₦airaland Forum

naijamanyoutube:
Most Brazilians don't understand much of Spanish. I know because I have Brazilians friends I talk to, and I was in Brazil for 3 months.
Speaking Spanish in Brazil is one of the 10 things you don't do. Search that topic on YouTube and you will see.

You are wildly exaggerating the extent to which Portuguese speakers will have difficulty understanding Spanish, especially when the Spanish speakers slow down to maximize their chances of being understood. Your personal experiences are not a sufficient basis for generalizing about the situation for the whole of Brazil: to illustrate, I too have plenty of friends and acquaintances who are native speakers of either tongue, and in not a single case has there been significant difficulty for either camp to make themselves understood to each other with a little effort. This isn't really a matter of my anecdotes versus yours, as language researchers have studied this issue in some detail. See, for example, the following link.

On the Mutual Intelligibility of Spanish and Portuguese

This reality shouldn't be surprising, as Portuguese and Spanish (or to be precise, Castilian) are part of a dialect continuum that covers the entire Iberian peninsula, and extends into France all the way to Italy (which is why I have also witnessed Italians and Spaniards conversing with each other just fine in their native languages). What that means is that if you start from anywhere in Portugal, as you proceed from village to village until you hit the Spanish border you won't see any two neighboring settlements where people have the slightest difficulty understanding each other, and this continues to be the case even when you get to southern France (as long as you stick with the native Occitan dialects).

With the Romance languages, the only ones that are true outliers are "official" Parisian French (which was heavily influenced by Dutch and Old Saxon) and Romanian (which has been isolated for over 1,000 years). All the others fade into each other gradually as you travel through Europe. To put this into the Nigerian context, Yoruba and Itsekiri may seem wildly different to non-native speakers, but for natives of either it only takes a few weeks exposure to get comfortable (here Igala is to these other "Yoruboid" languages what Parisian French is to Portuguese, Spanish and Italian).

manutdrichie:


Dont allow him to deceive you, he nevwr supported peter obi

He already predicted the winner here

Nonsense. How does making an objective prediction say anything about which candidate one supports? You are implicitly saying that to "support Obi" one must blind oneself to reality and act as like a member of a personality cult - which is exactly the criticism that has been leveled against you "Obidients" since the beginning.

airsaylongcome:
It's the other Romance languages that would be easier. European languages like Greek or German or even the Slavic Languages have almost no relationship with the Romance ones

That's not quite right. Nearly all European languages are members of the Indo-European language family tree, apart from a few isolates like Basque. In any case, for an English speaker, Scandinavian languages like Norwegian or Swedish would be even easier to learn than Spanish or any other Romance language.

abobote:
Brazil don't speak Spanish, but Portuguese

It's still useful Portuguese speakers can understand Spanish (though it's harder the other way around).

Originalsly:
So what if he wants to run for office? ... why some people have a problem with him running but not a problem with others? Even if he is using this to win votes in 2027 ... isn't he doing something to benefit the community? What are the other aspirants doing? ... what has the one who defeated him and now has the money and the power been doing? I would prefer he gets into office than others who do nothing until the eve of election then are busy with eye service. Where are the others who were in the race and lost? ... those are the ones who just need to get into office and enrich themselves.

I agree. Even if he's acting out of hypocritical motives, the benefits being offered by him remain real, and in any case, it is still more than most others are doing. If his actions have the effect of shaming enough Nigerian politicians into accepting that regular public service is a requirement for electoral victory, it will have left the country in a far better place than it is today. As the saying goes, "hypocrisy is the respect vice pays to virtue".

Genius100:
This thread illustrates what is wrong with Nigeria. Everyone is cursing Keyamo but almost no one has refuted what he said. What part of what he said is inaccurate?

There are other things to blame the FG for e.g. mismanagement of the monetary policy etc. but not everything is the fault of the FG. Know this and know peace.

