₦airaland Forum

Nice, how long can you keep that on though.

scholti:
The reason most scientific words in English are of Latin and Greek origins (50-55% of English words are of Latin origin) is tied intimately to the status of Latin in England (and Europe). England was conquered and ruled by the Normans, a French-speaking group, for centuries, who introduced floods of Latin-based words through French. French was used in high society. (Latin had inherited Greek learning in antiquity.) The same thing applies to all romance languages. They were once pidgins of Latin. The Igbo language has only been in intimate contact with English for less than 200 years, it isn't in the same socio-political situation that English was vis a vis French, Greek and Latin. When Igbos borrow from English they do so because they have no choice. There isn't a proper word base nor is there a refurbished grammar. Sure the Japanese has adopted words from English but they have also created plenty of local equivalents. No language sits back and allows every word enter the language unless specific historical examples like English and the romance languages. Languages borrow and create. Today robust languages find native words for many words.

When I write that nobody speaks Igbo well, I mean that the grammar and vocabulary do not permit the full expression of the sciences, politics, economics etc. The Igbo language doesn't allow serious communication (only in low-hitting areas.) The Igbo language needs the full and new vigour of fresh affixes covering every aspect of human life, to marry with the old.

I know English has a history with those languages, but I was talking about more recent words formed after the Normans had long gone. Words like physics, television, and telephone were all deliberately taken from Greek. And it took less than 50 years for English to go into the background when the Normans came.

Anyway. I agree that Igbo needs new words.

Bollove:
U no dey watch Igbo movie or watch when elderly Igbo folks are speaking .... they squeeze their forehead while pronouncing some words ... maybe as those words involve more force from the nose !!!

You have killed me finish.

Bollove:
Igbos are the most language stingy ethnic in Nigeria !!!
An average Igbo find it difficult to teach you his language and Igbo is also one of the most difficult language in Nigeria because it involve some Nasal pronunciation or some words that requires squeezing your face/forehead !!!

Many Igbos ain't eager to teach you their language even most times they communicate in English among themselves , some condemn the usage of words by fellow Igbo despite Igbo Izugbe being the generally acceptable !!!

I dey laugh o! Which one is squeezing forehead?

scholti:
I am not after making people speak Igbo or advocating for parents to teach their children Igbo or stopping the tide of people abandoning Igbo. These are beyond the purview of what I am about. People who refuse to teach their children Igbo or speak Igbo poorly (and happy with the situation) do so from conscious decision. I have never been drawn to the advocacy for people to learn Igbo (or the call for parents to teach their children Igbo), I see it as childish. People have abandoned languages for new ones. America is good example. People from different linguistic backgrounds have adopted English. What I am doing is for people who speak Igbo and want to use it in every area of life robustly (or those who want to learn).

There is no Igbo that speaks Igbo well because Igbo doesn't have the vocabulary or grammar for serious modern discussions, in the sciences, politics, economics etc. The Igbo precolonial past was not great. There is no archaeology or record from travellers indicating so. Sure some words and grammar have been lost or forgotten, but they wouldn't be sufficient for modern existence. They weren't great scientific researches in precolonial Igboland. Yes there was a civilization, but not as great as those in West Africa, or in and outside Africa.

Stop giving excuses about English. English is Nigeria's lingua franca but the Hausa language employs many people in newspapers, radios etc. English is spoken all over the North, in many cases better than the East, yet the Hausa is an economy on its own there. The Yoruba language has 6 newspapers. Whereas Igbo spoken natively in 8 states doesn't have a single Igbo language journalist. There are many multi-language countries like South Africa (Zulu etc), Switzerland (Italian etc) were languages live together and prosper. English can live well with every language in Nigeria, as the Hausa example shows (and other multicultural settings in the world show). The Hausa language has profited from borrowings from Arabic, grammatically and vocabulary-wise. Find out about people you share the same nationality with.

Concerning vocabulary, no people with any brains would cede 100% of their words to science or any discipline, not even 50 percent. Languages - Chinese, Japanese etc - do a mixture of borrowing and finding native words.

Affixes are indispensable to language growth as the Igbo medical affixes show, every language has borrowed them, Chinese, Japanese etc. A new vigor would charge Igbo.

