Hypercorrection in Nigerian English--with a few fixes
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Farooq A. Kperogi
Feb 6, 2010, 12:16:29 AM2/6/10
to USAAfrica Dialogue Series
Friday, February 5, 2010
Hypercorrection in Nigerian English
By Farooq A. Kperogi
Hypercorrection is a grammatical error inspired by a false, ill-digested analogy. For example, people who have been taught to avoid “me” in certain contexts (such as “It is me,” which should correctly be “It is I”; “You and me should get together,” which should correctly be “You and I should get together,” etc) may extend the rule to instances where “me” is correct.
Such people may insist that the expression “between you and me” is wrong because they had been taught that “You and me should get together” is wrong. But “between you and me” is perfectly correct, and “between you and I” is patently wrong. I will explain why this is so shortly. But, first, what gives rise to hypercorrection?
Well, my theory is that prescriptivist grammarians, that is, grammarians who hand down frozen, ossified usage commandments without context, conduce to the flowering of hypercorrection. This column tries to avoid that by being descriptivist, by discussing usage rules and exploring their contexts with minimal value judgments.
Before I identify the hypercorrections that seem unique to Nigerian English, let me quickly point out the rules for the examples I cited earlier. You use “me” and “whom,” etc in instances where these pronouns are the objects of a verb, that is, where they are the recipients of an action in a sentence. Another way to remember the rule is to note that if a preposition (such as “between,” “to,” “with,” etc) comes before a pronoun, that pronoun often takes the objective case. (“Who” is subjective case while “whom” is objective case; “I” is subjective case while “me” is objective case).
If that is still not helpful, simply remember that “you and I” is the same thing as “we” while “you and me” is the same thing as “us.” So when you are confused about where and when to use “you and I” and “you and me” simply substitute them with “we” and “us.” Now, let me go to more specific examples of hypercorrection in Nigerian English.
Some days ago, distinguished journalist and Daily Trust columnist Mohammed Haruna isolated my characterization of alleged would-be Christmas bomber Umar Farouk Abdul-Mutallab as a “crazed, fanatical, spoiled brat” to illustrate what he called a “disagreeable description” of the young man.
But in quoting me, he inserted the conjunction “and” to mark off the list of adjectives of disapproval I unleashed on the terrorist suspect. The full sentence ran thus: “Mutallab Jnr may seem a “crazed, fanatical (and) spoiled brat,” to use the rather disagreeable description – at least in my view – by his namesake, Farooq Kperogi, a writer in the Weekly Trust of January 2….”
First off, it is wrong to indicate the addition of comments to a quoted text with parentheses. The correct punctuation mark to use is square brackets, that is, this sign: [ ]. The reason is that the original sentence you are quoting may have a parenthesis and readers would be confused as to who actually used the parenthesis. So Haruna’s sentence should correctly read: “Mutallab Jnr may seem a 'crazed, fanatical [and] spoiled brat,' to use the rather disagreeable description – at least in my view – by his namesake, Farooq Kperogi, a writer in the Weekly Trust of January 2….”
But Haruna committed the grammatical offense of hypercorrection by inserting the conjunction “and” to my list. Relying on the analogy from the rules on the use of commas in listing two or more items, (usually nouns) in a sentence, he probably thought he was straightening my sentence. But this is why he is wrong.
In grammar, a distinction is often made between the rules for listing cumulative adjectives and co-ordinate adjectives in a sentence. Cumulative adjectives organically build up a picture, with each adjective building on the one before; there are no commas between the adjectives. Example: the cute little young girl.
With co-ordinate adjectives, however, each adjective refers to the noun separately and distinctly; there is a comma between each adjective. Example: "That tall, distinguished, good-looking fellow."
In the above example, it would rudely disrupt the flow of the sentence if we inserted “and” before “good-looking.” Although the adjectives refer to the noun separately, they also build up a picture of the noun, which an “and” would disrupt. Such a consideration does not arise when you are listing nouns. (Haruna is clearly applying the rules for listing nouns to the rules for listing adjectives).
