USA Africa Dialogue Series - Broken English, Pidgin English and Nigerian English
316 views
Skip to first unread message
Farooq A. Kperogi
May 20, 2010, 1:14:26 PM5/20/10
to USAAfrica Dialogue Series
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Broken English, Pidgin English and Nigerian English
By Farooq A. Kperogi
Is Nigerian English the same as (Nigerian) Pidgin English or, for that matter, “broken English”? I have been asked this question many times. And my short answer is no, although there are occasional overlaps between Nigerian Pidgin English and Nigerian English.
But, first, what is “broken English”? Well, it is a somewhat pejorative label used by native speakers of English to describe the often hysterical violations of the basic rules of Standard English syntax by non-native speakers of the language. Two other popular names for broken English are “halting English” and “faltering English.” For instance, the sentence, “I want to see you” may be rendered as “me like see you” in broken English. “I will see you tomorrow” could become “Me is come see you tomorrow.” And so on.
As it should be obvious by now, the people who are apt to speak or write broken English in the classical conception of the term are often people for whom English is a foreign language (e.g. Chinese and Japanese people) rather than people for whom it is a second language (e.g. Nigerians and Indians).
It should be noted, though, that uneducated or barely educated people in English-as-a-second-language linguistic environments can— and indeed do— speak or write broken English, while people who are well-schooled in English in English-as-a-foreign-language environments don’t speak or write broken English.
Now, since even native English speakers routinely violate the rules of their own language, tolerable grammatical errors can’t be regarded as “broken English.”
Pidgin, on the other hand, is a technical term in linguistics that refers to a “contact” or “trade” language that emerged from the fusion of foreign, usually European, languages and indigenous, usually non-European, languages. In this linguistic fusion, the European languages provide most of the vocabulary and the indigenous languages provide the structure of the language.
Look at this Nigerian Pidgin English sentence, for example: “Wetin dey hapun nau?” The informal Standard English equivalent of this expression would be “What’s up?” Now, “wetin” is a distortion of “what is,” “hapun” is the corruption of “happen,” but “nau” is derived from the Igbo word “na” or “nna.”
In the above sentence, the vocabulary is mostly English but the structure of the sentence is decidedly African. Let me give just one example to illustrate this. In African languages, it is usual to end sentences with what grammarians call terminal intensifiers. An intensifier is a word that has little meaning except to accentuate the meaning of the word or phrase it modifies.
A “terminal intensifier” is therefore an intensifier that appears at the end of a sentence. Words like “o” in “E don taya me o,” [I’m fed up], “na” in “wia you dey na?” [Where are you?], and “sha” in “Di ting get as e be sha” [That’s really unusual] are terminal intensifiers because they appear at the end of sentences and merely heighten the meanings of the phrases that preceded them. With a few exceptions, intensifiers appear either at the beginning or in the middle of sentences in English. E.g., “Honestly” in “Honestly, this doesn’t make sense to me,” “really” in “I’m really tired.”
Additionally, pidgins are characterized by a simple, often anarchic and rudimentary grammatical structure, a severely limited vocabulary, and are used for the expression of really basic thought-processes. This is because they emerged as “emergency” languages for casual, short-term linguistic encounters. Therefore, pidgins can’t express high-minded thought-processes and are usually not anybody’s primary or first language.
Where pidgins acquire complex, well-ordered, rule-governed grammatical forms, a rich lexicon for the expression of complex thoughts, and become the first language of a people, they mutate to “creoles.” In the socio-linguistic literature, it is traditional to label pidgins as “artificial languages” and other languages, including creoles, as “natural languages.” Problematic as this taxonomy is (at least to me), it does underscore the sense that pidgins don't have the same social prestige as other languages.
Now, in Nigeria, it is customary to use “Pidgin English” and “broken English” interchangeably. But Pidgin English isn’t broken English because it does not attempt to approximate the linguistic conventions of Standard English. In other words, it isn’t the product of an incompetent attempt to speak or write Standard English; it’s the product of a historically specific, socio-linguistic alchemy of Nigerian languages and English. Additionally, it seems to me that broken English, deformed as it is, is often comparatively more intelligible to monolingual native English speakers than Pidgin English.
Interestingly, Nigerian Pidgin English is now increasingly being creolized especially in Nigeria’s deep south and in such cosmopolitan, multi-ethnic urban centers as Lagos and Abuja. It’s anybody’s guess where this will all end.
What of Nigerian English? In an earlier article on this subject in 2007, I wrote: “By Nigerian English I do not mean Nigerian Pidgin English. Nor do I mean the English spoken by uneducated and barely educated Nigerians. I mean the variety of English that is broadly spoken and written by our literary, intellectual, political, and media elite across the regional and ethnic spectrum of Nigeria.
“I know this definition is barefacedly elitist. But this is true of all ‘standard’ varieties of all ‘modern’ languages in the world. What is called British Standard English, for instance, is no more than the idiosyncratic usage of the language by the English royalty—and by the political, intellectual, literary, and media elite of the country.
“The social and intellectual snobbery of the French language is even more blatant. There is a French language academy that not only consciously privileges the elite dialect of the language but that also polices its usage all over the world.
