ABSTRACT
The third and final stage in language development is often described by sociolinguists as modernisation. It is an adoptive process and consists in increasing the linguistic repertoire of the chosen standard so as to make it an effective medium for expressing the needs of modern life such as politics, administration, technology and science. The coining of technical scientific terms constitutes a difficult area in language modernisation. The suggestion is that all scientific and technical terms coming into Nigerian languages should be of the same or similar phonemic shape, to be determined by the Bureau. The English language, on the other hand, is an example of a language which has borrowed extensively from Latin, Greek and French, as well as from other sources, such as Scandinavian during the Old English period. Igbo language scholars will need to examine the different processes of vocabulary expansion available and adopt whichever of these are found suitable for the language.