In our own case, additionally, “spoiled” almost always co-occurs with “brat” in conversational English so that “spoiled brat” now functions as a collocation. (A collocation is a group of words which appears together in a sentence more often than would be expected by chance). So the phrase “crazed, fanatical, spoiled brat” actually combines elements of the rules for listing cumulative and coordinate adjectives in a sentence and, therefore, inserting a comma anywhere in the sentence amounts to hypercorrection.
Another hypercorrection that is rampant in many grammar columns in Nigerian newspapers is on the delicate distinction between the prepositions “among” and “between.” The general rule is, where more than two participants are involved “among” should be preferred to “between,” as in “the candies were divided between the two girls/among the three girls.”
However, the rule is more complex than that. Both American and British grammarians—and, for that matter, Australian and New Zealand grammarians, all native speakers of the English language—agree that when we speak of exact positions or of precise individual relationships, “between” is the only acceptable choice.
For instance, it is wrong to write: “A memorandum of understanding among five African countries.” It should properly be “A memorandum of understanding BETWEEN five African countries. “African” brings precision to the relationship. Similarly, it wrong to say “Nigeria lies among Cameroun, Niger, Benin and Chad.” It should be “Nigeria lies BETWEEN Cameroun, Niger, Benin and Chad.” The mention of the names of countries surrounding Nigeria brings exactness to the relationship.
An additional hypercorrection I noticed in a respected grammar column sometime ago is the wrongheaded advice against the use of the phrase “strike action.” The columnist said the expression is wrong because it is supposedly formed by false analogy to “industrial action,”—the same way that Nigerians say “of recent” (instead of “recently”) by false analogy to the idiom “of late.”
But he is perfectly off the mark. Strike action, which is often simply shortened to “strike” in everyday English, is the outright cessation of work to register employee grievances. Industrial action, on the other hand, has two related meanings. The first is as an umbrella term for all kinds of industrial protests, including strike actions. The second and more specific meaning is as a form of industrial protest where workers merely deliberately slow down their productivity without an outright cessation of work.
In the United States, “industrial action” is called “job action.” Industrial action, moreover, is not necessarily always job-related; it may sometimes be politically-motivated. Other terms for the second sense of industrial action are “go-slow” in the UK (which incidentally means traffic jam in Nigerian English!) and “slow-down” in the United States.
The last example I want to give is from a reader who questioned my use of “Nigerian” without preceding it with an indefinite article. The reader who “boasts a library of 5000 books, mostly on English” thought I was wrong to write that “I'm Nigerian.”
His argument is summarized thus: “When a linking verb like ‘be’ links a subject with a complement, the latter takes an article if it is a common noun. E.g. ‘I am a teacher,’ not ‘I am teacher.’ But when it's a proper noun, there is no need for an article. E.g. ‘I am Ibrahim.’ ‘Nigerian’ is both an adjective and a noun, but in your own case, ‘Nigerian’ is used as a noun which is obviously a common noun that requires the article ‘a’.”
This reader’s analysis is spotlessly correct in many respects but wrong in others. As is often the case with the English language, there are exceptions to the rule he brilliantly articulated. And as I pointed out here sometime ago, it is these tricky exceptions that often differentiate native and/or proficient speakers of the English language from non-native and/or non-proficient speakers of the language.
Let me cite one exception to the rule that the reader mentioned. You can say, for instance, “I’m a Mutallab” and be correct. “Mutallab” here, of course, would mean something beyond the name of a person; it may mean a religious, ethnic, or familial identity. In the West, for instance, when someone is called "a Muhammad" it’s often a handy way to say he's a Muslim.
Another example: When Hillary Clinton said, in February 2008, “It did take A CLINTON to clean after the first Bush and I think it might take another one to clean up after the second Bush” [emphasis mine] during the last Democratic presidential primaries, she clearly violated the rules my reader adverted to (i.e., she preceded the mention of a proper noun, “Clinton,” with an indefinite article, “a”) but she was perfectly correct nonetheless.
