any less? What does my inability to devote that amount of time to my own language say of me? Does my choosing to see God through my cherished Anglican background make me any less Igbo? By what do we quantify belonging?

13

In a conversation a year ago at the university, in a late afternoon class where the lecturer droned like a loose mic, where stale sweat mingled with cheap perfume hung in the air, a radiant, light-skinned girl commented on my inability to speak continuously in one language. I knew I code-switched and code-mixed in my speech. I had grown up in a sheltered home in Onitsha, attended schools where we had a phonetics teacher separate from the regular class teacher, where we were praised for speaking English through our noses. I spoke Igbo at home and English at school. This was nothing remarkable, as everyone my age spoke this way. Sometime in Primary Four, we were told that cameras followed us home, that we must speak English at all times. I did not believe this; it felt improbable even though, given that my school was only a three-minute walk from my home, I wondered if we were somehow being monitored. A neighbor’s child who attended a similar school once tried to speak English at home while we played Game Start and Dodging Ball. I remember the cacophony of laughter that followed, how it felt improbable and unsuitable. We did speak both languages, together, often unconscious of the fact: Bia, hold her, o chọrọ ịgba pu. Jidee m ego a, I’m coming.

14

 In an English as a Second Language class, the avuncular lecturer berated students for whom English was a first language, saying it would have been better if they had acquired “real” English, not the “what-resembled-English” we spoke. Legs trembling, I stood and asked if he agreed that, due to the legacy of colonialism, former colonies could take up English and create an acceptable version of it. He did not disagree. I then argued that, if Nigerian English was a valid version of English, then it could stand as a first language for some of us no matter how we felt about their inability to speak Igbo. 

15

It is December 2025 and I am in Oraifite, my mother’s ancestral home, for the festive season. In the mornings I re-read Achebe, pondering and reading his sentences out loud, enthralled by that sage-like voice, pleased at the clarity of his thought. In the evenings I help out at my uncle’s local bar, attending to his customers, many of whom live here in the countryside. Their Igbo is perfect. I am made to repeat myself, inundated with questions about my upbringing. Alas, my Igbo does not sound correct to the ears of those who have lived all their lives speaking Igbo, whose dreams and fears and joys are couched in the Igbo language. I repeat that I spent the first fifteen years of my life in Onitsha, in the heart of Igbo land, that I have spoken Igbo all my life. They gawp with disbelieving eyes. One man rattles off rapid Hausa to me in the middle of a conversation, half the time repeating my words with inflections that I do not consider mine. It’s not that my Igbo is unripe, they tell me. It’s just not good Igbo: the tones and the contours are anything but. It is not lost on me that I am about two years into my English Language program at the university, that I have spent the past few months taking exhaustive classes in English Phonetics, that part of the reason I read sentences out loud is to keep my pronunciation crisp and clear, to rid my English of its Igbo contours. A part of me is ebbing away and I cannot reach back for it. 

16

I dwell in two worlds, yet I wonder where the rivers of English and Igbo end and blend in my life. In making space for this language that is not mine, in my journey of becoming a global citizen, how much of me do I leave along the way? Who am I if my own people struggle to hear me, if the language I once considered home is no longer within reach in my subconscious as it once was? Have I become Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s cultural alien? ▪