CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background to the Study
An indigenous language or autochthonous language is a language that is native to a region and spoken by indigenous people but has been reduced to the status of a minority language. This language would be from a linguistically distinct community that has been settled in the area for many generations. Indigenous languages are not necessarily national languages, and the reverse is also true. Many indigenous languages have become endangered because of language deaths or linguicide caused by colonization, in which the original language is replaced by that of the colonists. The only channel by which human beings abstract reality is language. Language affects the way we think or perceive our reality. If we allow our language to slip away from us because of the various trans-national structural revolutions going on in the world today in the name of globalization, we will begin to think anew. Such newness affects our reality and this leads to endangerment.