“An additional problem with my definition is that Nigerian English has not yet been purposively standardized. Our English teachers still dismiss it as mere ‘bad English.’ I remember that when I served as an English language examiner for the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) in 1997, our team leader instructed us to penalize students who wrote ‘Nigerian English.’ The irony, however, is that no Nigerian who was educated at home, including those who deride Nigerian English, can avoid speaking or writing it either consciously or unconsciously.”
“It was the legendary Chinua Achebe who once said, in defense of his creative semantic and lexical contortions of the English language to express uniquely Nigerian socio-cultural thoughts that have no equivalents in English, that any language that has the cheek to leave its primordial shores and encroach on the linguistic territory of other people should learn to come to terms with the inevitable reality that it would be domesticated.”
I then identified the following as the fundamental sources of Nigerian English: linguistic improvisation (to express unique socio-cultural thought-processes that are absent in the standard varieties of English), old-fashioned British English expressions, initial usage errors fossilized over time and incorporated into our linguistic repertory, and a mishmash of British and American English.
In my weekly language interventions, I try to highlight the distinctiveness of Nigerian English and its deviations from standard American and British English, not to ridicule it, as one pathetically quixotic, intellectually insecure “pan-Africanist” pretender claimed sometime ago (how could I ridicule what I too write and speak every day?), but to heighten people’s awareness of the ways in which our English is different from the two dominant varieties of the language and therefore aid intelligibility across these varieties.
If you know, for instance, that the term “international passport” has limited intelligibility outside Nigeria, you won’t use it when you are in Britain or America. You would also not tell an American or a Briton that you would “flash” him because that could get you arrested!
Related Articles:
1. A Comparison of Nigerian, American and British English
2. Why is "Sentiment" Such a Bad Word in Nigeria?
3. Ambassador Aminchi's Impossible Grammatical Logic
4. 10 Most Annoying Nigerian Media English Expressions
5. Sambawa and "Peasant Attitude to Governance"
6. Adverbial and Adjectival Abuse in Nigerian English
7. In Defense of "Flashing" and Other Nigerianisms
8. Weird Words We're Wedded to in Nigerian English
9. American English or British English?
10. Hypercorrection in Nigerian English
11. Nigerianisms, Americanisms, Briticisms and Communication Breakdown
12. Top 10 Irritating Errors in American English
13. Nigerian Editors Killing Macebuh Twice with Bad Grammar
14. On "Metaphors" and "Puns" in Nigerian English
15. Common Errors of Pluralization in Nigerian English
16. Q & A About Common Grammatical Problems
17. Semantic Change and the Politics of English Pronunciation
18. Common Errors of Reported Speech in Nigerian English
Is Nigerian English the same as (Nigerian) Pidgin English or, for that matter, “broken English”? I have been asked this question many times. And my short answer is no, although there are occasional overlaps between Nigerian Pidgin English and Nigerian English.
But, first, what is “broken English”? Well, it is a somewhat pejorative label used by native speakers of English to describe the often hysterical violations of the basic rules of Standard English syntax by non-native speakers of the language. Two other popular names for broken English are “halting English” and “faltering English.” For instance, the sentence, “I want to see you” may be rendered as “me like see you” in broken English. “I will see you tomorrow” could become “Me is come see you tomorrow.” And so on.
As it should be obvious by now, the people who are apt to speak or write broken English in the classical conception of the term are often people for whom English is a foreign language (e.g. Chinese and Japanese people) rather than people for whom it is a second language (e.g. Nigerians and Indians).
It should be noted, though, that uneducated or barely educated people in English-as-a-second-language linguistic environments can— and indeed do— speak or write broken English, while people who are well-schooled in English in English-as-a-foreign-language environments don’t speak or write broken English.
Now, since even native English speakers routinely violate the rules of their own language, tolerable grammatical errors can’t be regarded as “broken English.”
Pidgin, on the other hand, is a technical term in linguistics that refers to a “contact” or “trade” language that emerged from the fusion of foreign, usually European, languages and indigenous, usually non-European, languages. In this linguistic fusion, the European languages provide most of the vocabulary and the indigenous languages provide the structure of the language.
Look at this Nigerian Pidgin English sentence, for example: “Wetin dey hapun nau?” The informal Standard English equivalent of this expression would be “What’s up?” Now, “wetin” is a distortion of “what is,” “hapun” is the corruption of “happen,” but “nau” is derived from the Igbo word “na” or “nna.”
In the above sentence, the vocabulary is mostly English but the structure of the sentence is decidedly African. Let me give just one example to illustrate this. In African languages, it is usual to end sentences with what grammarians call terminal intensifiers. An intensifier is a word that has little meaning except to accentuate the meaning of the word or phrase it modifies.
A “terminal intensifier” is therefore an intensifier that appears at the end of a sentence. Words like “o” in “E don taya me o,” [I’m fed up], “na” in “wia you dey na?” [Where are you?], and “sha” in “Di ting get as e be sha” [That’s really unusual] are terminal intensifiers because they appear at the end of sentences and merely heighten the meanings of the phrases that preceded them. With a few exceptions, intensifiers appear either at the beginning or in the middle of sentences in English. E.g., “Honestly” in “Honestly, this doesn’t make sense to me,” “really” in “I’m really tired.”