People can speak very good Igbo.

'Yes there was a civilization, but not as great as those in West Africa, or in and outside Africa.' What does this actually mean?

You're not getting what diglossia, the importance of language as the language of instruction and what the widespread use of a language means which results in this back and forth about the status of English and Hausa's dominance in the north, and now Yoruba. So in that case, is Yoruba among the more 'advanced' languages? Did it borrow grammar from Arabic and English in order for readers to write newspapers as you've said?

I've already alluded to it, but the majority of the scientific and medical terminology in English aren't even of English origin, they're loanwords deliberately taken from other Romance languages and Greek and Latin. So, yes, languages can take on massive amounts of loaning, just like I've said for Japanese: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gairaigo_and_wasei-eigo_terms .

All this was discussed because I did not see the need for certain affixes which were shoehorned in on certain words. If this is a discussion of the progression of Igbo language, then it should be a discussion on how to best mould it to the modern world while not completely alienating speakers, and if you think Igbo speakers don't learn or try to speak better Igbo now, it will be very hard to completely switch the grammar on them and others who speak Igbo very well and have been for more than half a century.

Flets:
http://www.postcolonialweb.org/nigeria/ethnicity.html

Read!!!

You're wrong.

Phut:
Coming back to this, isn't Judgement/ Verdict Nkpebi. That way Njuikpe would be Objection.
Coan you use the examples up above to explain when to use each affix. Is there a set rule which applies to each and every verb?

Nkpebi is agreement or decision, so I guess it can work for verdict, although if you would want to get more specific maybe you would want something that goes around a verdict.

Phut:
Nkpe wouldn't work for court (a noun) then

N/m 'action of the verb' loosely means an object which the verb could be acted on, so ntụ 'nail' is something used to inflict. The connotations of the affixes are just being deciphered, though. I forgot to add 'o/ọ' which is he/she/it.

Phut:
@ ChinenyeN and Ezeagu: can either one of you state the rules which govern the use of the affixes (a, I, e ...) such that a person that is new to the language will be able to decide what to use based on the rules? This isn't arbitrary is it? There has to be a method to the ....

I'd say ị/i is an infinite, a can be past-tense hence the verb has been attained, e is similar attainment depending on vowel harmony and the inherency of something, u is the perfect attainment of a verb, n/m is the action of the verb. Something like that.

What I'm asking is why can't eastern Nigerians and whoever get rid of people like TA Orji now? These so called leaders have been the cause of the lack of progression and even unity, and if there were to ever be a secession they will be in the way, unless a bloody succession takes place. Also, who is going to be the leader of a Biafra. There are so many more extra problems that comes with secession.

Is he in the running?

MOORCHMOORE:
why all these ladies eyes dey shine like vampire own

Because they're out hunting.

https://40.media.tumblr.com/fa43c88cdcbd1cc9847b65dc2c3cf68b/tumblr_nstss4CSwK1qjh37to1_1280.jpg

"Close-up of basketry from the Niger Delta area. Photo by Edward Chadwick, 1930s."

https://40.media.tumblr.com/7544b3b90ad63c81a1b93a8ef125857f/tumblr_nsy5f4jqvV1qjh37to1_540.jpg

"Igbo shrine complex. Photo by Gustaf Bolinder, 1930-31."

[size=14pt]Development of Ancient Igbo Shelter/Housing[/size]

https://41.media.tumblr.com/adc2d0cacb57f1e7968cbb73316bee08/tumblr_nt700xz5v41qjh37to2_1280.png

Possible Earliest Shelter

https://41.media.tumblr.com/4d50f1df4ee8cc601ebc3ebd44120869/tumblr_nt700xz5v41qjh37to3_1280.png

Further Development of the Earliest Shelter

https://40.media.tumblr.com/d9b4a5f1c2b42630e9522f133fec224d/tumblr_nt700xz5v41qjh37to1_1280.png

Possible Earliest Use of Mud in House Building by Igbo Ancestors

https://41.media.tumblr.com/ca421acec7b337ffa0c5b933d055825c/tumblr_nt700xz5v41qjh37to4_1280.png

