HISTORIC ORIGIN OF ESAN LANGUAGE
HISTORIC ORIGIN OF ESAN LANGUAGE
(ESAN LANGUAGE IS NOT EDOID LANGUAGE).
Esan language is one of the oldest languages spoken in the southern part of Nigeria with various dialects. The language is spoken by more than 3 million people, both inside and outside Nigeria.
According to Russia-Jewish linguist Max Weinreich ” A language is a dialect with an army and a navy”. In other words, for a language to be qualified as a parient language, it most have dialects.
Another rule of thumb is, there must be an “intelligibilty”. Meaning, if you can understand another language without a FORMAL TRAINING. Such language is a dialect of your language. If you can’t, it is a different language.
There are various dialects of Esan language spoken across the 35 kingdoms of Esanland and they are all Esan language, including Igueben dialect. For instance, an Irrua man don’t need a formal training to understand Igueben Esan dialect.
Similarly, the Bini language is a dialect of Esan language. An average Bini person can spend 6 years in Esanland and not be able to understand our language but an Esan person living few months in Benin can understand and converse with Bini language.
According to linguistic authors and anthropologists (Greenberg, Williamson k and Elugbe) Esan language is classified among the kwa language group. Which evolved, stemmed, and fanned out from the Niger Benue Confluence area around 10000 years ago. Similar languages, like Urhobo, Isoko, Owan, Etsako, Akoko Edo, and Bini also emerged from, at the same period in central Nigeria.
Greenberg basic language premises are that, “related languages contain the surviving forms of a single proto – language variously modified over time, and that application of the right rules can discover a valid genetic relationship and trace it back to this common origin”.
The most basic of this rule is that, language have to be classified on the linguistic evidence ALONE and other data, such as claims of oral history are irrelevant.
The most basic rule, that of classifying languages solely on their linguistic evidence, was broken by OGIEIRIAXI in 1973, a Benin man. He fabricated and grouped Esan language and other related languages as EDO LANGUAGE.
He called the theory Ohosu Niger language group. This is a direct quote from him ” based on the historical fact that the majority of the inhabitants of the geographical area between the river Ohusu and the river Niger claimed common ancestry from Benin City”.
Apart from breaking the most fundamental and obvious linguistic rule. The historic unreliability of such claims had been noted by Ryder some years previously.
Ryder is one of the historic scholars who studied the Bini, Esan and related tribes histories.
He said ” Many of the traditions doubtless have a basic in fact, because the establishment of settlements appears to have been one of the means adopted by BENIN for consolidating its hold upon a large territory. But many are equally certainly the product of a hankering after prestige, or simply the adoption of the most likely story given the canons of traditional histoiography”.. Ryder 1969.
It was Ogieriakhi in 1973 who fabricated the theory of EDOID language and fused Esan language, other related languages inside the theory.The reason is very simple, for imperialism and territorial expansion of the Oba of Benin.
Esan language is not Edo language. It is the Binis who speak 52 percent of Esan language but it is today mixed with Ife Ikedu dialect. A dialect of Yoruba spoken in Osun State, Nigeria. The Bini langauge separate from Esan around 1500 years ago according to language expert.
This period aligned with 500A.D when the aboriginal Binis left Esanland to the southern rain forest to go found the ancient Igodomigodo kingdom.