Additionally, pidgins are characterized by a simple, often anarchic and rudimentary grammatical structure, a severely limited vocabulary, and are used for the expression of really basic thought-processes. This is because they emerged as “emergency” languages for casual, short-term linguistic encounters. Therefore, pidgins can’t express high-minded thought-processes and are usually not anybody’s primary or first language.
Where pidgins acquire complex, well-ordered, rule-governed grammatical forms, a rich lexicon for the expression of complex thoughts, and become the first language of a people, they mutate to “creoles.” In the socio-linguistic literature, it is traditional to label pidgins as “artificial languages” and other languages, including creoles, as “natural languages.” Problematic as this taxonomy is (at least to me), it does underscore the sense that pidgins don't have the same social prestige as other languages.
Now, in Nigeria, it is customary to use “Pidgin English” and “broken English” interchangeably. But Pidgin English isn’t broken English because it does not attempt to approximate the linguistic conventions of Standard English. In other words, it isn’t the product of an incompetent attempt to speak or write Standard English; it’s the product of a historically specific, socio-linguistic alchemy of Nigerian languages and English. Additionally, it seems to me that broken English, deformed as it is, is often comparatively more intelligible to monolingual native English speakers than Pidgin English.
Interestingly, Nigerian Pidgin English is now increasingly being creolized especially in Nigeria’s deep south and in such cosmopolitan, multi-ethnic urban centers as Lagos and Abuja. It’s anybody’s guess where this will all end.
What of Nigerian English? In an earlier article on this subject in 2007, I wrote: “By Nigerian English I do not mean Nigerian Pidgin English. Nor do I mean the English spoken by uneducated and barely educated Nigerians. I mean the variety of English that is broadly spoken and written by our literary, intellectual, political, and media elite across the regional and ethnic spectrum of Nigeria.
“I know this definition is barefacedly elitist. But this is true of all ‘standard’ varieties of all ‘modern’ languages in the world. What is called British Standard English, for instance, is no more than the idiosyncratic usage of the language by the English royalty—and by the political, intellectual, literary, and media elite of the country.
“The social and intellectual snobbery of the French language is even more blatant. There is a French language academy that not only consciously privileges the elite dialect of the language but that also polices its usage all over the world.
“An additional problem with my definition is that Nigerian English has not yet been purposively standardized. Our English teachers still dismiss it as mere ‘bad English.’ I remember that when I served as an English language examiner for the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) in 1997, our team leader instructed us to penalize students who wrote ‘Nigerian English.’ The irony, however, is that no Nigerian who was educated at home, including those who deride Nigerian English, can avoid speaking or writing it either consciously or unconsciously.”
“It was the legendary Chinua Achebe who once said, in defense of his creative semantic and lexical contortions of the English language to express uniquely Nigerian socio-cultural thoughts that have no equivalents in English, that any language that has the cheek to leave its primordial shores and encroach on the linguistic territory of other people should learn to come to terms with the inevitable reality that it would be domesticated.”
I then identified the following as the fundamental sources of Nigerian English: linguistic improvisation (to express unique socio-cultural thought-processes that are absent in the standard varieties of English), old-fashioned British English expressions, initial usage errors fossilized over time and incorporated into our linguistic repertory, and a mishmash of British and American English.
In my weekly language interventions, I try to highlight the distinctiveness of Nigerian English and its deviations from standard American and British English, not to ridicule it, as one pathetically quixotic, intellectually insecure “pan-Africanist” pretender claimed sometime ago (how could I ridicule what I too write and speak every day?), but to heighten people’s awareness of the ways in which our English is different from the two dominant varieties of the language and therefore aid intelligibility across these varieties.
If you know, for instance, that the term “international passport” has limited intelligibility outside Nigeria, you won’t use it when you are in Britain or America. You would also not tell an American or a Briton that you would “flash” him because that could get you arrested!
Related Articles:
1. A Comparison of Nigerian, American and British English
2. Why is "Sentiment" Such a Bad Word in Nigeria?
3. Ambassador Aminchi's Impossible Grammatical Logic
4. 10 Most Annoying Nigerian Media English Expressions
5. Sambawa and "Peasant Attitude to Governance"
6. Adverbial and Adjectival Abuse in Nigerian English
7. In Defense of "Flashing" and Other Nigerianisms
8. Weird Words We're Wedded to in Nigerian English
9. American English or British English?
10. Hypercorrection in Nigerian English
11. Nigerianisms, Americanisms, Briticisms and Communication Breakdown
12. Top 10 Irritating Errors in American English
13. Nigerian Editors Killing Macebuh Twice with Bad Grammar
14. On "Metaphors" and "Puns" in Nigerian English
15. Common Errors of Pluralization in Nigerian English
16. Q & A About Common Grammatical Problems
17. Semantic Change and the Politics of English Pronunciation
18. Common Errors of Reported Speech in Nigerian English
Labels: Broken English, Nigerian English, Pidgin English
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
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsub...@googlegroups.com
Cornelius Hamelberg
May 20, 2010, 6:04:55 PM5/20/10
to USA Africa Dialogue Series
Farooq,
Good greetings!
