Abstract:

The high degree of multilingualism in Nigeria makes bilingualism an inevitable sociolinguistic phenomenon. This study investigated societal bilingualism in indigenous languages: Yoruba and Hausa of Nigeria which have been neglected and not studied, the same way English language bilinguals have been. The respondents comprised of four hundred and eighty (480) bilinguals in Hausa and Hausa sampled from Katsina and Kano States of the Northwest zone of Nigeria. The instrument of Second Language Oral Proficiency Evaluation (SLOPE) developed by the Summer Institute of Linguistics test was adopted to elicit data for the study. The findings revealed, among many others, that there is a progressive decline in the number of children who speak Yoruba as a native language in the sampled areas. Thus, a progressive gradual language shift has been initiated, and with time, Yoruba may be endangered in the language habits of such children. As a result of these findings, the study recommended that steps be taken to revive and revitalise the language habits of those native Yoruba children through literacy and other revivalist strategies in Nigeria.