If I were you, I wouldn't hold my breath expecting any such meaningful discussion on here. Nigerians are a product of their cultures and their education system, neither of which encourages calm, dispassionate, reasoned discussion of issues. The typical Nigerian is brought up in a culture which emphasizes uncritical reverence for elders, brooking no questioning or initiative from the young. Said Nigerian is then "educated" in a school system which emphasizes obedience and regurgitation by rote, with critical thinking not even registering on the curriculum. The end result is an individual who can certainly read and write, and who might even be able to display impressive skills in narrow technical fields, but who is utterly incapable of engaging in rational discussion about anything outside the scope of whatever they've had drilled into them during their school years. Critical thinking requires knowing how to weigh evidence, being able to detach one's personal wishes and desires from reality, knowing what constitutes a valid logical inference and what doesn't, etc. None of these things play any role in the typical Nigerian's upbringing or daily experience.

All of the above is why you see Nairalanders invariably lapse into the usual mishmash of "whataboutism", ad-hominems, non-sequiturs and the like whenever topics such as this one arise. They simply don't know how to do anything else but yammer on about irrelevant nonsense even when they aren't simply rushing to express their frustration through the flinging of curses and personal insults.

Stories like this will continue to be commonplace until Nigeria radically restructures its policing, and shifts emphasis to local police forces which are accountable to the citizens they watch over. Note that when I say "local", I truly mean local as in LGA, not "state police" which can be turned into private armies run by governors: in fact, they could be set up explicitly to be independent of state government control, with any such attempts being treated as constitutional infringements.

The rampant corruption in the NPF is not just a matter of low salaries, but a lack of accountability, and having local oversight committees would make it much harder for corrupt policemen to abuse their power and expect to get away with it. This is precisely the sort of issue which could have done with much more debate during the run-up to the presidential elections, but instead we were overwhelmed with a deluge of inane slanders, crude slurs and brazen lies being pushed by people pretending to want "youth" and "change" when all they really wanted was "their turn" to steal in Aso Rock ...

renderme:
Who is this drug dealer? Tinubu is not a drug dealer and never named as one. The DEA never opened a case on him. Neither were any criminal charges brought against him.

You're wasting your time with this correction, as it will fall on deaf ears. You're assuming that these "drug baron" rants are coming from a place of ignorance, but those making it know exactly what they are doing: they are practicing the "Big Lie" technique - tell a lie often and loudly enough and it will come to be mistaken for the truth.

FlawlessKarl:
It baffles me how you people suddenly found your voices when people try to defend their land but keep mute on all the atrocities committed by idiotic terrorist Fulani herdsmen.

What a pathetic justification for supporting vigilante violence by an unelected and unaccountable terrorist group. First off, nobody has an obligation to speak out against every single vigilantism to point out when a particular case is misguided, and secondly, if you'd done your homework, you'd realize that at least some of us warning against the current foolishness have also spoken against violence by herdsmen, so you're just knocking down straw men.

The Nigerian army are all cowards, they only intimidates civilians in Igbo land, kill them endlessly and pride in their cowardice. I dare them to go after the ESN, if they won't feast on their idiotic coward bodies. Foolish idiots

It's funny, these are exactly the kinds of words we were hearing in 2017, right up until the moment when Operation "Python Dance" started, and a mere 100 of those uniformed "cowards" crushed Nnamdi Kanu and his followers like flies.

Limitless72:
You all fail to learn from history. Go and read bout the Igbos. Where have you read in history that the Igbos are scared to fight back, or are subdued

Go and learn.
What justification are you talking about?
Talk about the justification the Fulani herdsmen have to murder over 40 people? You're a big fool if you don't talk about it and turn around to condemn the reprisals on the in IGBOLAND

I want to ask you something why do you people hide under the cloak of NORTHERNERS to drag other tribes in the north into the mess the Fulani created

The fight is against the FULANIS. Why say 'when northerners lose patience', are we talking about Northerner or FULANI HERDSMEN

Stop dragging the whole North into the mess Fulani made. Stop hiding under ''the NORTH'' to seeks and cry for help.

Stand alone on your own and fight your fight. Weaklings. Let only the FULANIS carry out the reprisals and let's see what happens...

Let me remind you,
The IGBOs never surrenders
The IGBO would always defend their land and won't fold their hands and allow foreigners invade and destroy their land. They would fight till the last drop of their blood.

