(By Farooq Kperogi) – Divided by a Common Language: Comparing Nigerian, American and British
English
It is important to stress that Nigerian English is not bad or
substandard English. It is a legitimate national variety that has evolved, over
several decades, out of our unique experiences as a post-colonial, polyglot
nation.
However hard we might try, we can't help writing and speaking
English in ways that reflect our socio-linguistic singularities. Even our own
Wole Soyinka who thinks he speaks and writes better English than the Queen of
England habitually betrays "Nigerianisms" in his writings. Or at
least that's what the native speakers of the language think. For instance, when he was admitted into the Royal
Society of Arts, the citation on his award read something like: "Mr.
Soyinka is a prolific writer in the vernacular English of his own country."
I learned that Soyinka's pride was badly hurt when he read the
citation. But it needn't be. It was Chinua Achebe who once said, in defense of
his creative semantic and lexical contortions of the English language to
express uniquely Nigerian thoughts that have no equivalents in English, that
any language that has the cheek to leave its primordial shores and encroach on
the territory of other people should learn to come to terms with the inevitable
reality that it would be domesticated. …
