By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D. Twitter: @farooqkperogi Every English-speaking nation on earth has its repertoire of idiosyncratic soleci...
By Farooq A. Kperogi,
Ph.D.
Twitter:
@farooqkperogi
Every English-speaking nation on earth has its repertoire of
idiosyncratic solecisms. I have written about common errors in American
English. Several writers have written about the errors that typically occur in
British English. And so on and so forth. In this article, I am concerned with
12 most popular, regularly occurring errors that appear in written and spoken
Nigerian English. This is an addition to the scores of other errors I’ve
identified in previous writings over the past couple of years. So here goes:
1. “As at when due.”
This widespread Nigerian English solecism is a classic example of an error that
initially started in spoken English but later ended up in written English as
well. The correct phrase should be “as and when due,” but many Nigerians
mishear it as “as at when due” and then go ahead and write it the way they
mishear it. The easiest way to remember the correct rendering of this fixed
phrase is to break it down to “as due” and “when due.”
The proper form of
the idiom in British English is “as and when.” According to the Cambridge Dictionary, it means, “at the
time that something happens.” Wikitionary also defines it as, “in the event
that the thing being discussed comes to pass.”
The idiom regularly
co-occurs with words like “due,” “needed,” and “required” (as in, “as and when
due,” “as and when needed,” “as and when required”) although most Nigerian
English speakers are only familiar with the idiom’s co-occurrence with “due.”
See the following examples of how the idiom is used: 1. “We
pay our workers as and when due.” 2. “We don't own a car—we just rent one as
and when we need it.” (That is the usage example given in the Cambridge Dictionary). 3. “I don’t have
a full-time job; I work as and when required.” The phrases can also be used as
compound modifiers such as, “we pay salaries on an as-and-when-due basis,” “I
work on an as-and-when-required basis,” etc.
The idiom occurs in American English as “if and when.” So if
the examples above were to be rendered in American English, they would be: 1.
“We pay our workers if and when due.” 2. “We don't own a car—we just rent one
if and when we need it.” 3. “I don’t have a full-time job; I work if and when
required.” In the compound-modifier examples, the American English rendering
would be, “we pay salaries on an if-and-when-due basis,” “I work on an if-and-when-required
basis,” etc.
2. “Comity of
nations.” This phrase is often used in Nigerian English, especially in
official Nigerian English, where “community of nations” would do. “Comity of
nations” is a fixed phrase that means the “courteous respect by one nation for
the laws and institutions of another.” It basically means the respect that
nations have for each other’s sovereignty. “Comity” means harmony, so comity of
nations means harmony of nations, not a collection of nations. Unfortunately,
“comity of nations” has been misused even in Nigerian presidential speeches
delivered at international arenas.
On the website of the Nigerian Embassy in the USA, the
following sentence appears: “Within that period too, Nigeria gradually regained
her voice in the comity of nations.” You would think that people whose exposure
to and knowledge of the practices and registers of international relations are
considered worthy enough to be appointed to represent Nigeria in the United
States would know enough to know that “community of nations” is the right
phrase to use in the sentence above.
It should be pointed out that it isn’t only Nigerian English
speakers that use “comity of nations” when they mean “community of nations.”
The misusage is widespread is several non-native English varieties. It’s so
widespread that many online dictionaries have expanded the meaning of the
expression to account for this.
3. “Drop.” This
word is misused in Nigerian English in at least three ways. One, it is used
where “get down” or “stop” would be more appropriate. In Nigerian urban areas,
when passengers in commercial buses want to come down at a bus stop, they often
say they want to “drop.” Well, it is the driver who drops (off) passengers. So
it would make more sense to say, “Driver, drop me (off) here” than to say, “Driver,
I want to drop here.” Saying you want to “drop” from a bus in, say, America or
Britain, might be mistaken to mean that you want to commit suicide by suddenly
jumping off a moving bus or car.
The second common error in the use of “drop” in Nigerian
English appears in the phrase “take a drop,” which is used where native English
speakers would say “take a taxi.” But, here, one must acknowledge the
socio-economic and cultural context of “take a drop” and admit that it is
difficult to replace it with “take a taxi.” To “take a drop” means to be the
exclusive occupant of a taxi since taxis in Nigeria usually take a whole bunch
of people who are headed in different destinations. In the West, taxis don’t
take different passengers going to different destinations; only buses do that.
Even then, buses drop off passengers at designated bus stops.
However, this does not entirely explain why the phrase “take
a drop” appears in Nigerian English. It seems likely that it is a linguistic
appropriation (or misappropriation) of the military terminology “drop” which,
according to the Oxford Dictionary of
English, means “an act of dropping supplies or troops by parachute.”
Nigerian English probably borrowed the sense of unidirectional flow in the
military “drop” and applied it to the one-way flow that occurs when someone is
the exclusive passenger in a taxi.
The third misuse of “drop” appears mostly in the lingo of
Nigerian youth such as in the phrase “drop something” to mean pay out money.
This seems to trace descent from Nigerian Pidgin English by way of Nigerian
languages.
4. “Female youths.”
The phrase “female youths” is decidedly nonstandard. Here is why. When “youth”
is used as a collective noun to mean “young men and women,” its plural form
doesn’t admit of an “s.” It is still youth, as in, “the youth of Nigeria is fed
up with the incompetence of the country’s ruling elite.” However, youth also
means “young man.” When it is used in that sense, its plural form takes an “s.”
That means “youths” invariably means “young men.” So it is impossible to have
“female youths” unless you mean women who were born men but underwent sex-change
operations to become men.
Out of curiosity, I searched the British National Corpus to
see if by chance any British English speaker ever used the phrase “female
youths” in speech or in writing. There was not a single instance. I also
searched the Corpus of Contemporary American English. I found 13 instances of
the usage of “female youths.” All but one appeared in academic medical
journals.
The only match I found in popular usage appeared in the
Washington Post of September 19, 2010 (EXTRAS; Pg. DZ18) in the sentence, “Two
female youths snatched a female pedestrian's cellphone and fled.” But when I
went directly to the Washington Post website to read the story, I discovered
that “two female youths” was changed to “two females.”
5. “Hotel.”
Nigerian English speakers, especially those with low- or mid-level proficiency,
habitually interchange “hotel” with “brothel” both because “hotel” and
“brothel” kind of sound alike and because, well, many Nigerian hotels are glorified
brothels. But a hotel is a building that provides temporary accommodation to
travelers while a brothel is a house of prostitution. A non-Nigerian lady once
told me that she caused a stir among her Nigerian hosts when she told them she
had stayed in a hotel for days during a previous visit.
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