House of Chief Ezuma-Kanu-Eni in Arochukwu, Zbigniew Dmochowski

"From the possible earliest form of ancient shelter to a traditional 19th/20th century Igbo house. The supposed primacy of the conical shape of housing is reconstructed from the housing of the peoples who now populate the areas around the Benue River which is possibly the point of migration of the ancestors of the Igbo. The quadrangular style housing started taking shape with the development of architectural elements such as posts and beams. [Godwin Chikwendu Nsude (1987). The Traditional Architecture of the Igbo of Nigeria.Thames Polytechnic School of Architecture and Landscape, Dartford.; Zbigniew Dmochowski (1990). An Introduction to Nigerian Traditional Architecture: South-Eastern Nigeria, the Igbo-speaking Areas. Ethnographica Limited.]"

Ify3:
Igbo is going into extinction. Most of my village guys and girls don't speak our languages now rather they chose pidgin English. Even, some of the elders are doing same now.
The cultures are gone completely. The king even worsens the whole matter. Rochas helped them to finish up everything. What a shame!

Strange. I don't know any Igbo village where Igbo isn't the main mode amongst kids.

Who?

scholti:
The Hausa grammar and vocabulary has been influenced by Arabic.The Hausa language was part of the Songhai-Timbuktu civilization and it has writings going back centuries in the Arabic script. 'The problem is diglossia and the rubbish orthography Igbo has, Igbo speakers don't need to speak Igbo because English is widely spoken, while in northern Nigeria Hausa is really all they've got.' I knew you were going to write this because your whole direction has been narrow-centric. Many Northerners speak better English than many Igbos. The Hausa language is taught in secondary schools in the North just as Igbo is in the East. The Hausa language enjoys more dynamic grammar and vocabulary than Igbo, because it came under more sophisticated linguistic influences from Arabic over the course of centuries. Many people are employed as journalists in and out of Nigeria, in the Hausa language media. It is the Hausa people proud of their centuries of written civilization that are propping up the language. There are many scholars of Northern origin whose works are published in local or foreign journals in English. Many Igbos speak English atrociously, so we enjoy no advantage over anyone that speaks their native tongue and Igbo. Infact, there is a generation of Igbos are can't speak any language well, Igbo or English.

The article on the Chinese language was only saying that after borrowing affixes from English, it undergoes native adaptation in the Language. So you agree that the Chinese borrowed affixes, which was my earlier point on the need for affixes. Here is a quote from the article that the Chinese language borrowed English affixes indirectly from Japanese as well as creating new affixes as a result of its contact with English scientific literature, 'But in Chinese most WMAs are borrowed from Japanese which
were also influenced by English. In recent years, research such as in Pan et al. (2004) and
Shen (1995) has been conducted to explore the new phenomenon of adding affixes to
Chinese words to form new words in scientific literature, which are mainly translated from
English or other western languages.'

Ofcourse languages try their best to adjust their borrowings to suit already settled practice, but it is not completely possible, something must give. Here is an article about the grammatical changes in Chinese, tilteled, 'Modern Chinese and Linguistic Change' http://journals.cambridge.org.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=3232528&jid=CQY&volumeId=92&issueId=-1&aid=3232520&bodyId=&membershipNumber=&societyETOCSession=

For your information the English language has a huge body of classical works. http://literature.proquest.com.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/createCompleteContents.do#works

And you conveniently ignored the 41 medical affixes created by the Igbo medical professionals in the Igbo-English medical dictionary, because they do not suit your excusatory trip. All your arguments, whether it is the Hausa part or the Chinese part, have been geared towards leaving the Igbo language as it is. You earlier hinted that the Igbo has a stock of lost 'sophisticated words and grammar' until I pointed out that the Igbo couldn't have had a high scientific tradition given their civilisation. Yes there was a civilization and the discovery of more than 100,000 objects of glass, iron etc hint at a flourishing past civilization of royalty, trade etc, but things should be put into perspective and not exaggerated beyond what they are.

