Nigerian English like no other

In Nigeria, people felicitate the successful, police open a can of worms on cutlass brandishing miscreants, and the criminals meet their Waterloo.
Touts, urchins and heaps of calumny: Nigerian English melds Victorian-era vocabulary inherited from log-gone British colonialists with the grammatical structures and syntax that underpin indigenous languages in Africa’s most populous nation.
The results can be ornate, oddly understated or remarkably apt. But in a rapidly globalizing world, some worry that Nigerians will be handicapped by an English that differs from the language of boardrooms and Internet bulletin boards.
For Adeyemi Daramola, an English professor at the University of Lagos, it’s a quandary; as an academic, he finds Nigerian usage fascinating and indicative of rich and varied influences. But he worries that it’s undermining local languages, leaving younger generations unable to speak their parents’ native tongue and conversant only in an argot not easily under stood outside Nigeria.
“As a teacher, we want to see these differences. We’re pleased with our geographical difference and our semantic differences,” he says.
“But we are at a crossroads now where some people don’t understand standard English, and also not their indigenous tongue,” he says. “And that’s a tragedy then because you don’t belong anywhere.”
As a colony, Nigeria was very lightly settled by Europeans. A few hundred administrators came, along with Christian missionaries who taught English so that the converts could read the Bible. When Nigeria became independent in 1960, it adopted English as the language of instruction and administration.
Within borders drawn in colonial times, Nigeria’s 140 millions of people speak hundreds of languages, and “English is the language of national unity” says Daramola. “In a multi-lingual situation, it serves the people.”
Others disagree, saying English is a colonial import whose widespread usage excludes the rural and less educated.
It has developed over the years with a Nigerian twist. For example, a TV isn’t switched on or off – it’s “on-ed” of “off-ed.”
A Nigerian congratulating someone on a success or victory will likely “felicitate” him rather than offer felicitations. Similarly, people are invited to “jubilate” or celebrate, a triumph.
Sentence structure often reflects local languages, says Daramola. In the Yoruba language, adjectives can be altered by repeating them. So in Nigerian English, a very small boy would be a “small, small boy.”
Also, Yoruba English speakers may “smell” soup, rather than taste it, because the words are similar in Yoruba.
Many words are simply holdovers from the colonial era. Eateries are called “Chop Houses” once popular but now all but vanished from Britain.
Upset stomach? Take “gripe water”. Puncture? Take the tire to the “vulcaniser.”
Street children are “urchins,” and police often brand criminals as “touts,” “rascals” or “miscreants” who carry “cutlasses”- machetes.
In reporting crime, Nigerian newspapers say police open a can of worms when raiding criminal hideouts. A dead or jailed robber is often said to meet his Waterloo. Politicians “heap calumny” on those they accuse of corruption.
In another influence of Nigerian languages, no letter is missed when speaking English. Fuel is FOO-el. Wednesday is pronounced as written – Wed-nes-day – and a leopard rhymes with a leotard.
In many areas of southern Nigeria where the Yoruba predominate, an “o” is added to the end of a word to add emphasis, a practice in Yoruba language. Most noticeable is a shout of “Sorry o!” to someone who trips or suffers another misfortune.
While Internet and satellite TV access exposes ever greater number of Africans to standard English, Nigerians are fusing the lingo of the World Wide Web with their own patois.
Who’s behind those infamous e-mails promising lucrative payoffs for hiding an African potentate’s ill-gotten gains? In Nigeria, the media is filled with exploits of the “Yahoo- Yahoo boys,” from the e-mail and search-engine company used by many of the scammers.
“I entered the Yahoo business just to survive after I was robbed of all my money,” one man explained. “There is money in Yahoo, but one is not always lucky. Sometimes in two months you make $200 – but we pray for a big catch.”
An Associated Press article culled from the Nation newspaper, March 11th 2008 edition.

Hmm! Interesting, don’t you think? What is your own opinion?