This learned thread/ language feud is becoming more interesting by the minute, educative indeed, with the latest contributions of John Edward Philips and Ibrahim Abdullah...
I must confess that I am delighted when Professor Harrow confers yet another meritorious title on journalism professor Kperogi with these memorable words :
"I regard Farooq as an authority on English and on language" (Kenneth Harrow).
Got me going, thinking about Pope's epitaph on Sir Isaac Newton
"Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, Let Newton be! and all was light."
and that acronym for the Nigerian Electrical Power Authority, NEPA being translated as
"never expect power always"
Cornelius Ignoramus' only question is one that some of the brave ones in and out of this forum are probably also wondering about and would like know: Who made Farooq an authority on English and on language? In the name of Ubuntu, who else apart from Harrow made Farooq an authority on English and on language ? And let me hasten to add, that having given Professor Harrow a prior poetic license, I do not regard either statement as a provocation...
Last night on the airport bus from Arlanda to Stockholm, I was joking with my Better Half (Swedish Language pedagogue), quoting Bob Dylan's line
"Steal a little, and they put you in jail.
Steal a lot, and they make you king."
not in connection with St. Augustine's story of Alexander the Great and the pirate (which I first encountered in Chomsky's " what we say goes") as in what Harrow says goes, but with regard to the bard - Nobel Laureate - King Dylan himself who arrived in his Cadillac to receive the Polar Prize from King Carl XVI Gustaf, a couple of years back, him also stealin' my blues, (like B.B. King) you know the song, that begins "Papa knows and mama too , rock and roll is music now " - "he comes for your gold but watch out for your soul..."
As Oluwatoyin Adepoju says, it's imperial English, the mother of all languages that is keeping Nigeria glued together (some of the Brits that I met at our last hotel in Marrakesh, think that the whole world is still their empire – I myself protested that BBC and CNN had been available in every other hotel in Casablanca, Fes, Meknes, Rabat, but at the Aqua Mirage it was French, French and French, the only news programme in English being France 24 – although Morocco was only a French colony for thirty five years, 1912- 1955 ( whereas Sierra Leone was a British colony for one hundred and fifty years, unlike Nigeria which was a British colony for forty six years, 1914- 1960...
On my way to Nigeria, where I taught English, I took a look at Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the oppressed and The Letters to Guinea-Bissau – was mainly interest in teaching English as a subversive activity and was mostly – at that time , interested in the Liberation of South Africa from the evil apartheid…
Must praise Keprogi with some satire written in various Englishes, later in the day
Cornelius,
On Tuesday, 1 November 2016 17:32:01 UTC+1, Cornelius Hamelberg wrote:
I have been updating my travelogue cum my notebook on the two Kperogi language threads and intend to transfer the satirical matter to this forum when next I access a computer keyboard ina Stockholm. For once, my Bettah Half ( a veritable language buff/translator/polygot in her own right - French, German, Italian, Spanish, English, Mother tongue Swedish) has been following the discussion and says that she likes IBK
Excuse the pomposity, but it also behoves me to defend/exonerate my dear Yoruba mentor, the venerable Ogbeni Kadiri, before insult adds to injury.
In the meantime, here's some passable patois, pidgin, broken, call it what you will, being put to some "literary" use
https://www.google.com/search?q=sam+selvon+%3A+Moses+ ascending&oq=Sam+Selvon+%3A+ Moses+Ascending&aqs=chrome.0. 69i59.2605j0j4&client=tablet- android-samsung&sourceid= chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8
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