Here is another exception: An indefinite article can precede the name of a person as a way to indicate uncertainty over the identity of that person. I can say, for example, "A Daniel came here to see you.” “A Daniel” here means someone I don't know who identified himself as Daniel.
There is also an exception to the rule that justifies my use of the phrase “I’m Nigerian.” In instances where demonyms (that is, names for the residents or citizens of a locality or a country, also called gentilics) also function as adjectives for countries (e.g. Nigerian, American, German, Filipino, etc) indefinite articles can be dispensed with.
But I think it’s problematic to call a demonym a common noun. Informally, demonyms like “Nigerian,” “American,” "Ghanaian," etc are called “proper adjectives” because they are derived from proper nouns. (Professional linguists don’t use that term, mind you).
So it's customary to hear Americans either say "I'm an American" or "I'm American," "he is a German" or "he is German," etc. When Americans want to confirm my nationality here they usually ask, "Are you Nigerian?" A few ask, "Are you a Nigerian?" But, often, the omission of the article shows informality, friendliness, fluidity, chattiness, etc while its inclusion can sometimes suggest stiltedness and even stuffiness, depending on the context.
There is, in fact, a popular song in the U.S. titled "I'm American" by an Atlanta-based heavy metal music band called "Stuck Mojo."
But it is also entirely possible that the omission of articles before demonyms is a consequence of the absorption of “headlinese” (that is, English usage peculiar to newspaper headlines) into conventional English usage. One of the conventions of headlinese is to dispense with articles and conjunctions wherever possible. That is why, for instance, the idiom “in the soup” is often rendered in newspaper headlines as “in soup.” In Nigeria, “he is in soup” is now the standard way to say “he is in the soup.”
Well, no one is immune to errors when it comes to the English language. As Steve Rivkin and Fraser Sutherland aptly observed in their book, The Making of a Name: The Inside Story of the Brands We Buy, “English is a slippery language, strewn with homonymic banana peels, slapstick mondegreens, and tongue twisters. Even fluent speakers of English constantly make mistakes.”
Hypercorrection is a grammatical error inspired by a false, ill-digested analogy. For example, people who have been taught to avoid “me” in certain contexts (such as “It is me,” which should correctly be “It is I”; “You and me should get together,” which should correctly be “You and I should get together,” etc) may extend the rule to instances where “me” is correct.
Such people may insist that the expression “between you and me” is wrong because they had been taught that “You and me should get together” is wrong. But “between you and me” is perfectly correct, and “between you and I” is patently wrong. I will explain why this is so shortly. But, first, what gives rise to hypercorrection?
Well, my theory is that prescriptivist grammarians, that is, grammarians who hand down frozen, ossified usage commandments without context, conduce to the flowering of hypercorrection. This column tries to avoid that by being descriptivist, by discussing usage rules and exploring their contexts with minimal value judgments.
Before I identify the hypercorrections that seem unique to Nigerian English, let me quickly point out the rules for the examples I cited earlier. You use “me” and “whom,” etc in instances where these pronouns are the objects of a verb, that is, where they are the recipients of an action in a sentence. Another way to remember the rule is to note that if a preposition (such as “between,” “to,” “with,” etc) comes before a pronoun, that pronoun often takes the objective case. (“Who” is subjective case while “whom” is objective case; “I” is subjective case while “me” is objective case).
If that is still not helpful, simply remember that “you and I” is the same thing as “we” while “you and me” is the same thing as “us.” So when you are confused about where and when to use “you and I” and “you and me” simply substitute them with “we” and “us.” Now, let me go to more specific examples of hypercorrection in Nigerian English.
Some days ago, distinguished journalist and Daily Trust columnist Mohammed Haruna isolated my characterization of alleged would-be Christmas bomber Umar Farouk Abdul-Mutallab as a “crazed, fanatical, spoiled brat” to illustrate what he called a “disagreeable description” of the young man.
