Inter-Group Marriages on the Jos Plateau and Language Endangerment: The Rukuba-Tariya Example from 1900 to Present

Abstract

Contracts between groups or individuals of distinct cultural and linguistic identities have characterized the life of man from antiquity. In the process, some of them have either been absorbed as clans by the larger are relatively more influential ones, or have survived to conduct relationships or reciprocal basis, characterized by mutual cooperation, competition or antagonism, sometimes leading to conflict. On the Jos Plateau, the Kishi section of Rukuba and the Tariya ethnic group have lived together in a common geographical environment since the pre-colonial times, not however, devoid of conflicts. Today, there are obvious indications suggesting that the Tariya are fast losing their language to the growing linguistic influence of their Rukuba neighbours. Reports of interview conducted in the area reveal that inter-ethnic marriages between the Rukuba and Tariya have become a threat to the survival of the language of the latter. This is a curious ethnographic phenomenon, triggering the fundamental question: how and why marriages between the Rukuba and Tariya now endanger the existence of the Tariya language. This is the focus of this paper. The fear arising from this trend is that the loss of a language suggests strongly the loss of its speakers. It is hoped that by this revelation, the attention of scholars (ethnographic, linguistics, historians) and policy-makers will be drawn and effort made for a possible halt of the trend.