The fact remains that the Igbo language must admit a new layer of grammar in the way of affixes, covering every aspect of life, the sciences, politics, economics, etc, to interact with the old. They are certain situations in a sentence where you can put 'nwanyo' while there are others where you must use 'onodonwanyo'. Langauge has to be laddered: you can't respond to compact sentences with explanations. Not saying that the Igbo language isn't layered, it just has to add more to confront new realities. The Igbo language has to match Shakespearian English with its equivalent, scientific English with its equivalent etc, and not verbose sentences and ridiculous coinages like, 'mbukachara' for substantiation.

The whole Arabic influence on Hausa making it more 'advanced' and therefore easy to spread is something I'm not going to buy, so agreement to disagree maybe. The fact that English is spoken in southern Nigeria more than it is spoken in northern Nigeria is evident in the fact that Hausa is a lingua franca in itself. The level or form of English is not really relevant because people still use a form of English in southern Nigeria as a lingua franca. English is not widely spoken in Zinder and Kano how it is in Port Harcourt or Warri. I'm certain of that. And when I talked about schools, I was talking about instruction, not subjects.

A 'classical English register' is different from classical English works. Classical English doesn't exist and there's no 'simple German' in the sense that you can get a simple English.

The presumed affixes in the medical terms are compound words, or even pseudo-affixes like in Chinese, I've not argued against compounding, or even the use of 'ọnọdụ', what I've warned about was the one-size-fits all approach of adding English-transliterated affixes to all forms even when it is unnecessary and the idea that Igbo grammar can't work for today. What I've spoken for was the use of the present affixes in Igbo which are very clear and rational to Igbo speakers. Now I can't remember talking about sophisticated words, because I wouldn't describe words in such a way. I wasn't going to talk about civilisation. Civilisation is very irrelevant to this discussion because we are talking about vocabulary and the expanding of it, the only words we have trouble with are post-industrial words, apart from geographical and cultural words like tea. Most languages in the world, including European ones had to follow English' lead for industrial words and everything that followed. The stuff we're doing here trying to find terminology for post-industrial words isn't even done by languages like Japanese for many cases, they just adopt a loan word and 'Japanify' it, and I'm talking about common words like engine, motor and machine. Not saying this is good or bad, just that the idea that Igbo's lack of post-industrial terminology signifies a backwardness in the old society isn't really putting everything in perspective, especially with the introduction of industrial age going hand-in-hand with British imperialism and therefore education. If you believe this is wrong then give me examples of pre-industrial words that do not exist in Igbo which aren't obviously geographical and cultural words like ice. Most of the medical terms in English itself were coined from only around 300 years ago via Latin and Greek because the English believed those to be the classical languages of civilisation.

This whole trajectory of this discussion was my contention in the first place: that we are assuming that the way Igbo words are formed is 'backward' simply because it doesn't follow the method used in the languages of 'more advanced' civilisations. There are people who speak Igbo really well, I mean really really well. They usually just use loan words and they communicate perfectly fine, if you came up with the vocabulary to simply replace these loans it'd work for them perfectly. Again, I don't see why we need to compeltely change the grammar of Igbo. I don't think that's the problem and I don't think that will solve the wider issue of people not speaking Igbo because they 1. they don't have to, the fact that this whole conversation is in English shows that 2. English is the official language of instruction and the most widely spoken language, in whatever form, in southern Nigeria.

ChinenyeN:
hehe, did you just coin these?

I thought hard!

Phut:
Hey guys, I bought a couple of dictionaries off Amazon and by comparing and from them, I was able to compile the attached dictionary. What do you guys think of the work, so far?
I want to make it an online, searchable dictionary with audio pronounciation for all the entries. I only attached the A entries but it is currently 525 pages long. I will add Biribiriga - Rainstorm as well as Iga - Fortress, akpede-crossbow and Agwa - Island. Can any of you make any recommendation(s) as to whom to hire for the development of the site?
cc: ChinenyeN
Ezeagu
Cheruv
Scholti
Radoillo
Melzabull

You should get in touch with Oge Nnadi who developed mkpuruokwu.org. It was the best online dictionary and I don't know why it's no longer online. It also provided the region of origin of dialect words and have their tone, like with ákwà (cloth), they transcribed it as [HL]. And it was searchable in both ways (Igbo-English-Igbo).