You are gradually succeeding in get us all focused on the
peculiarities of “Nigerian English” and it’s an altogether interesting
article which takes some looking into.
Interesting distinctions you make between English as a second Language
and English as a foreign language. You invite many exceptions to the
rule.
It cannot be said that Swedes for example speak “Broken English” -
perhaps a Nigerian can make that kind of evaluation, but at our
equivalent over here - whether it is a Swede who speaks English as a
foreign Language or as a second language - at best , he speaks it as
native (many among the younger generation do ( my friends son who had
never been to the US spoke English with a perfect American accent –
how come - I asked him, well when I was a kid I watched “Cartoon
network”., said he. Less than best he or her would be speaking what we
jokingly (realistic depreciation) in modesty we call Swenglish,
without t any colonial hang ups – and that’s a whole subject on its
own. And guess what? “Swenglish does attempt to approximate the
linguistic conventions of Standard English.”
“Broken English” as a naming can be used instead of/interchangeably
with patois, sometimes with Krio, Creole. As far as Sierra Leone Krio
is concerned, especially with Freetown’s special history - well
Sierra Leone was the Englishman’s first colony in Africa and Sierra
Leone remained a colony for the longest period of time: 150 years
until Independence on 27th April 1961. That Krio is still growing
rapidly, When Emmerson broke new ground with his “Borbor bele” song
N0.o. 5 was “SWEGBE” - and a lengthy discussion ensued about the
meaning of that word which has now passed on into Sierra Leone Krio,
like hundreds of other Yoruba words that enrich Krio - and now
everybody knows that it means “a fool”
http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&q=Nylander+%3A+Krio
I don’t think that it is only native speakers of English who have
given the term “broken English” to the varieties of English that are
known by the term, “Broken English” – nor is it necessarily “a
somewhat pejorative label “. In fact non- native speakers use the same
appellation quite naturally, without any trace of prejudice
whatsoever, as naturally as someone can be named/ baptised John. (In
one of his novels Ayi Kwei Armah asks, what happens to the soul of an
African boy who grows up, being called Mike.)
An Englishman gets lost in one of the jungles of Africa, he espies a
native – there in the thick of the forest and he shouts his first
question: “Do you speak English, my good man?!?”
If the answer is “Yes” or “Yes boss” then - what a relief - for he
feels that he is saved.
What are the reasons for this presumptuous first question anyway?
When an Englishman says to a non-native speaker,” You speak good
English”, what does he mean? Is it a compliment? An act of
condescension? Or?
I’ve heard Englishmen say to non- Englishmen “You speak good English”
- but not to me….
PS Abysmal ignorance is tempted to enquire from Chambi Chachage
whether or not Kiswahili is a pidgin of Arabic.
On May 20, 7:14 pm, "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooqkper...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> *By Farooq A. Kperogi*
> subject<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2007/09/divided-by-common-language-...>
> in2007, I wrote: “By Nigerian English I do not mean Nigerian Pidgin English.
> *Related Articles:
> 2. <http://www.blogger.com/goog_2036618659>Why is "Sentiment" Such a Bad
> Word in Nigeria?<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2009/12/why-is-sentiment-such-bad-w...>
> 10. Hypercorrection in Nigerian
> English<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/02/hypercorrection-in-nigerian...>
> <http://www.blogger.com/goog_704080340>16. Q & A About Common Grammatical
> Problems<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/04/q-and-about-common-grammati...>
> <http://www.blogger.com/goog_704080340>17. Semantic Change and the Politics
> of English Pronunciation<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/04/semantic-change-and-politic...>
> *
> *18. Common Errors of Reported Speech in Nigerian
> English<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/05/common-errors-of-reported-s...>
> *
> Labels: Broken English<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/search/label/Broken%20English>
> , Nigerian English<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/search/label/Nigerian%20English>
> , Pidgin English<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/search/label/Pidgin%20English>
Good greetings!
You are gradually succeeding in get us all focused on the
peculiarities of “Nigerian English” and it’s an altogether interesting
article which takes some looking into.
Interesting distinctions you make between English as a second Language
and English as a foreign language. You invite many exceptions to the
rule.
It cannot be said that Swedes for example speak “Broken English” -
perhaps a Nigerian can make that kind of evaluation, but at our
equivalent over here - whether it is a Swede who speaks English as a
foreign Language or as a second language - at best , he speaks it as
native (many among the younger generation do ( my friends son who had
never been to the US spoke English with a perfect American accent –
how come - I asked him, well when I was a kid I watched “Cartoon
network”., said he. Less than best he or her would be speaking what we
jokingly (realistic depreciation) in modesty we call Swenglish,
without t any colonial hang ups – and that’s a whole subject on its
own. And guess what? “Swenglish does attempt to approximate the
linguistic conventions of Standard English.”
