USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Nigerian Pidgin English Proverbs : The Institutionalization of a Tradition

This is going directly into my notebook ( diary of insanity)

Just realised that

"The change chant

 Is entering into the yard of yesterday" (Chidi Anthony Opara)

Kudos! Just found happiness.  I must say that for those of us not interested in the myths & the mystical shit, "Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems - "Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge" is getting  very interesting now that it's getting-down-to-earth  -  although – paradoxically you dey write about di pidgin with very BIG GRAMMAR.

The Oyibo was perplexed when the postman told him that his name is "Sunday", (here I'm thinking of Chidi & the savages who invaded Africa) thought that he could be standing in the presence of divinity

In our very midst we have one who is a repository of Yoruba wisdom & wit. I'll let the cat out of the bag one of these days (long before professor chicken wings starts flapping like an eagle or di ambitious chicken start growing teeth…

Whilst you are at it be sure to retrieve the early 1980s jingles from Radio Rivers 2 f m stereo – I have some of them on tape, somewhere (with other recorded conversations) and used to enjoy this one in particular - it went something like "person wey dey waka fiomp fiomp dae talk shit about another person, dey put hand where crocodile dey feast – dey look for trouble, ee go get am."

The naija comedians and Nollywood is good source material for where the spoken word (pidgin) meets the visual arts and as to the visual arts as far as my own experience goes, when it comes to body language (expressionism) Nigeria is di champion, cf Chiwetel Ejiofor…and many others such as the majestic Edo dancers…

I hope that the Saro swegbe also get cracking with di Krio proverbs, especially di Victorian Krio proverbs…

Marvellous Boy

Magician

On Tuesday, 24 November 2015 18:36:23 UTC+1, Oluwatoyin Adepoju wrote:

                                                                                                                                                                
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                           Nigerian Pidgin English Proverbs 

                        The Institutionalization of a Tradition

            
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                              Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

                                          Compcros

                    Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems

      "Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"

The ongoing exploration of Nigerian Pidgin English proverbs initiated by Stella Ishiekwene Kpolugbo and Aoiri Obaigbo at the University of Benin English and Literature Students and Alumni Facebook group founded by Aoiri Obaigbo,in demonstrating its expressive range in terms of an iconic form of native Nigerian languages,represents an effort at the institutionalization of Nigerian Pidgin English, an informal language which has become a lingua franca in Southern Nigeria.

The irony of a group composed of graduates and students of a university department centred in the study of all aspects of Standard English linguistics and composition, all periods of English literature,along with other literatures in English is able to give birth to such a vigorous outpouring of the linguistic creativity represented by the proverb as expressed in Nigerian Pidgin English suggests that these contributors to this corpus have been active users of this language even as they did their academic work in Standard English, a polyglotism issuing from the multicultural nexus the African has often become in the wake of the cultural transmutations created by contact with Europe.

Proverbs are the palm oil with which words are eaten, steeds of discourse unleashed as instruments of cognitive retrieval when discourse goes astray,the ' kpim', the expressive nexus of classical African philosophies, to adapt an Igbo coinage from Pantalon Iruegbu in consonance with Igbo and Yoruba conceptions of the proverb.As is befitting of a language that adapts English diction to the grammatical structures of native African languages, Nigerian Pidgin English is shown by this exercise on the Facebook group to have appropriated this particularly distinctive feature of the indigenous African languages, linguistic dynamism dramatizing the social dynamism of identity reconfigurations .

Image above from 10 Funny Nigerian English Proverbs and Quotes.

Accessed 24/11/2015

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