His contact details: http://nnadi.org/.

[size=14pt]When are they going to parade politicians who have stolen billions like this? Funnily enough those same politicians who steal daily have lead to the conditions where people feel they need to steal goats.[/size]

pazienza:
"To show you an example of census fraud
look at the census recorded population
growth of Enugu (1921-2006):
1921 - 3,170
1931 - 12,959
1953 - 62,764
1963 - 138,457
1982 - 349,873
1983 - 367,567
1984 - 385,735
1987 - 446,535
1991 - 407,756
2002 - 595,000
2006 - 722,664
(From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Enugu#Demographics
(Check the sources))
From the bolded you can see that there
government wanted us to believe that
39,000 people just vanished from Enugu
in 4 years from 1987 to 1991. Then we
can see how the growth rate after the
1991 suddenly tumbles from the rapid
growth seen before, between 1963 and
1983 Enugu grew by around 3 times.
Nigeria itself is a sham and this thread,
although needed for some, is a redundant
reminder for the majority of people".

Yeah, I think I saw this before. I think the other populations were done the same as well. To be honest, there are no reliable statistics out there for ethnicity, all there are are estimates based on populations of the states, and as we know those statistics are also unreliable and apart from that many people live in different states, especially Igbo people. There was never a 2014 census so this thread is misleading.

Phut:
2.It is actionable in court.

I was thinking about how the word for court could be created with the affixing and compounding of 'kpé' and using tone to our advantage, as well as in the creation of other law terms.

ikpe; legal battle
nkpè; court
ukpè; judgement, judge v. [gọ ụkpè]
àkpè; legislation
èkpè; act, decree; acting [èkpùkpè]
òkpè; lawyer
ókpè; court room

compound
àzúikpè; verdict
ńjụíkpè, ọjụíkpè; objection
ọláíkpè; inconclusive
ọhàíkpè [ọhíkpè]; jury

and so on, I haven't even gone into íwú and I've made, presumably, ten legal terms. From one verb. 10. Now imagine what could be done with the thousands of verbs using this simple affixing, and in that case understandable, style that's been used to create most Igbo words already.

FKO81:
Almighty Lagos pride of yoruba race

Hope you know as a Nigerian this paints the whole country in a sickly shade of doo doo brown?

scholti:
German doesn't have simple and complex forms? English doesn't have a classical form? Did you really write these? Really? You are just throwing around hazy thought processes and inaccuracies and hoping that they stick. For your information, English and German, have, high, low, classical and other forms of register. I thought you were a traditionalist fighting a rearguard action, but now I believe you do not understand the profundity of what I am about. You are just lost in a localized way of thinking. You do not understand how languages evolve and grow. Even if Igbo has lost words and aspects of grammar, they wouldn't be half enough to supply a modern vocabulary or grammar (if recovered). The simple truth is that the Igbo didn't have a robust civilization, to boast of lots of scientific terms or a high-powered repertoire of words.

Your refutations only reinforce the points I am making. The article I posted was about the borrowings the Chinese language took from English and nativized. I posted that article in response to your assertion that Chinese doesn't work with affixes: they do, massively, both native and foreign ones. The article is simply saying that it nativizes the borrowings it takes from English as I am doing. I am simply nativizing affixes from English as Chinese and plenty other languages has done. If your accusation that I am simply transliterating English words to English is based on my proposed affixes like 'sis', I only chose them for illustrative purposes. 99.9% of the affixes I am working on are Igbo words . Guess what, I am not the only one thinking along the lines of affixes; today, a friend of mine, lent me an Igbo medical dictionary that was created in 2009 by a team of Igbo medical professions and it contains 41! affixes. ( Here is the book on amazon:http://www.amazon.com/Translation-NTAP-1eca-AS-1ee4S-1ee4-1ee4F-1eccD-1ee4-D-1eccK-1ecaTA/dp/1441590269/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8).

I am going to copy out the affixes here in another post. Every language that aspires to serious usage borrows/nativizes/creates affixes and words. The Chinese are not fools for borrowing '-ing'; nor are the Greeks fools for borrowing '-s' for their plurals; nor are the Germans fools for borrowing 'welt' from English (a nativized word denoting conscious or wide.) Affixes help the expressive powers of a language. And if you shelter under the argument that Igbo 'belongs to a different language family or is different', I would reply that languages families are arbitrary, all languages share the same fundamental features.