“Broken English” as a naming can be used instead of/interchangeably
with patois, sometimes with Krio, Creole. As far as Sierra Leone Krio
is concerned, especially with Freetown’s special history - well
Sierra Leone was the Englishman’s first colony in Africa and Sierra
Leone remained a colony for the longest period of time: 150 years
until Independence on 27th April 1961. That Krio is still growing
rapidly, When Emmerson broke new ground with his “Borbor bele” song
N0.o. 5 was “SWEGBE” - and a lengthy discussion ensued about the
meaning of that word which has now passed on into Sierra Leone Krio,
like hundreds of other Yoruba words that enrich Krio - and now
everybody knows that it means “a fool”
http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&q=Nylander+%3A+Krio
I don’t think that it is only native speakers of English who have
given the term “broken English” to the varieties of English that are
known by the term, “Broken English” – nor is it necessarily “a
somewhat pejorative label “. In fact non- native speakers use the same
appellation quite naturally, without any trace of prejudice
whatsoever, as naturally as someone can be named/ baptised John. (In
one of his novels Ayi Kwei Armah asks, what happens to the soul of an
African boy who grows up, being called Mike.)
An Englishman gets lost in one of the jungles of Africa, he espies a
native – there in the thick of the forest and he shouts his first
question: “Do you speak English, my good man?!?”
If the answer is “Yes” or “Yes boss” then - what a relief - for he
feels that he is saved.
What are the reasons for this presumptuous first question anyway?
When an Englishman says to a non-native speaker,” You speak good
English”, what does he mean? Is it a compliment? An act of
condescension? Or?
I’ve heard Englishmen say to non- Englishmen “You speak good English”
- but not to me….
PS Abysmal ignorance is tempted to enquire from Chambi Chachage
whether or not Kiswahili is a pidgin of Arabic.
On May 20, 7:14 pm, "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooqkper...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Thursday, May 20, 2010
> Broken English, Pidgin English and Nigerian
> English<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/05/broken-english-pidgin-engli...>
> Broken English, Pidgin English and Nigerian
> *By Farooq A. Kperogi*
> in2007, I wrote: “By Nigerian English I do not mean Nigerian Pidgin English.
> 1. A Comparison of Nigerian, American and British
> English<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2007/09/divided-by-common-language-...>
> 2. <http://www.blogger.com/goog_2036618659>Why is "Sentiment" Such a Bad
> Word in Nigeria?<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2009/12/why-is-sentiment-such-bad-w...>
> 3. Ambassador Aminchi's Impossible Grammatical
> Logic<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2009/12/yaraduas-health-amb-aminchi...>
> 4. 10 Most Annoying Nigerian Media English
> Expressions<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2009/12/10-most-annoying-nigerian-m...>
> 5. Sambawa and "Peasant Attitude to
> Governance"<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2009/12/sambawa-and-peasant-attitud...>
> 6. Adverbial and Adjectival Abuse in Nigerian
> English<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2009/12/adverbial-and-adjectival-ab...>
> 7. In Defense of "Flashing" and Other
> Nigerianisms<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/01/in-defense-of-flashing-and-...>
> 8. Weird Words We're Wedded to in Nigerian
> English<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/01/weird-words-were-wedded-to-...>
> 9. American English or British
> English?<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/01/american-english-or-british...>
> 10. Hypercorrection in Nigerian
> English<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/02/hypercorrection-in-nigerian...>
> 11. Nigerianisms, Americanisms, Briticisms and Communication
> Breakdown<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/02/nigerianisms-americanisms-b...>
> 12. Top 10 Irritating Errors in American
> English<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/03/top-10-irritating-errors-in...>
> 13. Nigerian Editors Killing Macebuh Twice with Bad
> Grammar<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/03/nigerian-editors-killing-ma...>
> 14. On "Metaphors" and "Puns" in Nigerian
> English<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/04/on-metaphors-and-puns-in-ni...>
> 15. Common Errors of Pluralization in Nigerian
> English<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/04/common-errors-of-pluralizat...>
> <http://www.blogger.com/goog_704080340>16. Q & A About Common Grammatical
> Problems<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/04/q-and-about-common-grammati...>
> <http://www.blogger.com/goog_704080340>17. Semantic Change and the Politics
> of English Pronunciation<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/04/semantic-change-and-politic...>
> *
> *18. Common Errors of Reported Speech in Nigerian
> English<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/05/common-errors-of-reported-s...>
> *
> Posted by Farooq A. Kperogi at 12:58
> PM<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/2010/05/broken-english-pidgin-engli...><http://www.blogger.com/email-post.g?blogID=2625710219374323467&postID...><http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=2625710219374323467&postID=...>
> Labels: Broken English<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/search/label/Broken%20English>
> , Nigerian English<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/search/label/Nigerian%20English>
> , Pidgin English<http://farooqkperogi.blogspot.com/search/label/Pidgin%20English>
>
> 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
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
> For current archives, visithttp://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
> 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
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
Cornelius Hamelberg
May 20, 2010, 7:06:08 PM5/20/10
to USA Africa Dialogue Series
Farooq,
I think that I’d better hasten to correct some of my grosser
mistakes lest you think I’m exemplifying “Broken Swenglish”
I guess that I should have written,
1. “You are gradually succeeding in getting us all focused “
2. “Less than best he or she would be speaking what we jokingly call
Swenglish”
http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&source=hp&q=Swenglish
On May 21, 12:04 am, Cornelius Hamelberg
> ...
