₦airaland Forum

hakeem4:
I remember the time when I was queuing up at the ATM. One girl just came to me and said "egbon, am in front of your back ooo"

I nearly died

OneManLegion:
A lot of people claim fluency in English is not a sign of intelligence. While i share in their misery caused by the Patrick Obahiagon's of this world, I choose to disagree with that belief.
It takes a lot of cognitive strength to attain a commendable level of proficiency in a foreign language.

However, grandiloquence or verbosity isn't necessarily a sign of intelligence. In fact, most people who employ verbose verbiages are those who wish to be acknowledged as possessing superior intellect.

davidif:
As much as i love Naija and its people there are some things that really irritate me about the country and its the way they communicate with English language. Nigerians think that in other for them to express themselves in the English language, they have to uses flowery and superfluous words even when they know that a simple one would do. I came across this hillarious piece from the BBC that described this frustration i have with Nigerians and boy did it feel good to finally run into someone who shared my frustration with the Nigerian people. Enjoy hahahaha.


Letters from Africa: Nigeria's art of flowery language
In our series of letters from African journalists, novelist and writer Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani considers the art of Nigerian verbosity.

My friends in the international media are perplexed by the flowery language often used in press releases from Nigerian officials.
The pretentious diction, dying metaphors and padded sentences would make George Orwell somersault in his grave.

Take, for example, this paragraph from a press release by the Nigerian parliament:
"The seminar is aimed at making good the promise of the National Assembly that we are on the same page with the President Buhari led administration and in line with the legislative agenda, that there is a synergy between the National Assembly and the Presidency in the fight against corruption.
"It is to reaffirm the point that you cannot clap with one hand. It is our way of saying that there must be a legislative strength to back the anti-corruption stance of the present administration."

Here is another example, this time a paragraph from a Nigerian military press release:
"The Nigerian Army in synergy with other security agencies under its constitutional mandates... acted responsively in order to de-escalate the deteriorating security scenario in-situ.
"Instructively, the military and other security agencies exercised maximum restraints against the odds of provocative and inexplicable violence that were employed against them...
"It is rather inconceivable for any individual or group to have decided to inundate the general public with an anecdote of unverified narratives in order to discredit the Nigerian Army in the course of carrying out its constitutional duties despite the inexplicable premeditated and unprovoked attacks..."

Such long-winded passages can also be found in the local press, which commonly use expressions such as "the remains of the deceased have been deposited in the mortuary", "men of the underworld", "hoodlums" and "tantamount to insubordination".

Foreigners wonder why Nigerian government officials do not opt for simpler language.

Are they intentionally trying to confuse the public or to conceal information?

Well, these press releases are simply following an age-old Nigerian tradition of verbal ornamentation.

For us, important information has always been best conveyed with grandiloquence.

Chiefpriest1:
Lol. Pure and undiluted verbosity. These are the little things they teach in regular journalism training sessions.

Unfortunately, not up to three of the hundreds of media houses in Nigeria organise training classes for their reporters/editors.

Simple rules: 1. if you can say it in three words , don't use five.

2. Keep it simple

Yesterday on twitter , somebody fried ordinary puff puff and called it mascourdes esculante or something.

Its just like the SGF cutting ordinary grasses for N250m and calling it 'degrassification of riverine pines '

When dem wan steal, them go dey use big grammar.

OneManLegion:
A lot of people claim fluency in English is not a sign of intelligence. While i share in their misery caused by the Patrick Obahiagon's of this world, I choose to disagree with that belief.
It takes a lot of cognitive strength to attain a commendable level of proficiency in a foreign language.

However, grandiloquence or verbosity isn't necessarily a sign of intelligence. In fact, most people who employ verbose verbiages are those who wish to be acknowledged as possessing superior intellect.

ExInferis:
My, you're almost guilty of the same sin you denounce.

Jarus:
My British boss saw this article when it was first published two months ago and sent it to me by email with the accompanying message "Partly true?".

I had replied him with "very, very true" before knowing I just committed what the article was talking about.

musicwriter:
That's the purpose of education in Africa- to cause you to self-destruct. We've been trained to think speaking English means intelligence, so you can see why we must abandon our native languages in favor of English.

What a shame the owner of English is now telling us "your mumu don do". I wish one day Britain will also tell us how stupid we're for still putting English above our native languages.

koolaid87:
You hit my soul with this..

'' I wish one day Britain will also tell us how stupid we're for still putting English above our native languages.''- musicwriter 2017

God bless you

OneManLegion:
I wasn't being grandiloquent, your vocabulary needs expansion.

OneManLegion:
I wasn't being grandiloquent, your vocabulary needs expansion.

Fifthcolumnist:
Even in literature, the average Nigerian writer tries to impress using words straight out of the Queen's playbook. Reading an average column in a local newspaper consumes more calories than reading a similar article from the Guardian or Daily times UK.

If you doubt me read Saturday match comments on goal.com international and compare to match comments on goal.com Nigeria.

Bitcoiniler:
It is apparent you weren't taught how to differentiate "Their" and "There"

khalhokage:
Being obtuse and intentionally confusing isn't what made Chinua Achebe & Chimamanda Adichie award winning authors though.

Ighoga898:
even the op dat is correcting someone said there instead of their

jaybim:
Besides some obviously flawed grammar and almost zero punctuation, I'd say you are equally guilty of that which you have complained about.

Everyone writes from within a social fabric and that fabric to a large extent colours what he writes and how he writes it.

limitless777:
NOTHING, I repeat, NOTHING IS WRONG with our use of English. it's an epic demonstration of class and the level of our advancement.

Y was Wole Soyinka whose write ups U need the dictionary to fathom and Achebe given worldwide recognition?

this people sef, yet IF we are below this level a lot of them will indict and run down our educational standard. na wah O.

listen to Jay Z's, Nas', Talib Kweli's, Jadakiss' lyrics and U all we marvel at the level of intellectual capacities of EVEN this non-graduates command of the English language.

I don't buy this ttrraaash.

davidif:
Yes my grammar is technically flawed especially since I am writing on a public forum to pass time but that's not the issue. The issue i raised here is when people use unnecessary language when they can use a simpler one. End of story.

Ighoga898:
the thing just weak me