But in quoting me, he inserted the conjunction “and” to mark off the list of adjectives of disapproval I unleashed on the terrorist suspect. The full sentence ran thus: “Mutallab Jnr may seem a “crazed, fanatical (and) spoiled brat,” to use the rather disagreeable description – at least in my view – by his namesake, Farooq Kperogi, a writer in the Weekly Trust of January 2….”
First off, it is wrong to indicate the addition of comments to a quoted text with parentheses. The correct punctuation mark to use is square brackets, that is, this sign: [ ]. The reason is that the original sentence you are quoting may have a parenthesis and readers would be confused as to who actually used the parenthesis. So Haruna’s sentence should correctly read: “Mutallab Jnr may seem a 'crazed, fanatical [and] spoiled brat,' to use the rather disagreeable description – at least in my view – by his namesake, Farooq Kperogi, a writer in the Weekly Trust of January 2….”
But Haruna committed the grammatical offense of hypercorrection by inserting the conjunction “and” to my list. Relying on the analogy from the rules on the use of commas in listing two or more items, (usually nouns) in a sentence, he probably thought he was straightening my sentence. But this is why he is wrong.
In grammar, a distinction is often made between the rules for listing cumulative adjectives and co-ordinate adjectives in a sentence. Cumulative adjectives organically build up a picture, with each adjective building on the one before; there are no commas between the adjectives. Example: the cute little young girl.
With co-ordinate adjectives, however, each adjective refers to the noun separately and distinctly; there is a comma between each adjective. Example: "That tall, distinguished, good-looking fellow."
In the above example, it would rudely disrupt the flow of the sentence if we inserted “and” before “good-looking.” Although the adjectives refer to the noun separately, they also build up a picture of the noun, which an “and” would disrupt. Such a consideration does not arise when you are listing nouns. (Haruna is clearly applying the rules for listing nouns to the rules for listing adjectives).
In our own case, additionally, “spoiled” almost always co-occurs with “brat” in conversational English so that “spoiled brat” now functions as a collocation. (A collocation is a group of words which appears together in a sentence more often than would be expected by chance). So the phrase “crazed, fanatical, spoiled brat” actually combines elements of the rules for listing cumulative and coordinate adjectives in a sentence and, therefore, inserting a comma anywhere in the sentence amounts to hypercorrection.
Another hypercorrection that is rampant in many grammar columns in Nigerian newspapers is on the delicate distinction between the prepositions “among” and “between.” The general rule is, where more than two participants are involved “among” should be preferred to “between,” as in “the candies were divided between the two girls/among the three girls.”
However, the rule is more complex than that. Both American and British grammarians—and, for that matter, Australian and New Zealand grammarians, all native speakers of the English language—agree that when we speak of exact positions or of precise individual relationships, “between” is the only acceptable choice.
For instance, it is wrong to write: “A memorandum of understanding among five African countries.” It should properly be “A memorandum of understanding BETWEEN five African countries. “African” brings precision to the relationship. Similarly, it wrong to say “Nigeria lies among Cameroun, Niger, Benin and Chad.” It should be “Nigeria lies BETWEEN Cameroun, Niger, Benin and Chad.” The mention of the names of countries surrounding Nigeria brings exactness to the relationship.
An additional hypercorrection I noticed in a respected grammar column sometime ago is the wrongheaded advice against the use of the phrase “strike action.” The columnist said the expression is wrong because it is supposedly formed by false analogy to “industrial action,”—the same way that Nigerians say “of recent” (instead of “recently”) by false analogy to the idiom “of late.”
But he is perfectly off the mark. Strike action, which is often simply shortened to “strike” in everyday English, is the outright cessation of work to register employee grievances. Industrial action, on the other hand, has two related meanings. The first is as an umbrella term for all kinds of industrial protests, including strike actions. The second and more specific meaning is as a form of industrial protest where workers merely deliberately slow down their productivity without an outright cessation of work.
In the United States, “industrial action” is called “job action.” Industrial action, moreover, is not necessarily always job-related; it may sometimes be politically-motivated. Other terms for the second sense of industrial action are “go-slow” in the UK (which incidentally means traffic jam in Nigerian English!) and “slow-down” in the United States.
