By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D. Twitter: @farooqkperogi Before any smug philistine confronts me with the usual inane retort that gramm...
By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
Twitter: @farooqkperogi
Twitter: @farooqkperogi
Before any smug philistine confronts me with the
usual inane retort that grammar is the least of Nigeria’s worries now, let me
state that this is a grammar column. On this page, which first appears in the Sunday Trust, I talk only about
grammar, language, and usage. Nothing else. That’s why the column is called
“Politics of Grammar.” My “Notes from Atlanta” column in the Weekly Trust addresses broader, less
restricted, and more variegated subject-matters. So spare me the trite, tired
tripe about what I need to worry about—or about the fact that English isn’t
native to Nigeria.
Paying attention to the grammar of the president of
a country isn’t a trifling matter. It’s imperative in its own right. As I
stated in my January 27, 2013 column titled “President
Goodluck Jonathan’s Grammatical Boo-boos,” “the usage patterns
of the elite of any country--especially of the president, who is the most
important political and cultural figure in a country--tend to get naturalized
and imitated by the general population over time.” That’s why presidents of
countries are often trend-setters in the language commonly used in the
countries they govern.
That’s certainly true of the United States where
presidents routinely contribute to shaping the contours of the English
language. I am reading an exciting little book titled Words from the White House: Words and Phrases Coined or Popularized by
America’s Presidents, which I will review for this column in the coming
weeks, that chronicles common words and phrases that are now central to the
lexical and idiomatic rhythm of the English, but that were invented or made
popular by American presidents either deliberately or initially in error. A few
examples mentioned in the book are “normalcy,” “belittle,” “lengthy,” “military
industrial complex,” “lunatic fringe,” “dark horse,” “frazzle,” “manifest
destiny,” etc.
This election season, President Jonathan has been
particularly hard on the English language. It’s like he’s on a rampage, on a
linguistic murderous rage. Poor English! Well, see below some of the
president’s grammatical slip-ups that stuck out like a sore thumb.
1.
“Senior citizen.” Apparently, the president thinks
“senior citizen” is synonymous with “(elder) statesman.” He is wrong. But,
first, the context.
Smarting from recent vicious attacks on him by
former President Obasanjo, President Jonathan couldn’t wait to hit back at his
former benefactor. So, on January 7, 2014, when Northern Elders’ Council
chairman Tanko Yakassai led members of his group to the Aso Rock Presidential
Villa, President Jonathan seized the moment to strip Obasanjo of his “senior
citizen” status and to demote him to a mere “motor park tout.”
“And your
commitment to ensure we live in peace and harmony that is what citizens
especially our senior citizens should do just like you have been doing,” President
Jonathan told Yakassai. “Some people call themselves
statesmen but they are not statesmen; they are just ordinary politicians. For
you to be a statesman, it is not because you have occupied a big office before
but the question is what are you bringing to bear?
“Some people are hiding under some cloaks, some big
names and creating a lot of problems in this country, making provocative
statements in this country—statements that will set this country ablaze and you
tell me you are a senior citizen. You are not a senior citizen. You can never
be. You are ordinary motor park tout because if you are a senior citizen you
will act like one.”
People don’t become “senior citizens” through a
presidential imprimatur—and they certainly don’t stop being “senior citizens”
on account of a petulantly tempestuous presidential animadversion. “Senior
citizen” is merely a euphemistic expression for an old person. Most
dictionaries define a senior citizen as any person who is 65 years and older.
Obasanjo is officially over 70 years old. That makes him a senior citizen. So
when Jonathan said, “You are not a senior citizen. You can never be ,” he
clearly had no clue what he was talking about. Senior citizenship isn’t an
earned title; it’s invariably biological and chronological.
The term “senior citizen,” interestingly, first emerged
in America in 1938 during campaigns for the country’s midterm elections which
saw President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Democratic Party losing 72 seats in the
House of Representatives and 7 seats in the Senate but still managing to
maintain control of the Congress. “Senior citizens” was used euphemistically to
refer to old Americans whose votes the Republican and Democratic parties
courted aggressively. The term later crossed over to British English—and to
other varieties of English. American English speakers now just say “senior(s)”
instead of “senior citizen(s),” although “senior citizen(s)” still appears in
America’s informal and formal registers.
British English speakers also use the term “golden
ager” as an alternative to “senior citizen.”
2.
“Motor park tout.” The president also called Obasanjo a
“motor park tout.” That is problematic, if excusable, phraseology. In Nigerian
English “motor park touts” are people who earn a living by soliciting
passengers for commercial transport drivers at “motor parks” (another uniquely
Nigerian English expression, as I pointed out in my April 27, 2014 column
titled “Q
and A on Nigerian English Expressions and Other Usage Concerns”)
They are paid a token for every passenger they send
to drivers, and have a reputation for being aggressive, crude, vulgar,
untutored, and uncouth. So when Nigerians describe somebody as a “motor park
tout” they usually mean such a person is tastelessly indecent or lacking
refinement. That was the sense of the term President Goodluck Jonathan had in
mind when he obliquely insulted former President Olusegun Obasanjo as a “motor
park tout” for being openly critical of his administration.
This usage will puzzle many native English speakers.
In Standard English, especially in Standard British English, a tout is
understood as a person “who advertises for customers in an especially brazen
way.” That sense appears consistent with Nigerian “motor park touts” who often
pester potential passengers in an annoyingly aggressive manner. In British
English a tout can also mean a person who buys things, usually tickets for an
event, and resells them to people at a price several times higher than the
original. American English speakers call such a person a “scalper.”
In Irish and
Scottish English, a tout has a completely different meaning. It is used to
refer to someone who betrays his group members by sharing their confidential
information with the police or other authority. American English speakers also
use tout, usually “le tout,” to refer to the social, political, and cultural
elite of a city, as in “le tout Abuja admired him.” This sense of the term is
derived from French where “le tout Paris,” which literally means “all of Paris,”
is used to refer to the upper crust of the Parisian society.
It appears that when Nigerian English speakers call
people “touts” they usually mean “thugs.”
3.
"How much did Jim Nwobodo stole?” During a campaign stop in Enugu, the president
was reported to have uttered the following cringe-worthy grammatical howlers:
“How much did Jim Nwobodo stole? Money not up to the price of a Peugeot and
Buhari regime send him to jail. Is that good enough?"
In English grammar when the base form of a verb
(which is “steal” in President Jonathan’s quoted statement above) is preceded
by an auxiliary verb (such as “did,” “might,” “should,” etc.) the base form of
the verb is never inflected for tense. In other words, when “did” comes before
a main verb in a sentence, the main verb always remains in the present tense.
Examples: “What did he say to you?” “Did
he say
anything to you?” “When I saw her last year, I didn’t like
her.” “He did come to my house yesterday.” As you can see, the main verbs
in the examples (“say,” “like,” and “come”) are not marked for past tense. So
“how much did Jim Nwobodo stole?” should be “how much did
Jim Nwobodo steal?” That’s a basic grammar rule that is taught in primary
and secondary schools in Nigeria and the rest of the English-speaking world.
But while the president added an unnecessary past
tense to a verb that was preceded by an auxiliary verb, he neglected to mark a
main verb for past tense when he was supposed to. He said, “Buhari regime send
him to jail.” That should properly be “[the] Buhari regime sent him to jail.” Or
“the Buhari regime did send him to jail.”
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