A propos, is there any reason we shouldn’t consider pidgin an African language?
ken
Kenneth Harrow
Dept of English and Film Studies
http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/
From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Abdul Salau <salauabdul@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Friday 28 October 2016 at 01:52
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: SV: SV: USA Africa Dialogue Series - “Outrightly,” “Faithfuls,” “Graduands”: Q and A on Nigerian English and Learner Errors
I just wish every one of us as African people can struggle everyday to write a word and a sentence and a paaragraph to enrich African languages and cultures: If we can be as passionate about it like Farooq then there will be hope for us: Remember this Hausa Proverb
Kowa ya bar gida, gida ya bar shi= Who ever departs or disregards his home; his home will depart or disregard him
On Fri, Oct 28, 2016 at 3:25 AM, Kenneth Harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:
Maybe I would want to add that if you don’t live in the environment where a language is spoken around you I don’t see how you could acquire native fluency.
All I know is, I couldn’t.
And yet I’ve heard and seen some amazing things—mostly from people who are gifted (which, I regret to say, I am not)
That is: I had a French teacher in Cameroon, decades ago, who had been posted in Vietnam where he watched American tv all the time. He had an amazingly good command of American English.
I’ve heard a great deal about hausa people up north who have watched so much Bollywood that they’ve learned hindi. Is that really possible?
Lastly, I can’t help but say I’ve been amazed by the command of 3-4-5 languages by so many African people. In some cases the languages are related; but even there, it isn’t easy. I think it has in part to do with expectations.
Americans, and brits, largely do not expect their children will master a foreign language, and it is very very low on our totem pole. It is uncommon to find an American or brit who speaks good French, for instance; and vice versa, the French are often very weak in English. There are historical and cultural reasons for this. but on the other hand, no one expects Mexicans having come to the u.s. not to speak English, and eventually very good English. Americans do better with Spanish than French, and I really don’t know why.
No doubt Farooq could explain that to me.
ken
Kenneth Harrow
Dept of English and Film Studies
http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/
From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Salimonu Kadiri <ogunlakaiye@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Thursday 27 October 2016 at 15:48
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: SV: SV: USA Africa Dialogue Series - “Outrightly,” “Faithfuls,” “Graduands”: Q and A on Nigerian English and Learner Errors
Kenneth Harrow wrote this lovely piece : Some of us are too old or inept to become truly fluent. But probably most, if not all, if we apply ourselves to it, and live in the environment where the language is spoken, with effort we cannot only acquire fluency over time, but native fluency.
A Nigerian that migrates to America at the age of thirty, for instance, will speak English with Nigerian accent and even in written English, he must learn how to spell some English words in American way namely, labour or favour without the alphabet 'U'. With time the Nigerian immigrant would learn to speak American English with nasal sound. Even in the South of USA, Africans prefer to retain their African accents while speaking English in order to shield themselves from the persecution which is the birth-right of indigenous African-American. Speaking English with Nigerian accent has its advantages too in some parts of USA.
Kenneth is correct in postulating that if we live in the environment where the language (English) is spoken we can acquire fluency or native fluency. However, Nigeria is not an environment where English is spoken as a native language, like England and USA. In Nigeria, English is not a national language but official language which many Nigerians do not speak, understand, read or write. The colonial masters imposed English as the official language on Nigerians but saw to it that only a selective few who they needed to serve as intermediaries between them and the masses were taught English language. It was never in their interest that all Nigerians should be able to speak, read and write in English. And since Nigerians stepped into the colonialist shoes, as slave overseers, they have seen to it that learning of English language is restricted to privileged few. Premised on the fact that English is not a native or national language, but official language, I think it is unfair to taunt and harangue any Nigerian that studied English in Nigeria for not speaking or writing Queen's English. What should matter in communicating in a foreign language to a targeted audience is not only that the information being conveyed is accurate and correct but that the contents of the information are understandable regardless of any grammatical flaws.
Olayinka Agbetuyi claimed to have met an Igbo who spoke Hausa and Yoruba fluently, but he failed to understand, just as Kenneth pointed out, that the Igbo man had resided in the environment where Hausa and Yoruba were lingua franca. Besides there are many words in each ethnic language in Nigeria that mean the same things in relation to one another but have various spellings and pronunciations.
S.Kadiri
Från: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> för Olayinka Agbetuyi <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com>
Skickat: den 26 oktober 2016 20:59
Till: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Ämne: Re: SV: USA Africa Dialogue Series - “Outrightly,” “Faithfuls,” “Graduands”: Q and A on Nigerian English and Learner Errors
I met an Igbo young man in northern Nigeria who spoke to me in impeccable Yoruba whose claim to Igbo nationality I denied until I saw him speaking to fellow Igbo. He spoke fluent Hausa too by virtue of his domiciliation. I dont know how to classify him till today.
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------
From: Kenneth Harrow <harrow@msu.edu>
Date: 26/10/2016 19:53 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: SV: USA Africa Dialogue Series - “Outrightly,” “Faithfuls,” “Graduands”: Q and A on Nigerian English and Learner Errors
Thanks olayinka.
Let’s put it another way. How many Africans speak more than one language? Do none of them speak 2 or even three with native fluency?
[answer: lots!]
ken
Kenneth Harrow
Dept of English and Film Studies
http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/
From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Olayinka Agbetuyi <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wednesday 26 October 2016 at 14:14
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: SV: USA Africa Dialogue Series - “Outrightly,” “Faithfuls,” “Graduands”: Q and A on Nigerian English and Learner Errors
Im with you there Ken. As a fellow comparatist Id be surprised if you did not react the way you did since this reality is at the core of the discipline, perhaps more than any other discipline: grasp of languages across cultures.
Not everyone is a comparatist by training; what is obvious to you may not be obvious to others.
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------
From: Kenneth Harrow <harrow@msu.edu>
Date: 26/10/2016 18:58 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: SV: USA Africa Dialogue Series - “Outrightly,” “Faithfuls,” “Graduands”: Q and A on Nigerian English and Learner Errors
I shouldn’t take the time for this, but quickly>
It is ridiculous to think people can’t acquire fluency in ANY other language than their own native language.
Aren’t we all children of the word?
Some of us are too old or inept to become truly fluent. But probably most, if not all, if we apply ourselves to it, and live in the environment where the new language is spoken, with effort can not only acquire fluency over time, but native fluency.
The language I learned as a child changed; I don’t speak lots of what these young people speak. But I know absolutely that most African scholars I know are as native in their fluency of the English I speak as anyone else.
The arguments being made must be by those seeking to protect ownership over their own languages. But forget it. We can, and do, learn the language of others, as do all the children, babies, of the world.
Am I wrong? Are there scholars, living in the states now for some years, who have a different opinion?
Lastly, some people lose their accent; others (like me) somehow can’t. but accented speech is as amenable to native fluency as anything else. And who, in the end, doesn’t have some kind of regional accent to their speech anyway?
ken
Kenneth Harrow
Dept of English and Film Studies
http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/
From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Olayinka Agbetuyi <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wednesday 26 October 2016 at 13:24
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: SV: USA Africa Dialogue Series - “Outrightly,” “Faithfuls,” “Graduands”: Q and A on Nigerian English and Learner Errors
Your observations are largely true. But if you want to enter graduate school in the US there is test of advanced use of English which both native speakers and foreigners must take the scores of which in part determines intake. If.you score higher than a native American you would be admitted while the native American with low scores will be denied admission as people on this forum with American graduate degrees will confirm.
From the way you write, your grounding in Yoruba traditional culture is undeniable. Much of it would have been acquired through study of Yoruba written culture. Some who are urban Yoruba people who also have studied Yoruba culture in written form will not be as grounded in Yoruba as you are. How would you be able to write Ikamidu even if you could say it had you not learnt written Yoruba?
There are native English speakers who may know the English word for Ikamudu but unable to write it because they are inadequately educated natives. In the same vein there are children of native Yoruba who dont know what ikamidu is let alone write it down.
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------
From: Salimonu Kadiri <ogunlakaiye@hotmail.com>
Date: 26/10/2016 17:49 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: SV: SV: USA Africa Dialogue Series - “Outrightly,” “Faithfuls,” “Graduands”: Q and A on Nigerian English and Learner Errors
English na language, na native of England de speak am. A no be native of England o!! The late Babs Fafunwa, the erstwhile Minister of Education, wrote in *Learning and Teaching in our Mother Tongue* thus, "The colonial education robbed the Nigerian child of his inventiveness, creativity and originality. Since the Nigerian child is forced to think in English, other than in Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba and other local languages, the child finds it hard to assimilate instructions easily and build manual dexterity effectively." Babs Fafunwa was correct if we think about what kind of confusion will arise in the head of a Nigerian child who is being taught in a Physics lesson with the example of icy road to demonstrate slippery on frictionless surface when there is no snow season in Nigeria and the temperature throughout the whole year in the country is beyond melting point for snow or ice. To the Nigerian child, banana peels or okra on the ground would have been the best example of frictionless and slippery surface, instead of icy road.
To be able to write and speak English fluently cannot be equated to being educated. Some years ago, a light-headed woozy Bachelor of Arts in English who was a senior official in one of the Nigerian Embassy in Europe bought a new car. After dinner on that fateful evening, he excused himself from the wife and children to go to his car garage. With the door and windows of the garage closed, he key-started the car on neutral gear to listen to the radio while reading the car manual. He died of inhaled smoke from the exhaust pipe of the car. The policemen that came to the scene concluded that the ambassador's official had committed suicide because they assumed that the educated official of the embassy in question knew the consequence of inhaling carbon mono-oxide when he key-started the vehicle in an enclosure. Unfortunately, his knowledge of English language did not extend to the effect of inhalation of carbon mono-oxide which non-English speaking farmers in Nigerian villages deploy daily to drive out and kill animals by infusing concentration of smoke into their holes.
Education that cannot give us what we want is useless. We have a lot of good English speaking scientists, Engineers and Medical Doctors in Nigeria and despite the natural resources at their disposals, Nigeria remains poor and underdeveloped economically and industrially. Yet, our ancestors carried out experiments to know that the tortoise never suffers head ache, the snail never suffers liver pain and fish never suffers fever inside the river. With that said, a Nigerian who asserts that English is her/his first language is like asserting that butterflies are birds. For me I know what is ÌKÁMÌDÙ in Yoruba language but I don't know the English name for it!!
S.Kadiri
Från: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> för Ayo Obe <ayo.m.o.obe@gmail.com>
Skickat: den 26 oktober 2016 12:16
Till: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Ämne: Re: SV: USA Africa Dialogue Series - “Outrightly,” “Faithfuls,” “Graduands”: Q and A on Nigerian English and Learner Errors
"A native of England with primary school education can write and speak better English than the best Nigerian Professor of English language because as native of England he/she is born with the language."
I beg to differ. Many natives of England with primary school education write and speak execrable English. Being born with a language does not mean that you write or speak it better, even though it may give you a certain fluency. Both my parents, who were briefly teachers during their time as students in the UK, wrote and spoke better English than most of those they were teaching although Yoruba was their first language. In fact, both spoke and wrote Yoruba, and though I am not in a position to judge whether they spoke it impeccably, I should say that from the corrections they issued to junior Yoruba-speaking members of the household, that they were pretty good.
I also have to challenge the assertion that English is a second language "to all Nigerians". Not these days.
Lastly on Farooq's observations about being able to make judgments about people from the way they speak English: in Pygmalion George Bernard Shaw wrote that it was impossible for one Englishman to open his mouth and speak without making another Englishman despise him. Thus the native speakers of the language!
AyoI invite you to follow me on Twitter @naijama
On 25 Oct 2016, at 11:35 PM, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunlakaiye@hotmail.com> wrote:English is the official language in Nigeria but it is not a national language. To all Nigerians, English is a secondary language to our mother tongues - Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Ijaw, Ibibio etc. No matter how good a Nigerian speaks and writes English it can never be as perfect as a born English native of England. The chance of learning the language perfectly in Nigeria varies and is limited, depending on which institution of learning one is lucky to attend. However, I am yet to meet any Caucasian who can read, write and speak any of Nigeria's ethnic languages perfectly as many Nigerians do in English language. Since we often equate fluency in spoken and written English language to being highly educated in Nigeria, Farooq Kperogi wrote, "From the way you write and speak English, people can tell your level of education, your social status, your regional identity, your professional affiliation, the depth of your immersion in the language."
A native of England with primary school education can write and speak better English than the best Nigerian Professor of English language because as native of England he/she is born with the language. Can we say the level of education of a German or a French Engineer is low because of lack of fluency in written and spoken English? Will the social status of a French, German, Spanish and Italian engineers in Nigeria be low because of their poor oral and written English language?
The purpose of language is to communicate effectively with the people of the nation in which that language is spoken. A national broadcast by the President of Nigeria is normally done in English but since absolute majority of Nigerians do not speak or understand English, the broadcast used to be translated into various indigenous languages. Wole Soyinka is a highly educated Nigerian with a very high social status. Once, he referred tacitly to the then First Lady, Patience Jonathan, as a hippopotamus that could be taken out of the swamp but the swamp could not be taken out of her, the hippopotamus. When the attention of Mrs. Jonathan was drawn to Professor Wole Soyinka's sarcastic reference to her as a hippopotamus, she said, "That Professor Soyinka sef, why den de call am Nobelle Loletta? Him be woman? E de play sheater, why e no de for Nollywood?" With her low education, Mrs Jonathan could communicate more effectively than Soyinka, with many Nigerians by speaking in the language most Nigerians understand and, in fact, the social status of Mrs. Patience Jonathan in Nigeria was not lower than that of the learned Professor.