I am not out to prove that the English language is superior, I am simply out to take the Igbo language to the next level, out of domestic settings to serious oral and written usages. Many Igbos do not believe that the language should be used to communicate biology, physics etc; they are content in the language being a local champion (and thus dying.) Languages must be made relevant to the times we live in, if they are used at all; that means we must create affixes that communicate every aspect of human experiences, the sciences, politics, economics etc. Yes we would incur a little awkwardness in the grammar structure initially, but it is a prize worth paying to advance the language. There is no alternative. And schools that teach exclusively in Igbo are not mandatory for the language to prosper: the Hausa language proves my point. Despite not having schools exclusive to it, it is a bounding, prosperous language. Many people make a living in Nigeria as Hausa journalists, radio hosts, media personnels etc; whereas the Igbo language spoken natively in more than seven states cannot even muster a single newspaper. There is simply no excuse for the Igbo language not to take on the next level of growth; it would do so with a new layer of grammar.

Okay, first of all there's not classical English. I think you misunderstood me saying Chinese and all do not have those prefixes, not prefixes in general, to function. This is what your sources says on Chinese affixes in relation to English ones.

"An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Words with
multiple affixes (WMAs) such as “translatability”, “postmodernism” and “surrealism” are
very common in English. But in Chinese most WMAs are borrowed from Japanese which
were also influenced by English. In recent years, research such as in Pan et al. (2004) and
Shen (1995) has been conducted to explore the new phenomenon of adding affixes to
Chinese words to form new words in scientific literature, which are mainly translated from
English or other western languages. Although these words have an English origin, they
show their own characteristics. To distinguish them from their counterparts in English,
Chinese linguists call them “quasi-affixes”. The concept was first proposed by Lu Shuxiang
in The Analysis of Chinese Grammar in 1978, which turned a new leaf of study Chinese
affixes. For this Xu(1997) also remarked: “In Chinese-Tibetan languages, the derivation
that plays an important role in new word creation is not those affixes whose senses are
fading and that only serve as formal markers, but those quasi-affixes that retain their certain
senses”. Because quasi-affixes emerge very fast, many new words have been created in this
way, especially in scientific literature. As we mentioned above, many Chinese compound
words were borrowed from Japanese (more than 20,000) in late Qing Dynasty by
introducing Japanese textbooks. In the process, WMAs became a part of Chinese lexicon,
e.g. words with common affixes like “-性(-ity)” and “-度(-dom)”.

"By comparing the WMAs in both English and Chinese, their features that can be used
for automatic translation are summarized into the following three categories: First, in
English the part-of-speech a word is generally shown by derivation and many multiple
affixes are used to indicate their syntactic functions. But this is not true for Chinese.
Therefore, when an English WMA is translated, the stem word is usually kept while the
affixes will be taken off. For instance, the structure of the word “modernization” is “stem
word+suffix+suffix”. Its Chinese translation is “现代化(modernization)” and the last
suffix has to be omitted and corresponds to the empty character ε.
In contrast, English words with a single affix may be translated to Chinese WMAs.
For instance, when a word like “usable” is translated, the Chinese prefix “可-(-able)” has
to be added and its translation becomes “可 利用 的 (usable)” (with the structure
“prefix+stem word+suffix”）. When analyzing this type of words, new characters need to be
generated. Some WMAs correspond very well in both languages, e. g., word
“nongovernmental” with the structure “prefix+stem word+suffix” and “ 非 政 府 的
(nongovernmental)” with the structure “prefix+stem word +suffix”.
The work in this paper considers only verbs and adjectives, the majority of WMAs.
Ordinary dictionaries usually cannot collect all the WMAs, especially in scientific literature.
They often become “unknown words” in machine translation and cannot be translated
successfully. Section 5 provides a few examples for such words."

