Ubang, The Nigerian Village Where Men And Women Speak Different Languages (Pix)

They are saying girls are from Venus and males are from Mars, and nowhere is that extra evident than in Ubang, a singular Nigerian rural neighborhood the place women and men have their very own separate languages.

It’s exhausting to imagine that women and men who develop up together in the identical neighborhood can find yourself talking totally different languages, however within the case of Ubang’s residents, it’s completely true. It’s not precisely clear what quantity of the phrases within the males’s and ladies’s languages are totally different, however there are sufficient examples to make sentences sound totally different when spoken by the alternative intercourse.

For instance, for ‘clothes’ males use the phrase ‘nki’, whereas girls say ‘ariga’; ‘kitchi’ means tree for males, whereas girls say ‘okweng’. These will not be just a few refined pronunciation variations, however completely totally different phrases and it’s been like this for so long as anybody can keep in mind.

“It’s virtually like two totally different lexicons,” anthropologist Chi Chi Undie instructed the BBC. “There are quite a lot of phrases that women and men share in widespread, then there are others that are completely totally different relying in your intercourse. They don’t sound alike, they don’t have the identical letters, they’re utterly totally different phrases.”

Apparently, each women and men are capable of perceive one another completely in Ubang, as each girls and boys develop up round their dad and mom and get to be taught each languages, however by the age of 10 boys are anticipated to talk within the male tongue.

“There’s a stage the male will attain and he discovers he’s not utilizing his rightful language,” Chief Oliver Ibang stated. “No person will inform him he ought to change to the male language. When he begins talking the lads’s language, you already know the maturity is coming into him.”

Nobody actually is aware of how or why the dual-language custom of Ubang started, however most locals choose the spiritual principle based on which God created Adam and Eve as Ubang folks and gave them two totally different languages. He deliberate to offer every ethnic group two languages however realized there weren’t enough languages to go round, so he stopped on the Ubang, leaving the village totally different from all the opposite communities of the world.

Anthropologist Chi Chi Undie believes the 2 languages are the results of a “dual-sex tradition” the place women and men function in two separate spheres and stay in separate worlds that not often come collectively. Nonetheless, she admits this can be a weak principle, because the dual-sex tradition is current in lots of elements of Africa, minus the totally different languages for women and men.

Right now, as English phrases proceed to enter the lexicon of young people in Nigeria, Ubang’s two languages are in peril of being misplaced ceaselessly. Neither the male nor feminine language is written down, so that they each depend on younger folks passing them right down to the following era.