The last example I want to give is from a reader who questioned my use of “Nigerian” without preceding it with an indefinite article. The reader who “boasts a library of 5000 books, mostly on English” thought I was wrong to write that “I'm Nigerian.”
His argument is summarized thus: “When a linking verb like ‘be’ links a subject with a complement, the latter takes an article if it is a common noun. E.g. ‘I am a teacher,’ not ‘I am teacher.’ But when it's a proper noun, there is no need for an article. E.g. ‘I am Ibrahim.’ ‘Nigerian’ is both an adjective and a noun, but in your own case, ‘Nigerian’ is used as a noun which is obviously a common noun that requires the article ‘a’.”
This reader’s analysis is spotlessly correct in many respects but wrong in others. As is often the case with the English language, there are exceptions to the rule he brilliantly articulated. And as I pointed out here sometime ago, it is these tricky exceptions that often differentiate native and/or proficient speakers of the English language from non-native and/or non-proficient speakers of the language.
Let me cite one exception to the rule that the reader mentioned. You can say, for instance, “I’m a Mutallab” and be correct. “Mutallab” here, of course, would mean something beyond the name of a person; it may mean a religious, ethnic, or familial identity. In the West, for instance, when someone is called "a Muhammad" it’s often a handy way to say he's a Muslim.
Another example: When Hillary Clinton said, in February 2008, “It did take A CLINTON to clean after the first Bush and I think it might take another one to clean up after the second Bush” [emphasis mine] during the last Democratic presidential primaries, she clearly violated the rules my reader adverted to (i.e., she preceded the mention of a proper noun, “Clinton,” with an indefinite article, “a”) but she was perfectly correct nonetheless.
Here is another exception: An indefinite article can precede the name of a person as a way to indicate uncertainty over the identity of that person. I can say, for example, "A Daniel came here to see you.” “A Daniel” here means someone I don't know who identified himself as Daniel.
There is also an exception to the rule that justifies my use of the phrase “I’m Nigerian.” In instances where demonyms (that is, names for the residents or citizens of a locality or a country, also called gentilics) also function as adjectives for countries (e.g. Nigerian, American, German, Filipino, etc) indefinite articles can be dispensed with.
But I think it’s problematic to call a demonym a common noun. Informally, demonyms like “Nigerian,” “American,” "Ghanaian," etc are called “proper adjectives” because they are derived from proper nouns. (Professional linguists don’t use that term, mind you).
So it's customary to hear Americans either say "I'm an American" or "I'm American," "he is a German" or "he is German," etc. When Americans want to confirm my nationality here they usually ask, "Are you Nigerian?" A few ask, "Are you a Nigerian?" But, often, the omission of the article shows informality, friendliness, fluidity, chattiness, etc while its inclusion can sometimes suggest stiltedness and even stuffiness, depending on the context.
There is, in fact, a popular song in the U.S. titled "I'm American" by an Atlanta-based heavy metal music band called "Stuck Mojo."
But it is also entirely possible that the omission of articles before demonyms is a consequence of the absorption of “headlinese” (that is, English usage peculiar to newspaper headlines) into conventional English usage. One of the conventions of headlinese is to dispense with articles and conjunctions wherever possible. That is why, for instance, the idiom “in the soup” is often rendered in newspaper headlines as “in soup.” In Nigeria, “he is in soup” is now the standard way to say “he is in the soup.”
Well, no one is immune to errors when it comes to the English language. As Steve Rivkin and Fraser Sutherland aptly observed in their book, The Making of a Name: The Inside Story of the Brands We Buy, “English is a slippery language, strewn with homonymic banana peels, slapstick mondegreens, and tongue twisters. Even fluent speakers of English constantly make mistakes.”
1 Park Place South
Suite 817C
Atlanta, GA, USA.