So the point is Chinese may have been influenced by the scientific words in English by way of Chinese, but their affix or quasi-affix system follows the way established way of affixing. I don't know why I need to say 'ọnọdụnwanyọ' when I can just say 'nwanyọ'. The nature of Igbo itself flows and removes redundancies in order to harmonise words. I see this as a classic example of what this process of affixing will do, which is to attach a one-size-fits-all English-derived affixation system to everything regardless of whether it is needed or not. Reading the Chinese affixation system makes it clear that theirs is different enough from English and works with the language how it has always done. Chinese didn't 'take from English and nativized' in the sense you're talking about, rather it looked at English and provided a suitable Chinese response.

On Hausa and the Igbo languages use in media, again: I am 99% certain if you were to switch the language of all the Hausa speakers to Igbo and the language of the Igbo speakers to Hausa, we would still see a phenomena where Igbo would be used in all types of media. I am equally certain that Hausa is used in schools in northern Nigeria in a way Igbo isn't in southern Nigeria, in fact, speaking Igbo was/is often times punishable in some schools. The problem is diglossia and the rubbish orthography Igbo has, Igbo speakers don't need to speak Igbo because English is widely spoken, while in northern Nigeria Hausa is really all they've got. Even taking the Hausa example, we see that they did not need to change their grammar much to have a language that everyone uses comfortably in all or most areas of life. I'm not even going to talk about grades of civilisation, partly because it's quite irrelevant in the discussion of expanding vocabulary today.

What toilet? Looks like renderings from a zombie apocalypse game. Where's the tuition going?

Phut:
I don't think "beautifuness" is a good test case
@ Ezeagu: Thanks for the translation.
Ezeagu and Scholti how do we say the following words. Is there an already workable affix for these words or is there a need to extend the already existing:

The rest: trimness - ụkpá, ụchá, abruptness - ńkụjà, attentiveness - ńghé, fieriness - àgwà ọkụ, obi ọkụ, genteelness - ogaranya, gratefulness - ọgọ, greasiness - mmanụmmanụ, idi mmanụ, ụnya mmanụ, grouchiness - mkpasu, indebtedness - ịri ụgwọ, oriri ụgwọ, queasiness - afọ nsá, sọ oyi, spaciousness - mbadamba, sa, saasa, graciousness - úrè, uba, mma, braveness - obi shike

QuotaSystem:
This is just another attempt by the Ibos to subjugate the South South people.

Imagine the audacity of telling me my land does not exist.

QuotaSystem:
Never claimed I was SS. I am not from the SS.

So what did you mean by "Imagine the audacity of telling me my land does not exist."? Dubious, no?

AnanseK:
Uncivilized people do not know how to weave and wear cloth, while in the north there was social organization, domesticated animals , utilities , kingdoms and empires, There were artisans and craftsmen and civilizations for hundreds of years in the north when the SE were primitive hunters.

Where was the earliest textiles in Nigeria found and from what estimated date? What is the oldest kingdom in Nigeria? What is the oldest bronze making tradition in West Africa I want you to answer first. That Obasanjo wore more cloth like parachute did not make him more advanced than Tony Blair.

By the way Hausa people today below.

No vision whatsoever.

secretaryabdul:
Thank God, they were properly dressed. The obis and obinnas were roaming unclad then.

This is a Japanese man before western clothes, una pass them then?

[img]http://cfile8.uf.tistory.com/image/155F293C5023DD7B01DC8A[/img]

These are Japanese people today at a festival, una pass them now?

https://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-02/25/xin_37202062520147961138023.jpg

Proposed rail.

www.nairaland.com/attachments/2744343_esternigeriarail_jpegcff374ab293ef4f81bb4605f74db7e6a

BMZK:
I can't believe the northerners were properly dressed even back then in the 40's when their counterparts in many regions were roaming naked.

There's nothing wrong in being nude, nudity or reams and reams of clothing does not signal any type of civility.

NoRetreat:
It is not peculiar to the northern emirs, what of the igbos who were carrying Colonial Masters on their rocking chairs and they were happy to be slaves, what of the yorubas that were selling each other to the whites for a bottle of wine? Or those Calabars who saw white men as gods? We were all caught by the storm!

Sorry, when were the Igbo carrying people in rocking chairs, do you have a picture?