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hile my parents grew up, they spoke
their native languages at home and English in school as well as other formal
settings. This way, they spoke English as well as their dialects correctly, I
cannot think of any of their friends of same educational status who speaks
grammatically incorrect English.
When I was a child, there were lots of
indigenous languages spoken, but in formal settings, Standard English was
accepted. In establishments, Standard English was spoken among staff and with
clients. Pidgin was a language spoken mainly by or to the uneducated.
Today, the scenario is different. In
some formal settings pidgin is used for clients, and staff who hail from
different localities have adopted it as their medium of communication. This
pattern has a disadvantage in educational settings where people who never spoke
English as it should be continue regularly with it and end up mixing tenses and
teaching grammatically incorrect sentences to the children looking up to them.
With the drastic fall in the use of native
languages in our society, the Nigerian pidgin has risen to a place where it can
be termed a language of its own. The Wikipedia encyclopaedia points out that
pidgin has no official status, despite its common use in the country.
A beautiful thing about this language
is the way it evolves. It is easy for people to create new words and terms
daily from their environments. Phrases gain and lose power based on the season.
Phrases like ‘you wan try?’ ‘na you biko’,; ‘how far now?’ ‘wetin dey?’;
‘hol am’, ‘match am’, ‘fain where stop; ‘I dey trowe salute’, ‘I hail oh’
etc are vivid examples of the evolution of pidgin because each group of
phrases says the same thing in ways acceptable at different periods of time.
We are also pointed by the Wikipedia
encyclopaedia to the fact that words borrowed from native languages also
exist in pidgin, making it sound different in its use ‘ se you dey come?’ is an
example cited of the way a yoruba man will speak pidgin. A man from Edo state
may say ‘you go come?’.
The music industry has gone on to
beautify this medium of communication as it has adapted words, terms, phrases
and sounds which universalize the industry in the country among all ethnic
entities, and this has given our music a unique place even internationally.
We cannot overlook the comic scene
where stand-up comedians who have imbibed the ‘waffi’ style thrill us daily
with a genre full of slang, melody and humour. I can conveniently say that
pidgin is the language of comedy in Nigeria, because those who do not use it
are very few.
The Nigerian pidgin is strong enough to
break the barriers of social class as Oga and boy can communicate freely
without the embarrassing pauses due to grammatical blunders by the boy. While
this helps the self-esteem of those who do not speak English well, it can be a
blockade to their quest for excellence as well as present a general
lackadaisical attitude towards speaking English properly. This has given rise
to an acceptance of a substandard variety of English spoken confidently with
sentences like: ‘He said I should cofo him’, ‘Dress for him to sidown’, ‘comot
the plates from the table’, ‘gi me my ball’, ‘he is making me to provoke’.
I listen to people from older
generations and I am thrilled over and over by their good command of English,
even by those who did not complete the educational journey. It is clear that
they received tutelage form good sources as English was lingua franca.
Today it is a different ball game
altogether, pidgin is now used for clients almost everywhere, staff from
different localities use pidgin as their medium of communication. This, in
educational settings, does not help as some teachers who speak pidgin regularly
and have not mastered Standard English, mix up tenses and pass grammatically
incorrect sentences, like those listed earlier to children who look up to them.
Imagine a teacher asking ‘have you do your correction?’ or saying ‘pin-pin’.
Have we wondered over time why children say ‘jangolova instead of ‘dangle
over’? How would you feel if your child reports to you that his teacher said ‘
you came late and you are standing at the domot’ ?Funny right? But imagine an
uneducated parent hearing that, he may not know it is wrong because he will
understand the meaning immediately.
I believe the authorities should pull
educational resources together and look critically at the issue of the Nigerian
pidgin. Do we standardize it? Can we specify environments where it is used? Do
we have enough English teachers in schools to teach children correctly so the cases
of borrowing are reduced? Is there a pidgin dictionary or should we let the
language evolve daily?
We need to take a stand on this, not
just for today, but the future because I believe pidgin is spoken more than
Standard English.
Copyright (C) 2011 Omonefe O. Eruotor
First published on the ConnectNigeria
website (Rising Trends of the Nigerian Pidgin Against Standard English)-
28/3/16
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