Feel free to believe whatever you like about Igbo exceptionalism. It still won't change the fact that if this violence spirals out of control, there are a lot more Igbos residing in the north within communities which are sympathetic to Fulanis than there are Fulani "herdsmen" in the south. None of the epistle you've written will change that reality, or restrain angry northerners from engaging in yet another in a long history of indiscriminate lynching of the Igbos amongst them - all of which happened despite all the special qualities you're claiming. You think it was only Fulanis who were chopping off Igbo heads in 1966 after the murder of the Fulani Sardauna?

Satanistx:
don't complain when they start doing same to Igbos

They're so high on their own self-image as "warriors" that they're immune to reason, even though most of them know nothing about real-world combat. This is exactly the same way in which the IPOB madness started, with lots of chest-beating and threats, only to switch to a narrative of victimhood once the FG cracked down by sending soldiers to conduct the "Python Dance" exercise ...

Limitless72:
Shut up..

That's all lamebrained lunatics like you have to offer, insults. Take your advice and shut that stinking orifice you call a mouth. It's not like there's anything worthwhile coming out of it.

So because alot of Igbos are in the North Fulani herdsmen should be allowed to murder people in cold blood in their own land.

Here you betray your lack of the slightest iota of intelligence by mistaking someone pointing out facts to you for a justification of violence.

All reprisal attack against Igbos down North did it change anything. If it's only the Fulanis that want to attack the Igbos, then they should bring it on..

The Fulanis can't stand the Igbo in warfare. They're too small. Last last ESN would invade the North and Fulanis would be targeted

The fight would happen there. You attack the Igbos ESN retaliates in the North while dishing to Fulanis in the East

Except Govt intervene and begin to favour one side as usual. The Fulanis are no match for the Igbos...

Lots of empty chest-beating, even though I'm sure you're like the average half-literate tradesman from your region who wouldn't know the business end of an AK-47 from its rifle butt. Just make sure to keep your yap shut once the northerners lose patience and start paying you in kind. It's as predictable as the setting of the sun that you and your ilk currently calling for violence will also be first to wail and moan online about "persecution" and "Igbophobia" once the fire you're currently stoking gets out of control.

hammerT:
FULANI ARE TOO BUSY WITH WEAKLINGS IN YOUR ANCESTORS LAND.


THEY HAVE BEEN TO IGBO LAND AND IT IS RACE THEY USE TO LEAVE.



THEY CAME WITH NIGERIA ARMY, ESN CLASH BOTH OF THEM TOGETHER AND MANY MEN FALL, AFTER THAT THEY DECIDE IT IS BETTER TO CONQUER WOMEN LIKE YOURSELF IN YOUR ANCESTRAL LAND.



ESN WILL NOT DISTURB THEM THERE.


DID YOU NOT SEE PICS OF THE MAN ATTACKED IN YOUR LAND BY FOOLLANI?

There were many hot-headed clowns just like you in 1967 calling Yorubas "weaklings" for not joining them in starting a war they were clearly unprepared for. We all know how that particular show of "strength" by your people ended, with all the pictures of kwashiorkor and 500,000 Biafrans dead to show for it. That you fail to learn from your own history is a sign of your own intellectual weakness, not anyone else being "weak". As the saying goes, "Foöls rush in where wise men fear to tread".

Deeprooted:
Kudos!

This should continue. Fulani herdsmen don't deserve to be alive!

This is pure unadulterated hatred, raw incitement to genocidal violence. If anyone dared to replace "Fulani herdsmen" in the above with "Igbo migrants", the person would be sure to quickly catch a long and well-deserved banning, but when it comes to Fulanis, anything seems to go on Nairaland.

SLOVFO:
Are the Igbo people in the north attacking their host communities? Or are they roaming the bushes with automatic weapons?

You're deluded if you think that will spare them from violence if the Fulanis in the north decide to carry out reprisals for what is being done to their kinsmen in your region. It's as if you're unaware of just how often in Nigerian history Igbos have been lynched en-masse in the north for a lot less justification.

The bottom line is this: if this spirals out of hand into a series of reprisals, there are a lot more Igbos at hand in the north than there are Fulanis in Igboland, and those northern Fulanis are a lot more comfortable with firearms, living off the land and engaging in guerilla warfare. Ignore all this if you like, but no amount of justification on your part will change this harsh reality, no matter how "rational" said justifications may seem to you.

