An Investigation into the State of Status Planning of Tiv Language of Central Nigeria

Atonde Terkimbi

Abstract


The Tiv language is one of the major languages spoken in central Nigeria. The language is of the Benue-Congo subclass of the Bantu parent family. It has over four million speakers spoken in five states of Nigeria. The language like many other Nigerian languages is in dire need of language planning efforts and strategies. Some previous efforts were made to plan the language and government too has made policies to back up such efforts. This study therefore examines empirically the current state of the status planning of the language and its implication for the future and survival of the language. Status planning deals with the allocation of functions to a community’s language(s). The functions investigated here include the educational, the media and home functions and it has been discovered that the language has a weak functional status. This therefore requires some conscious and deliberate language engineering strategies to be set in motion to rescue the language from its present bleak and weak functional status, to which end some recommendations have been made.

Keywords: Language planning, Status planning, Nigerian languages, Tiv language


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References


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