>
> read more »
I think that I’d better hasten to correct some of my grosser
mistakes lest you think I’m exemplifying “Broken Swenglish”
I guess that I should have written,
1. “You are gradually succeeding in getting us all focused “
2. “Less than best he or she would be speaking what we jokingly call
Swenglish”
http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&source=hp&q=Swenglish
On May 21, 12:04 am, Cornelius Hamelberg
>
> read more »
Chambi Chachage
May 21, 2010, 12:20:03 AM5/21/10
to USA Africa Dialogue
Cornelius, no, Kiswahili is not an Arabic pidgin. As my secondary school teacher taught me, and I still agree with him, 'Kiswahili is neither Creole nor Pidgin.' What is so amazing about it - and I have a feeling Hausa and many other African languages which have been influenced by Arabic are like that - is that it has managed to take so many Arabic words without having to conform to the Arabic grammar/linguistic structure. It is doing the same with English words. I have addressed this issue, albeit in Kiswahili, whereby I am arguing that there is nothing wrong in promoting what is increasingly called 'Swanglish' as long as it is really operating under that logic of taking English words and 'swahilizing' them. In that article
I differentiate what I call 'Kiswanglishi', which to me is nothing more than Kiswahili that is ever developing by adding new English words, and 'Kiswanglish' which is simple an attempt to code-switch from English to Kiswahili and vice versa, a tendency that is very much observed among educated elites. This is the difference:
- Kiswanglish: Nakwenda kula chakula then I'll go to town alafu nitarudi kazini, of course I will see you there (This sentence code-switch between two languages, English and Kiswahili, in such a way that you don't have one particular language pattern)
- Kiswanglishi: Nakwenda kupata menu kisha nitaenda tauni alafu nitarudi jobu, naam tutaonana hapo (This sentence follows a proper Kiswahili Bantu grammatical/linguistic pattern after 'Swahilizing' the 'English' words 'menu', town' and 'job')
- Kiswanglishi: Nakwenda kupata menu kisha nitaenda tauni alafu nitarudi jobu, naam tutaonana hapo (This sentence follows a proper Kiswahili Bantu grammatical/linguistic pattern after 'Swahilizing' the 'English' words 'menu', town' and 'job')
In sum, my main rationale for supporting 'Kiswanglishi' is not to make Kiswahili a 'slang' language with words such as 'menu' which do not really mean 'food' in English but, rather, to help us add new Kiswahili 'synonyms' to resolve the so-called crisis of not having enough technological/science words.
From: Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Fri, May 21, 2010 2:06:08 AM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Broken English, Pidgin English and Nigerian English
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Fri, May 21, 2010 2:06:08 AM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Broken English, Pidgin English and Nigerian English
Cornelius Hamelberg
May 21, 2010, 6:13:49 AM5/21/10
to USA Africa Dialogue Series
http://www.postcolonialweb.org/sarowiwa/pidgin.html
( For Chidi Anthony Opara) – a short afterthought/eftertanke
Ah yes, I have alighted on one word :hysterical,
as in
“destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,”
”The often hysterical violations of the basic rules of standard
English syntax by non-native speakers”?
OK, so the French speak French like machine guns, and the rapid
staccato is all right all night but since we're still talking about a
language - why - why is it hysterical and what's hysterical about
the breaking of ” the basic rules of standard English syntax by non-
native speakers”?
Can you give a few examples of the alleged hysteria – and please don't
spare the exclamation marks when you give your examples.
West Africans talk of non-native speakers doing “ violence “ to the
language ( mostly the grammar)
and are variously accused of “ butchering” the grammar and - still in
the realm of metaphor, the death penalty and sometimes even accused
of first degree murder of an innocent English grammar...
Like the drama of Lewis Nkosi's Rhythms of Violence ?
“Hysterical violations” gives the impression of a stable, quiet, calm
almost discreet free-flowing of a river – ( like Allen Ginsberg's
“Plutonian Ode” as I heard him read it at the Kulturhuset on January
23 1983) not a torrent of words in predictable, predestined word
order governed by the laws of Lord Chief Justice of English Grammar.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i27t5txCrwg
Still in the poetic realm I'd say that sure, all rivers flow - have
their own individual rhythms and syntax and as Dr. Ojo made clear not
too long ago,
“Yes, languages may be like rivers that continually change. However,
the Thames and the Rhine are European rivers.
The Niger and the Volta are African rivers, and they never meet at any
point in their journeys. They can therefore not have similar
ecological systems, fauna, fishes, villages along their banks”
“If you are a tenant, you catch your arse forever, but if you are a
landlord, it is a horse of a different colour” - ( And so it is with
the English Language – if you feel that you are a tenant)
Here's keeping it simple:
http://www.amazon.com/Moses-Ascending-Caribbean-Writers-Unnumbered/dp/0435989529
On May 21, 1:06 am, Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelb...@gmail.com>
> ...
