Small rant: This is mainly a message for Ijaw musicians, Ijaw music promoters, and Ijaw film makers. If you understand the situation our language is in right now, you would understand the importance of having accessible translations to your media: whether through captions or a lyric page. Don’t you know translations help those Ijaw who can’t speak Ijaw to learn it kalakala? Don’t you know a translation can help spark interest for a non-Ijaw to be interested in the culture? Don’t you know it can be used to help bridge understanding between different Ijaw dialects? If so, why does it seem often people need to pester una to get the complete translations of your works? Furthermore, again to all my fluent Ijaw speakers, why till date has no-one tired the effort in documenting the lyrics of our music legends of the past (Robert Ebizimor, Rex Lawson, Echo Toikumoh, etc) in a concise place. It seems for many this fluency of the language only comes out when it to censure non-Ijaw for not speaking properly, not in actual projects that would help others learn.
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