30303
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Blog: www.farooqkperogi.blogspot.com
"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will
Lavonda Staples
Feb 6, 2010, 1:43:32 PM2/6/10
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Mr. Kperogi, in regards to your excellent and stellar article, there are a few nuances which must be clearly stated. "You and I" is not the same as "we" and "you and me" is not the same thing as "us." Both phrases allow English speakers to use specificity. In example, "The man gave us two quarters." What does this mean? Did everyone implied in the "us" received two quarters? Were the quarters shared? How man animate entities are included in the term "us?"
La Vonda R. Staples
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Farooq A. Kperogi
Feb 6, 2010, 3:35:51 PM2/6/10
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Ms. Staples,
Maybe I didn't make my point clearly enough. I certainly didn't mean that "you and me" has the same semantic properties as "us" in all cases. I only meant that "you and me" is in the "objective mood" in the same way that "us" is, and that, in most cases, "you and me" and "us" can be interchanged where the reference is to two people only.
In your example, for instance, if the reference is to two people, it will clearly be wrong to write "the man gave you and I two quarters" because "you and I" stands for "we" and it's obviously incorrect to say "the man gave we two quarters." So the correct way to say it would be "the man gave you and me two quarters."
Of course, if the reference is to more than two people, "you and me" can't take the place of "us."
I hope I have clarified my position.
Farooq
1 Park Place South
Suite 817C
Atlanta, GA, USA.
30303
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Blog: www.farooqkperogi.blogspot.com
"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will
Suite 817C
Atlanta, GA, USA.
30303
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Blog: www.farooqkperogi.blogspot.com
"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will
Obododimma Oha
Feb 7, 2010, 7:33:13 AM2/7/10
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Farooq,
--
Obododimma Oha
http://udude.wordpress.com/
Dept. of English
University of Ibadan
Nigeria
&
Fellow, Centre for Peace & Conflict Studies
University of Ibadan
Phone: +234 803 333 1330;
+234 805 350 6604;
+234 808 264 8060.
Thanks for blogging on Nigerian English consistently. I have added a link to your blog in a site I am building for "The English Language in Nigeria," a 300-level course I am currently teaching in the Department of English at UI. I will be using some of the essays to stimulate debate in my online classroom in the course.
Regards.
Obododimma.
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Obododimma Oha
http://udude.wordpress.com/
Dept. of English
University of Ibadan
Nigeria
&
Fellow, Centre for Peace & Conflict Studies
University of Ibadan
Phone: +234 803 333 1330;
+234 805 350 6604;
+234 808 264 8060.
Lavonda Staples
Feb 7, 2010, 11:56:00 AM2/7/10
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Faroq,
Once again, we have experienced one of the most detrimental (in my opinion) obstacles of non-personal (i.e. face-to-face) communication. Let me state my opinion plainly: I think your articles(s) are stellar. My comment can be couched in the theatrical term, "aside." It was not a criticism.
Additionally, I am extremely interested in how other cultures view our language. I hope you will agree with me when I say that the hardest facet of learning the English language is its lack of precision. In order to gain an exact view, the speaker must quite nearly over-burden his/her speech with a plethora of verbiage. Further, we are (native English speakers) are the recipients of cognates and loan words from SEVERAL different languages. This is in contrast to languages such as Swahili and Hausa which have loan words from one primary language (Arabic).
Keep writing and I will keep reading. I save your articles for discussion as well.
La Vonda R. Staples
Farooq A. Kperogi
Feb 7, 2010, 2:38:02 PM2/7/10
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
My pleasure, Obododimma. My Nigerian English blog entries actually first appear in the weekly language column I write for an Abuja-based newspaper called the People's Daily. The column, which appears on Thursdays in the print and online editions of the paper, is called "Politics of Grammar."
1 Park Place South
Suite 817C
Atlanta, GA, USA.
30303
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Blog: www.farooqkperogi.blogspot.com
"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will
I am glad you find the contributions good enough for your class discussions on Nigerian English.
Farooq
1 Park Place South
Suite 817C
Atlanta, GA, USA.
30303
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Blog: www.farooqkperogi.blogspot.com
"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will
Cornelius Hamelberg
Feb 7, 2010, 4:43:15 PM2/7/10
to USA Africa Dialogue Series
I should also like to thank you very much for this very insightful
essay.
essay.