>
> read more »- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
( For Chidi Anthony Opara) – a short afterthought/eftertanke
Ah yes, I have alighted on one word :hysterical,
as in
“destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,”
”The often hysterical violations of the basic rules of standard
English syntax by non-native speakers”?
OK, so the French speak French like machine guns, and the rapid
staccato is all right all night but since we're still talking about a
language - why - why is it hysterical and what's hysterical about
the breaking of ” the basic rules of standard English syntax by non-
native speakers”?
Can you give a few examples of the alleged hysteria – and please don't
spare the exclamation marks when you give your examples.
West Africans talk of non-native speakers doing “ violence “ to the
language ( mostly the grammar)
and are variously accused of “ butchering” the grammar and - still in
the realm of metaphor, the death penalty and sometimes even accused
of first degree murder of an innocent English grammar...
Like the drama of Lewis Nkosi's Rhythms of Violence ?
“Hysterical violations” gives the impression of a stable, quiet, calm
almost discreet free-flowing of a river – ( like Allen Ginsberg's
“Plutonian Ode” as I heard him read it at the Kulturhuset on January
23 1983) not a torrent of words in predictable, predestined word
order governed by the laws of Lord Chief Justice of English Grammar.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i27t5txCrwg
Still in the poetic realm I'd say that sure, all rivers flow - have
their own individual rhythms and syntax and as Dr. Ojo made clear not
too long ago,
“Yes, languages may be like rivers that continually change. However,
the Thames and the Rhine are European rivers.
The Niger and the Volta are African rivers, and they never meet at any
point in their journeys. They can therefore not have similar
ecological systems, fauna, fishes, villages along their banks”
“If you are a tenant, you catch your arse forever, but if you are a
landlord, it is a horse of a different colour” - ( And so it is with
the English Language – if you feel that you are a tenant)
Here's keeping it simple:
http://www.amazon.com/Moses-Ascending-Caribbean-Writers-Unnumbered/dp/0435989529
On May 21, 1:06 am, Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelb...@gmail.com>
>
> read more »- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
kenneth harrow
May 21, 2010, 8:50:30 AM5/21/10
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
i heard from linguists that swahili is a bantu language which contains
many arabic origin words
ken
ken
At 12:20 AM 5/21/2010, you wrote:
Cornelius, no, Kiswahili is not an Arabic pidgin. As my secondary school teacher taught me, and I still agree with him, 'Kiswahili is neither Creole nor Pidgin.' What is so amazing about it - and I have a feeling Hausa and many other African languages which have been influenced by Arabic are like that - is that it has managed to take so many Arabic words without having to conform to the Arabic grammar/linguistic structure. It is doing the same with English words. I have addressed this issue, albeit in Kiswahili, whereby I am arguing that there is nothing wrong in promoting what is increasingly called 'Swanglish' as long as it is really operating under that logic of taking English words and 'swahilizing' them. In that article I differentiate what I call 'Kiswanglishi', which to me is nothing more than Kiswahili that is ever developing by adding new English words, and 'Kiswanglish' which is simple an attempt to code-switch from English to Kiswahili and vice versa, a tendency that is very much observed among educated elites. This is the difference:
- Kiswanglish: Nakwenda kula chakula then I'll go to town alafu nitarudi kazini, of course I will see you there (This sentence code-switch between two languages, English and Kiswahili, in such a way that you don't have one particular language pattern)
- Kiswanglishi: Nakwenda kupata menu kisha nitaenda tauni alafu nitarudi jobu, naam tutaonana hapo (This sentence follows a proper Kiswahili Bantu grammatical/linguistic pattern after 'Swahilizing' the 'English' words 'menu', town' and 'job')
In sum, my main rationale for supporting 'Kiswanglishi' is not to make Kiswahili a 'slang' language with words such as 'menu' which do not really mean 'food' in English but, rather, to help us add new Kiswahili 'synonyms' to resolve the so-called crisis of not having enough technological/science words.
Kenneth W. Harrow
Distinguished Professor of English
Michigan State University
har...@msu.edu
517 803-8839
fax 517 353 3755
Farooq A. Kperogi
May 21, 2010, 10:23:50 AM5/21/10
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Chambi,
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 have never been able to understand how and why Kiswahili is a Bantu language and not an Arabic-based creole. As far as I can tell, it has all the characteristics of a creole. First, like all pidgins and creoles, it started as a contact or trade language. Second, like all creoles, its structure is indigenous, i.e., African or, if you will, Bantu while its vocabulary is mostly Arabic and Persian.
Most importantly, we can locate its evolution on a temporal map. That is, we can determine when it actually started. We can't do that for other "natural languages." Before the Arab/Persian (or, if you like, Indian Ocean) slave trade, there was no language, to my knowledge, called Kiswahili. In any case, the name of the language itself is derived from the Arabic word for coast.
Again, unlike almost all African, specifically Bantu, languages, Kiswahili lacks lexical tone. Tonality is a central feature of Bantu languages.