XAUBulls:
Kudos @Seun! This is one of the suggestions I have made in the past and on your last thread for you guys to implement.

You have listening ears.


Second, the Foreign Affairs Section, American Politics thread has a troll that relentlessly creates many monikers after being banned for
Rule 19 violation, derailing and extreme misogyny, stalking and sexual harassment of females by describing and threatening rape and defamation.

This male troll has been bragging that neither Seun nor the supermoderators can ever successfully ban him because he would simply create a new NL moniker. He has over 15 monikers that he uses or has used for stalking, sexual harassment, and trolling.


So, that Foreign Affairs section requires the presence of very responsive moderators that will ban ALL Rule 19 violators.

Sadly I don't think it will be possible for any financially feasible number of human moderators to keep up with all such trolls, for the simple reason you've mentioned - it's trivial for them to simply create new accounts from which to resume their trolling. Witness the regularity with which certain accounts post disgusting pictures begging for money on front-page threads, even though they are of interest to virtually no one regardless of party or ethnicity ...

The only workable solution that scales is one I haven't seen given serious consideration, namely some sort of automated system, probably one relying on reputation. If trolls knew that comments from brand-new accounts would be likely buried until they'd acquired enough reputation points, the incentive to create such accounts would vanish. In addition, long-standing users with accumulated reputations would think twice about having them sunk over petty tribalistic exchanges.

press9jatv:
Seun caused it in the first place. Why still retain moderators on nairaland that the users on this app are always complained about them and other banning of their monikers. Put up a poll on nairaland and list the moderators the people hate most and their ways of life towards the users on nairaland. From there nairalanders will start to show love ❤️ that you are neutral in your dealings. Without that your forum will keep on breed hatred among the tribes on nairaland.

So your prescription for Seun to counter the lynch mob is to surrender to mob rule entirely by turning moderation into a popularity contest? You are essentially asking him to kill the platform he has spent so many years nurturing by turning it into yet another echo chamber for "Obidient" trolls and propagandists, who will quickly scare off everyone else. Somehow I doubt that's going to happen ...

muhammaduyusufu:
Ironically, he is an Obidient as well.

That's the thing, they don't care that he supported Peter Obi and lent the LP a platform on Nairaland, because for them the one true way to be "Obedient" is to agree with them all the time on absolutely everything. Even the slightest deviation is enough to earn a casting into the darkness as a heretic.

This is precisely what Wole Soyinka (who has made personal sacrifices most of the "Obidients" could never even imagine) was getting at when he talked about "fascist" tendencies. Intolerance of any deviation from orthodoxy, no matter how slight, is the mark of a totalitarian movement, not a political party motivated by fairness and justice.

Ishilove:
Genetics plays a major role in all these. I was a VERY plump child, but the only junk food I was being fed was the once in a blue moon meat pie my dad sometimes bought from Mr Biggs. My dad is on the big side, even though he is no longer big because of age (a few years shy of 70), so when people so how robust I and my sibs were, they knew that it was our father's stature we inherited.

This child has inherited his father's stature and i am very sure it has little to do with diet

How does "stature" explain the rolls of fat on the boy's leg? The kid is morbidly obese, and is well on his way to dying early of diabetes or heart disease if things are left this way.

CodeTemplar:
from consultant to employee. Weldone o.
You don't motivate consultants that way. They are professionals and suppose to deliver irrespective the amount involved per transaction. What you are arguing is like Telecom billing users by importance of calls or messages and not on volume.

It's your kind of mentality that has left so many businesses stuck in 2x2 corner shops because their owners prefer to own 100% of nothing rather than "just" 5% of something worth billions. It's a good thing Lagos isn't being run by people with your way of thinking.

CodeTemplar:
incentive in saner places are the one paying the tax and not a mere consultant managing tax collection.

What does any of this mean? We are talking about the incentives to collect taxes! That's what Lagos State hired AlphaBeta to do! It's obvious that they do an excellent job of it, and the reason they do is because Lagos has given them the right incentives to carry out the job with zeal.

