Hyam Language: Orthography and Codification

 

       An orthography is understood as the process of engraving a spoken language, like Hyam, into writing. Accordingly, for Hyam, a yet to be written language to survive another century (say from 2015), codification becomes obligatory if at all we are to salvage it from vanishing from the face of the earth. By ‘codification’ I mean it is indispensable to institute a systemised and deliberate ordering of Hyam grammar through word formation, identification of rules governing spellings (DWO instead of DOW), capitalization (Ham instead of ham), stress, and punctuation, etc.

    Most languages, like ours which have survived centuries but exist only in the spoken domain, are gradually disappearing. This elucidates why there is a surge in linguistic study of “threatened or endangered languages” seeing that the greatest peril of any “endangered language” such as Hyam is BASICALLY the absence of a written tradition. And true, without an intensive effort, Hyam could disappear within the next 75 years or even less in the face of our seeming complacency and failure to transfer the language to next generation of speakers especially with a lack of teaching and learning in it.

     You may wonder what language then shall our descendants speak and my response is PIDGIN Hausa or English as the ones we currently engage with in our daily lives are often not standard Hausa or English at all. What is noteworthy is that for Hyam, to be written down, a standard orthography has to be developed, in my opinion, determinedly drawn from a collection of words from all the dialects which exhibit less tonal variation - e.g. the Hyam Fu Taa Ham and Kwyeny.

    This is essential considering that the dialects contestably classed as Hyam or languages bspoken by the Ham are about ten or eleven namely: (i) Gwoor, (ii) Hyam Fu Taa Ham (Hyam of the wider Ham area), (iii) Kyoli, (iv) Kwyeny, (v) Shamang, (vi) Yaat, (vii) Zhire, (viii) Shang, (ix) Dzar, (x) Saik with linguistic evidence that (xi) Gyong be added to the list.

   However, the situation linguistically would require the Gwoor (Gora) to re – learn Hyam as a sample of words from the current language spoken in the town is shown to be a case of language shift. This also explains why Duya, an often Hyamic classified linguistic group, is excluded. The reasons for the change in language are not far-fetched. During slave raids, people could not move freely thus every location considered safe was where people went to stay. As a result, several years of loss of contact coupled with the fact that it was different groups, with variant languages, who lived together, new languages emerged sooner or later thereby blurring intelligibility (resemblance) with Hyam.

    Consequently, there may be variations in our language's orthography. An example is between American and British spelling in the case of the English language. But when we compare the case of the Ham we can’t risk trying to capture all the above dialects of Hyam all at once. What is needful, to my mind, is to achieve one standard orthography then all other dialects are utilised for communication in their immediate community.

    Another way is to have the local government education authority introduce Hyam as one of the subjects of teaching and learning for forty (40) minutes at the primary level at least three (3) times a week whilst the pupils learn Hausa through daily interaction on their own. The point is premised on the provision of the National Policy on Education (2010) which offers that “the language of the immediate environment” be used for instruction from the primary school level alongside English. Except I do not read the document well, Hyam is the language of the “immediate environment” in ribi Ham.

     Having noted that Hyam has multiple dialects more or less mutually intelligible (comprehensible by speakers of the different dialects - e.g. Nok/Kyoli, Kwyeny/Hyam Taa Ham), to have several writing systems, with distinct orthographies, as in Kurdish language of Iraq and as in Turkish language, at the moment could cost us the loss of all. Thus, I hold the viewpoint, that for Hyam orthography to be fully conventional and usable, there should be regulated institutes such as language academies – persons with training in linguistics as well as those who demonstrate commitment and zeal with teachable character.

     Although for many languages (including English I hear) there may not be such institutions, thus orthography developed through a less prescribed method, there are bodies such as the French academy which regulates and admits words into the French vocabulary with a formally prescribed acceptable spelling. The reason for this I hear is to maintain some form of consensus in addressing the challenge of a multiplicity of word meanings due to dialectal variation.

    A ready example of such in Hyam is NYI – YOU (Plural) in Hyam Taa Ham whilst in Kwyeny it refers to "us/we." Thus without a standard orthography in Hyam anyone would write what they imagine to be correct spelling and since there is no agreed spelling, we could end up in huge confusion in the manner of what happened at the tower of Babel where the work of building came to an abrupt stop due to linguistic differences.

    For that reason, standard orthography is fundamental if Hyam is to be written. It is because there is standard orthography that is why we all recognise “Kaduna” as the name of our state capital. Assuming someone writes “Kadun state” it would be taken to be INCORRECT in view of the existence of an AGREED spelling that KADUNA is the RIGHT one.

    I reiterate that it is our individual responsibility to key into the vision of saving our language, our marker of culture and identity, from going extinct. Learn Hyam today and transfer it to your children. In that way it could survive a little longer than the 75 years current studies suggest it may not survive beyond. In this respect, studies have revealed, the most globally acclaimed procedure of creating an orthography is teamwork or building on existing ones. In this regard the Ham, luckily a society with an orthography developed, though unknown to the people, several years before the coming of formal education (Castelnau 1851, Koelle 1854) need to work together to establish, codify and formalise all aspects of the language. This is an aspect, I must note, the people ought to pay more attention to nowadays.

    Let me note that Hyam Literacy & Translation Project situated in Zheky and in Jos working to translate the New Testament into Hyam has created an orthography, which I have adopted not because it is perfect but for in-depth grammatical and linguistic justifications on how words, vowels and consonants are formed in Hyam. Accordingly, the harmonisation of the plethora of orthographies in Hyam is compelling. This is because most Ham musicians producing Gospel Music on CDs have diverse ways of writing titles or labels of their songs depending on their level of education and understanding of vowels and consonants and how these work in orthography creation. If everyone is to claim to be 'right' without a central working committee or body to harmonise these spellings, I doubt if it would be possible to achieve standardisation of written Hyam language.