Chambi cites the Hausa language. Well, the Hausa language does not compare with Kiswahili at all. Hausa is NOT derived from Arabic; it merely extensively borrowed (still borrows) from Arabic--just like Yoruba and many other languages that have had contact with Arabs in earlier times, chiefly through the Trans-Saharan Trade. English has also extensively borrowed from Latin but it is NOT a Romance language; it a Germanic language.
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
Tony Agbali
May 21, 2010, 1:52:57 PM5/21/10
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Farooq,
One of the reason that you have this problem is very simple. You continue to tag on to existing paradigm of pidgin/creole evolultionary linearization that you are not looking at the structure of each languages at their own merits. That means that to get beyond this difficulty, you now have to assume the possibility that Chambi is offering rather than operate at a generalized level.
Like you, when I picked up interests in pidgin creole languages during my study of Linguistic Anthropology, back in the days, I did encounter some of the same kinds of difficulties, with one that confounded me especially being that pidgin becomes creolized when it becomes the first language of a speech community. However, looking at the case of Nigeria, this is not always the case.
For instance, Nigerians from the Delta do not just have pidgin as the first and only language of their speech communities. Rather, they operate at the level of what I call "multilingual simultaneity" spontaneously speaking multiple languages and code-switching almost at once, with say Ijaw and Pidgin been dually their first languages. That made me to look further to see the ethnographic realization of this kind of development, by looking at Nigerian urban areas- especially urban dwellings, especially those apartments (yards), where children of different ethnic groups mix together and adopt almost simultaneously and speak spontaneous say English, Pidgin English, Igbo, Yoruba, and Hausa, code-switching, and amazing very competent speakers in these languages. Some, unfortunately, as they grow older and get absorbed in the school system, often lose this kind of spontaneous and simultaneously multilingual competence.
Further, languages do shift from pidgin to creole and become a language within their own rights. The classificatory convenience of using creole as a further evolutionary term, does not often tell the entire story of how often the pidginized superstrates (say English in the say of Nigerian Pidgin English) often overtime through the process of relexification, when it begins to operationalize itself using the local languages (hitherto substrates), including adopting its structures, lexicons, and others. To the extent that this occurs in a very major way and the hitherto substrates begin to assume dominancy, I had advanced the process of "pletholexification" (overabundant lexification) or "plenalexification" (full lexification) as beginning to take hold (a fact I amply discussed in my work on Nigerian Pidgin English and Urbanity in Toyin Falola and Steve J. Salm, 2005, Urbanization and African Cultures). Hence, "I dey
kampe" ( I am in tact), is no longer "I'm kampe" or "I dey hang on". In this process, the substrates begin to overwhelmingly reorder even the lexical and structural frame of such languages, in such a sense that as Ben Elugbe argued for Nigerian Pidgin English, as a language rather than as a creole.
That said, it becomes very difficult to properly demarcate between what for you is "Nigerian Pidgin English" and "Nigerian English." Both operate at some level of congruence and convergence that makes such easy distinctions difficult to make. However, as I see it, from your other assumptions, your sense and point of evauating what to you is Nigerian English, and its variants, derives from what you consider to be a standard English (whether British or American) quant vantage pinnacle. It is this level of extrinsic measuring that intends to valuate a language, using certain cryptic markers, and fossilized linguistic constructs, devoid of new constructive understanding and fieldwork engagement leading to new theoretical formation that mainly shapes the kind of problem of examining these languages in their own merits.
Finally, you can say that Hausa is not a pidgin because the Arabic loan words does not constitute a veritable constitutive linguistic elements of its repertoires. However, with reference to Fulani, and the shaping of the Hausa language over time, at the level of historic contact, was there anything that could or would approximate a pidgnized form of Hausa?
The point here is that fully we, who are interested, competent or speakers of these languages, should move toward developing new analytical frameworks and theories, in further amplifying the understanding of these linguistic formations, beyond older and recirculating theories, that often end up in contradictory and generalized abstractions that do not often hold water under critical analysis and ethno-linguistic considerations of specific and particular languages of these kinds. In fact, there are some theoretical confusions even among renowned scholars regarding this phenomenon. The one cap fit all model is anomalous,hence our need to be astutely careful.
Given that many symbolic anthropologists such as the British anthropologist scholar of Burma, Edmund Leach, have alerted us to the fact that ritual and myth represents as kinds of language; hence while some rituals and myths many be similar, its specific nuances can vary even within the same region, or country. Hence, a similar practice in Oyo ritual while similar in name, may in fact in practice, be nuanced differently in Ondo ( a fact that I found Ilesanmi's study very fascinating within Nigeria, and also equally alluded to by Karin Barber's wonderful study of the Oriki in Okuku and other Yoruba communities). Therefore, abstractions and generalization pertaining to pidgin and creole may in fact diminish our critical and evolving understanding of these linguistic phenomena, hampering our understanding of human creativity and resiliency.
From: Farooq A. Kperogi <farooq...@gmail.com>
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Fri, May 21, 2010 10:23:50 AM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Broken English, Pidgin English and Nigerian English - Plus Kiswanglish Digress
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages