BTW, the Spanish deferential form, usted, is borrowed from Arabic ustadh (professor). The /dh/ [ð] becomes /d/ in western, or Maghribi dialects.
On Apr 9, 2021, at 20:30, Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:right, ev ery european language has that difference, except english, as far as i know.i don't know how non-european langs work, but i bet many languages around the world maintain that difference. some with more than a simple binarykFrom: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, April 8, 2021 10:20 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - You Do Not Own Your Success Alone--From my spanish learning, the tu vs vous differentiation also applies.It happens in portuguese too. So I think it cuts across the Romance languages.OAASent from my Galaxy-------- Original message --------From: "Harrow, Kenneth" <harrow@msu.edu>Date: 09/04/2021 03:13 (GMT+00:00)To: USAAfricaDialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - You Do Not Own Your Success Alone--i enjoy this thread, from moses to farooq's to olayinka's contributions. i think oaa has the key notion: respect. when my african students or even younger colleagues called, and call, me prof, i understand it is a sign of respect.in france or most of europe that same respect is conveyed through the use of vous vs tu, or sie vs du--the more formal address vs informal. the difference is felt right to the bone. in 1968 young people tried to get rid of the vous, but that didn't prevail.in africa, tu prevailed almost everywhere, except in higher govt or admin circles. almost everyone was on a tu basis, and that actually felt like a positive strike against the elitism of the educated use of vous.but oaa's wonderful evocation of baba, or on this list oga or prof conveys respect, but also something closer to an appeal to belong to a community. it entails closeness, as in a family where one might teach their children to call you papa or mama, and not your first name. or especially within the afr-amer community, auntie or uncle for elderly friends of your parents. respect. that is respect, and something more.the use of first names is a leveling.and yet, as a prof, i'd prefer a campus where deans and presidents were addressed on the first name basis by the faculty or other administrators; and not by students.respect, after all, has to go both ways, and we all collectively can't control the speech of others who mean no disrespect.toward the end of my career most undergrads didn't know how to address me. i introduced myself as prof. harrow, but some didn't know what to say. so they found ways to speak to me without using any form of address at all!kenFrom: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, April 8, 2021 4:10 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>; USAAfricaDialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - You Do Not Own Your Success Alone--Eveyone according to their opinions. It depends how close. My own siblings dont call me by any formal titles. I dont call my senior cousin who is a full professor , at OAU 'professor' He is still ' brother so and so to me' I have visited homes of professors where the parents and parents in- laws didnt call the professor anything but the first name just ss Farooq insists.At any rate Farooq is not making any exception of his uncle (he only felt scandalised.) He has insisted on this forum he prefers anyone and everyone to address him by his first name, Farooq. That does not mean he would brook insults that demean him as consequence. Even identical twins dont always view the world the same way. Has Moses Ochonu switched to calling Farooq ' Prof' since his elevation?Is he professing outside his formal role in college or outside official engagements? Anything outside such settings are mere honorific. If you dont dint know him well enough as formality courtesy, yes.In Yorùbá culture you dont meet a farmer in the streets and say ' hello farmer!' even though you know he is a farmer, It's ' Ęnlę o baba' ( how are you today, elder?) Professor for older relative as a surrogate for local honorific of respect, yes! Why would I meet my close friend who is a professor and call him anything else but his first name? Has Moses Ochonu switched to calling Farooq ' Prof' since his elevation? ( then I would insist every single person on this forum address me by my proper title ' Prince.'OAASent from my Galaxy-------- Original message --------From: Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>Date: 08/04/2021 20:01 (GMT+00:00)To: USAAfricaDialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - You Do Not Own Your Success Alone----You Do Not Own Your Success AloneBy Moses E. OchonuRecently, I was having a conversation with my friend Farooq Kperogi and I was formally congratulating him on his promotion to the rank of Full Professor.
He said to me "Moses, you know this is a routine promotion but our people are blowing it way out of proportion." I replied that, to him it may be a routine, expected elevation but that to the thousands of Nigerians who revere and look up to him, and certainly to his family, it is a big effing deal, to paraphrase President Joe Biden.