You seem like the sort of short-sighted person who thinks it's more "proper" to pay an employee a flat N50k and see that employee bring in N250k over that time period, rather than pay 10% to the same employee to go hustle and pull in N15 million, so fixated are you on the extra N1.45 million you'll "lose" that you give up N13.25 million instead. Thank goodness the leaders of Lagos haven't suffered from your kind of myopic pettiness.

KanwuliaExtra:
EGBEKEGBE APC don start again.
Instead of facing their SHAMEFUL 'drug' case' and escaping jail sentence by plea of forfeiture. . . they keep forging lies.
NARCO president that killed millions of people with heroine addiction.

Where is your evidence that the APC is behind this? Do you think British passport control officers are paid APC agents or something?

CodeTemplar:
Use your brain if you have one and it us working.

Collecting a percentage of tax irrespective of effort it took to receive it is unfair.
It doesn't take more effort to receive a N100m tax than a N1m tax.

This comment only shows that you have no understanding of how incentives work. If AlphaBeta (or any other such consultancy) were being paid a flat rate, what incentive would they have to do more than the bare minimum required to earn that rate? Why do you think salesmen are paid on a commission basis?

This same excessive focus on the internet is how so many "Obidients" fooled themselves into thinking their candidate was going to win in a landslide, forgetting that the vast majority of Nigerians aren't spending every waking moment online chattering about a 62-year old 2019 PDP Vice-Presidential candidate now repacked as an "outsider" after switching parties just last year. Besides, nobody is going to be doing searches on Tinubu and Atiku as everyone in Nigeria already knows who they are, and in any case, the winners of the election are hardly going to be grumbling about INEC, are they?

All we have here is the same old echo-chamber effect generated by "Obidients", who mistake the obsessive noise they themselves generate about their "movement" for some sort of consensus amongst the population at large.

Seun

I'd have thought it would be obvious by now that human moderators don't scale, and that they aren't capable of being judged "neutral" and "unbiased" no matter how hard they try, especially since for so many Nairalanders, "unbiased" simply seems to mean "allows people of my ethnicity to run riot while banning anyone who says anything slightly critical about us".

No matter the protestations all applicants are currently making, the likelihood is extremely high that they will abuse the powers given to them once appointed, and while Mynd44 gets a lot of criticism on here simply for being forthright about his views and preferences (which actually makes it easier to hold him accountable), there are other moderators who pretend to neutrality while advancing a blatantly tribalistic agenda, feeling secure that they can do as they please because they haven't bothered to publicly own up to their own beliefs.

Certainly this has been my recent personal experience, when I was blocked for 3 days over a critical comment I made in response to a bigoted troll writing barely veiled all-caps tribal slurs about Yorubas in general and Wole Soyinka in particular: my comment was deleted while that of the troll was left unmolested. There was no way of knowing who did the banning and deleting, and no explanation given, but it was clear from the context that it was motivated by raw tribalism, as my deleted comment contained no slurs or threats, unlike the ones by the troll which were left intact.

I'm saying all of this to point out that if you're serious about ridding Nairaland about its incessant tribalistic trolling, you need to face reality and accept that some measure of automated moderation is required, based on something cleverer than merely a few regexes which inventive trolls can quickly learn to circumvent. Algorithms can certainly be biased, but they are easier to hold accountable and to rectify than human moderators whose actions will likely never be audited.

Soludo didn't specifically mention any group in his message, so why is his throwaway comment on "the headless mob" so triggering to the OP, if it doesn't apply? Unless it's a guilty conscience prodding this angry response, isn't this a case of running when no one is chasing you?

Masterito:
I am responsible for what I wrote not what you understood.

Oh I understood you all too well, don't worry ...

tuborme:
When you and Tinubu tether your Onanuga, FFK, Mc Oluomo… then we can talk

Of course, in your mind the world is divided cleanly into Obi and Tinubu supporters with nothing in between, never mind that Atiku actually got more votes than your messiah ...

Masterito:
If the Obidients you blame has done more than what you are doing. Lol. W[b]ell like I said earlier I will leave to wallow in your ignorance.[/b] Remind the part of the Bible that says don't judge others.

You really can't help yourselves with the insults, can you? How sad and pathetic.