By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D. Twitter: @farooqkperogi Is it “Moslem” or “Muslim”? Are the expressions “remain blessed” or “stay blesse...
By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
Twitter: @farooqkperogi
Is it “Moslem” or “Muslim”? Are the
expressions “remain blessed” or “stay blessed” uniquely Nigerian? Can “guys” be
used to refer to both men and women? Is “majorly” a legitimate word? You will
find answers to these and many other questions in this week’s edition of my Q
and A series.
Question:
A Muslim friend of mine took
offence when I spelled Muslim as “Moslem.” I told him Moslem is the accepted
English spelling and that Muslim is the Arabic rendition. Since I am speaking
or writing English I thought I should use the accepted English spelling. Can
you help me educate my friend?
Answer:
Your friend may be a little too
thin-skinned for his own good if he takes offense at the mere (mis)spelling of
a word, but his objection to the spelling of “Muslim” as “Moslem” has basis in
modern English. Most modern dictionaries and style guides now prefer “Muslim”
to “Moslem.” The Oxford English Dictionary, for instance,
says “Muslim is the preferred spelling for a ‘follower of Islam’….The archaic
term Muhammadan (or Mohammedan) …should be avoided.”
The 2017 edition of the Associated
Press Stylebook, America’s most prestigious journalistic style guide, also
writes: “Muslims [is] the preferred term to describe adherents of Islam.”
Finally, in their book Longman Guide to English Usage, Professors
Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut, two of Britain’s most celebrated grammarians,
wrote: “The adherents of Islam are now usually referred to as Muslims, rather
than the older form Moslems.”
So, in essence, many educated
native speakers of the English language no longer spell Muslim as “Moslem.”
This change is a response to the preference of Muslims. Related spellings that
have changed over the years are Qur’an (instead of the now archaic “Koran”) and
Muhammad (instead of “Mohammed” or the older, more archaic “Mahomet”). The
changes are also a response to the preferences of Muslims, although many
Muslims still spell Muhammad as “Mohammed” even in the Middle East, the
birthplace of Islam.
Question:
I have a question for your column.
"Stay blessed" and "remain blessed," are these Nigerian
expressions? What are about "journey mercies"?
Answer:
“Stay blessed” or “remain blessed”
(sometimes incorrectly written as “stay bless” or “remain bless”) are not
exactly uniquely Nigerian English expressions, but Nigerians use them way more
frequently than native English speakers do. These expressions, which are often
used to sign off letters and emails, are scarcely used by the general
populations in America and Britain. Only very religious, compulsively
churchgoing people in America, and perhaps Britain, use them. The general
populations in America and Britain end their emails with expressions like “kind
regards,” “best,” “best wishes,” “take care,” etc.
The expression “I wish you journey
mercies” is also church lingo in America. The general population says “I wish
you a safe trip” or just “have a safe trip.” Before writing this response, I
asked a number of Americans if they would understand me if I said “journey
mercies” to them. Of the 10 or so people I asked, only one had any clue what
the expression meant, and that one person is a churchgoer who said she would
never use the expression in everyday settings.
But Nigerians are overtly, some
would say overly, religious people, and this reflects in their language use.
Question:
I have two questions. First, is
there a word like "majorly"? I have been unable to find it in any of
the dictionaries available to me. Second, does one move the adoption of the
minutes of a meeting or move for the adoption?
Answer:
Yes, “majorly” is a legitimate
word. It means extremely, mainly, chiefly, etc. Examples of the word’s usage in
my dictionary are: “majorly successful," "I feel majorly
better," "he is majorly interested in butterflies." The reason
you don’t find the word in basic dictionaries is that it’s a relatively recent
word. It was formed first as a slang term in the US and Canada in the 1980s,
but it’s now used and accepted across all the major varieties of English. In
fact, Oxford English Dictionary, the oldest-surviving and most
prestigious dictionary in the English language, has an entry for the word.
To answer your second
question, one moves a motion for the adoption of the minutes of a meeting.
Question:
I’m a student in Nigeria. I often
hear my colleagues use “guys” to refer to for both genders. My question is: is
the word conventionally accepted for both genders in America?
Answer:
The straightforward answer is yes.
The singular form of the word, that is, “guy,” is an informal term reserved
only for a man, as in, “He is a really great guy.” But the plural form of the
word, that is, “guys,” can be, and is often, used to refer to men alone, women
alone, and men and women combined. Women here in America frequently say “let’s
get going, guys!” when they address an all-female company. And it is
conventional to refer to a mix-gender company as “guys.”
My students and I actually
discussed this issue extensively two weeks ago during a class on gendered
language in the news media. At least two things came out from the discussion.
First, “guys” has not always been used to refer to both men and women; its use
as gender-neutral plural is a relatively recent semantic evolution. Second, the
use of “guys” to refer to people of either gender first took roots in northern
United States before it crossed over to the South. One of my students said her
parents told her one of the definitive shibboleths (that is, a manner of
speaking that marks people out) of Yankees (as people from the American south
call their northern compatriots) was their tendency to use “guys” where
southerners would say “you all” (often pronounced “y’all”).
But it’s important to note that in
modern informal English, in both America and Britain, it’s now wholly
legitimate to use “guys” to refer to either gender. This sense of the word has
already been captured even in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Question:
What grammatical rules are
responsible for the hyphenation or non-hyphenation of some compound nouns
/words/expressions such as: backbone, back-breaking, birthmark, birthplace,
blood-red, etc.?
Answer:
Hyphens perform many functions in
written English, but for reasons of space and time I will touch on only a few
of them.
First, hyphens are joiners;
they help form new words by joining words that are traditionally different into
a single word. For example, what used to be “electronic mail” up until the
1980s became “e-mail” in the 1990s, and “email” in most dictionaries in the
later part of the 2000s. Similarly, the words “proof” and “read” were
hyphenated to form “proof-read.” Now, there is no hyphen in the word: it’s
correctly spelled “proofread.”
It helps to note, though, that
unlike other punctuation marks, there are no standard, universal rules for
hyphenating words. Different style guides have different rules about
hyphenation. In general, however, hyphenation is used to avoid ambiguity. For example,
the hyphen helps us differentiate between the words “recover” and “re-cover.”
While “recover” can mean recoup, recuperate, or get back (as in, “he recovered
from his illness”), “re-cover” means to cover again (as in, “he re-covered the
table after the wind blew the tablecloth away”).
Second, the hyphen is used to avoid
what the Associated Press Stylebook calls “duplicated vowels”
such as “anti-intellectual” and “pre-empt,” or tripled consonants such as
“shell-like.” However, some words with duplicated vowels, such as “cooperate”
and “coordinate” are not hyphenated by many style guides and dictionaries.
Third, in forming what grammarians
call compound modifiers, hyphens are indispensable. Compound modifiers are two
or more words that act like an adjective and appear before a noun. Examples:
the good-for-nothing governor of my state, little-known heroes, etc.
Question:
On the bodies of tankers carrying
fuel in Nigeria, we often see the inscriptions “Highly Inflammable” or “Highly
flammable.” Which one is correct?
Answer:
I’ve
answered this question before. Here is what I wrote: “Both expressions are
correct. Flammable and inflammable mean one and the same thing. You can use one
in place of the other. Many people mistake inflammable to be the antonym of
flammable. They are wrong. The proper antonym of flammable is ‘non-flammable.’
Other alternatives are ‘fireproof’ and ‘incombustible.’”
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