I then told him that for his extended family especially, this was huge, and that he should not try to tamp down their joy and celebration. Our families live vicariously through us, they identify with our success, and our accomplishments both inspire and confer on them pride and bragging rights. They live through us, and our success motivates and fills them with a sense that they're connected to a lineage and a family with a person of distinction. You cannot discount the symbolic and inspirational value of this.
I told Farooq that he was now community property, that his success does not belong to him alone but also to his family and his hometown. He would be doing them unintended disservice if he tried to either discourage them from celebrating his accomplishment or tried to diminish the accomplishment itself. It is not every day that a member of their family and a son of theirs gets promoted to Professor in an American university, and so they deserve to wear that as a badge of honor if they choose to.
I told Farooq that this was not about him but about his relatives, so he should put his modesty and unease aside and let them have their moment and bask in the accomplishments of their brother and by extension their own accomplishment. I told him that his success had an inspirational and affirmative effect on them, which is something positive.
Farooq concurred with me. Not only that, he said the case of his uncle was particularly illustrative of the point. He said his uncle, his father's younger brother, insists on calling him "Prof" nowadays even though he is much older than him. He has tried to explain to him that it is awkward, given the fact that this man witnessed his birth and helped raise him. "Prof" and other titular honorifics are for people outside, not family, and certainly not a much older uncle, Farooq told his uncle. His uncle refused to budge. When he kept trying to get his uncle to stop the formality of calling him "Prof" his uncle figuratively sat him down and gave him a brilliant lecture on why he would continue to call him "prof."
His uncle's logic was as philosophically African as it was compelling. Essentially, he argued that all along he had rooted for his nephew to succeed and get to the pinnacle of the academic career and longed for the day when, like other people, he could boast of a Professor in his family and could bask in his nephew being a professor. One of his lifelong aspirations was to be able to call one of his own "prof." Now that that dream of his had come true, how could Farooq try to deprive him of the proud satisfaction of using that title to refer to him? He concluded that he was not stupid, that he knew that Farooq was much younger and that ordinarily he should call him by his name, but that Farooq's accomplishment had rendered that cultural practice moot and made a new form of cultural interaction necessary. Farooq, he said, should allow him this one joy.
This story reaffirmed my position, and Farooq and I agreed that, in our social and cultural circles, success is a collective property to be shared and enjoyed communally. We may be modest folks averse to vulgar celebration, bragging, and showy, exhibitionist declarations of personal accomplishments, but it is not for us to determine how our folks relate to or what they do with our accomplishments.
Farooq had not even told his family in Nigeria about his promotion, so when some of them saw it trending on social media, they were disappointed and told him so. He had not told them because he saw the promotion as a routine event in the life of a scholar. Not so for his relatives, who saw a star shining from their lineage and wanted to both share in the brightness and announce it to their interlocutors.
As Farooq and I talked more about the inspirational and communal significations of individual accomplishments in the African cultural milieu, we recalled the successful relatives we were proud to be associated with and related to, despite the fact that some of them did not even know that we existed. For us, as children, it was not about interacting with these relatives but simply having them as examples of what was possible to achieve for someone from our extended family and from our socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds.
I recalled the particular case of a banker uncle of mine (uncle in the African sense of uncle), who had schooled abroad and had returned to take up a senior management position in a prominent bank. I had very little interaction with him, but just the thought of knowing him and of being related to him filled me with both pride and belief. The positive stories we heard about his accomplishments enabled us to see possibilities for people from our backgrounds.
To this day, he probably does not realize how much of an inspiration he was to me and others in his extended family and lineage. Not by doing anything for us, but just by being successful. I attended the wedding of one of his sons in the US two years ago and kept thinking that, without realizing it, his dad was one of the reasons I could dream big.
Please do not own your success alone. Realize that when you get to a certain point in life, your accomplishments are no longer just your own. You and your accomplishments are now community property. Try to make peace with that reality.
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