I'm relieved to know that I'm not the only one who has occasionally
suffered from similar post-colonial uncertainties, sometimes more,
sometimes less temporarily.
I should come up with a few such examples shortly and uncertainty is
always at the crux of the moment (you could call it the grammatical
exigency of the situation. I'm also thinking about language
interference problems for Swedish speakers too, they are also
sticklers for correctness when employing Her Majesty the Queen’s
English , sometimes lovingly and reverentially a confessed inadequacy
or localsiation called Swenglish ( Swe-dish+ English.
I'll ask my better half who is a language buff...
On Feb 6, 6:16 am, "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooqkper...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Friday, February 5, 2010
> Hypercorrection in Nigerian
> English<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/02/hypercorrection-in-nigerian...>
> By Farooq A. Kperogi...
> read more »
Chambi Chachage
Feb 7, 2010, 10:22:24 PM2/7/10
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Kiswahili has loan words from different languages too e.g. Shule from German, Duka and Gari from 'Indian', Mvinyo and Meza from Portuguese, Treni and many others from English. By the way, it also has a lot of loan words from other Bantu languages or do we only view those as 'dialects'. Unless, of course, you meant it has more loans words from Arabic which may not be entirely true if we take the other factor into consideration i.e. the loaning of words from many African languages.
From: Lavonda Staples <lrst...@gmail.com>
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sun, February 7, 2010 7:56:00 PM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Hypercorrection in Nigerian English--with a few fixes
Lavonda Staples
Feb 9, 2010, 2:17:42 AM2/9/10
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Also, in Kiswahili, are there terms and phrases which are called or deemed archaic? In English we have words that no longer have any value. In example, we don't use fortnight or se'ennight. The words 'nay,' 'naught,' and 'yea' are also viewed as archaic terms and are not suitable for journalistic or academic writing. In a personal sense (i.e. home use) we no longer say 'ice box' - I should say that we no longer are SUPPOSED to use this word since it has been replaced by the word 'refrigerator.' However, there are many words which are viable within regions. If you lived in Mississippi you could say icebox and no one would care, this is not the case if you were in the North or East of America.
You know that American English has dialects but how often are students of English (in other countries) confronted with the various "rhythms" of American English? I live in the midwest and although I have what is called a high southern accent (the words are rounded, spoken in a certain cadence, but it is not as pronounced as the drawl of a Texan or the twang of someone from Arkansas) but my pronounciation is completely midwestern. We have the American accent which is most common in broadcast media because it is said that our region lacks a decided "flavor" (i.e. Boston, Brooklyn, or any of the states in the American southwest). I would also like to know how is the vagueness of American English received. In personal communication, we can either go on and on or we can utilize paucity of verbiage. On the other hand, formal communication in American English is very legal, very specific and can be seen as over-burdened with words. This is evident in writing assessments where it has been decided (don't ask me who made this decision) that the average American uses a simple subject/verb agreement with a sentence length of no more than 8 to 10 words. By contrast, an American holding at least an undergraduate degree should utilize a sentence structure consisting of compound subjects/verb agreement with a sentence length of 15 to 20 words.
I have a very real curiousity of how the rest of the world learns "our" language. I hope you can answer some (or all) of my questions.
La Vonda Staples
On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 1:04 AM, Lavonda Staples <lrst...@gmail.com> wrote:
Thank you Chambi for that concise but intricate mini-lesson. I have a question: Are the loan words in Kiswahili used in conversation or are they primarily words used in a lingua-franca connotation?La Vonda Staples
Lavonda Staples
Feb 9, 2010, 2:04:55 AM2/9/10
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Thank you Chambi for that concise but intricate mini-lesson. I have a question: Are the loan words in Kiswahili used in conversation or are they primarily words used in a lingua-franca connotation?
La Vonda Staples
On Sun, Feb 7, 2010 at 9:22 PM, Chambi Chachage <cham...@yahoo.com> wrote:
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