S.Kadiri
Från: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> för Ibukunolu A Babajide <ibk2005@gmail.com>
Skickat: den 25 oktober 2016 14:23
Till: Farooq A. Kperogi
Kopia: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - “Outrightly,” “Faithfuls,” “Graduands”: Q and A on Nigerian English and Learner Errors
Dear Farooq Kperogi,
Your elaborate response to my rant says a lot. More about you than about me. For a rant to exert and pique you this much, and as an "an enthusiastic student of the language," to condescendingly pour vitriol on me through your response shows it was not a rant.
Like we all do, we read what we want to read and relate to what aligns with the innermost base instinct. Did you read my wholesome praise that, "You are a brilliant student of the language of English.?" So why should you dredge up my asking you in the past for illumination on the language?
The admission that you are not a gatekeeper is enough vindication of my position. All your other vituperations are uncalled for or relevant so I will not comment on them. The rules of the language are not hard and fast. When I first arrived in England in 1987, I heard common and widespread usages like, "two pound," "you was the one," and so many similar acceptable usages that defy my own rigid rules of English language training in Nigeria.
You accept that you and other erudite scholars of the language agree that the rules of the language are NOT fixed in time, space and class of users! Why then should we accept your take on "outrightly" if we understand it one way, that is different to your own "gatekeeping" way? My dear friend, please learn to take yourself a little tad less seriously and relax. Please take things easy because not all public exchanges should be attended by your amateur psycho-analysis and presumptuousness.
My very dear friend, have a great day.
Cheers.
IBK
On 24 October 2016 at 22:06, Farooq A. Kperogi <farooqkperogi@gmail.com> wrote:
IBK,
First, this is hypocritical ranting. You have had reason in the past to send me an email or two requesting to know the correct usage of words and expressions. If you don't care about grammar or "gate-keeping," why did you bother to ask me to tell you if certain expressions were correct or not? Is it because your settled certainties have been exploded b y my latest offering that you're getting ticked off?
I have pointed out several times here that English evolves naturally, that no authority regulates its use, etc. Several people have said that before me. So you are not saying anything new. But it's also true that English grammar isn't anarchic. Like other languages, its grammar and usage traditions are elaborately rule-governed. There are usage norms that stand people out, that serve as social markers. From the way you write and speak English people can tell your level of education, your social status, your regional identity, your professional affiliation, the depth of your immersion in the language, etc. This is true of all languages. Everyone has a choice to come across as educated, regional, slangy, informal, uneducated, colloquial, etc.
I am not a gate-keeper of the English language. I am not even an expert of the language. I, too, make my own mistakes. I am only an enthusiastic student of the language. All I do is analyze usage patterns, call attention to the consensus of experts on usage norms, highlight dialectal peculiarities, answer questions from readers, etc. And there is nothing revolutionary or newfangled about that. Several other people do it. Is that too much for you to understand?
If reading my grammar writing heightens your insecurities and hurts your fragile ego, you know you can save yourself this needless torment by not reading me. There is a delete button for a reason. You can even block my email address so my posts don't come into your inbox at all. It's that simple.
Take care,
Farooq Kperogi
Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Journalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & MediaSocial Science Building
Room 5092 MD 2207
402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State UniversityKennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.comTwitter: @farooqkperog
Author of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World
"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will
On Mon, Oct 24, 2016 at 1:42 PM, Ibukunolu A Babajide <ibk2005@gmail.com> wrote:
My brother Farooq Kperogi,
You are a brilliant student of the language of English. However, your attempt at being a gate-keeper will not work. You always forget that the only reason English is the ascendant language is its ability to import from other languages and enrich itself through usage.
If you want a language you wish to cage and guard, please fall in love with the language of French and join the French Academy. There, you every year determine what is French and what is not, and what usage is fixed in granite with you fellow academy members.
When we learnt GNS 101 in 1978 at the University of Ife we were taught and bout registers of English and usage and it was also obvious that English evolves through time and place and nobody, not you or any coven determines its usage. That right belong to us who speak it. That is why when a devotee of Michael Jackson like my daughter who is also a language buff says "I'm bad," she means she is good.
Try as you may, sorry you will not cage English and by the way to borrow a phrase from the Jewish scriptures, "who made you a judge (of English language) over us.
Cheers.
IBK
On 23 October 2016 at 19:28, Farooq A. Kperogi <farooqkperogi@gmail.com> wrote:
Twitter:@farooqkperogi
Over the past few days, I was dragged into many online arguments about the grammatical correctness of certain popular Nigerian English expressions. My responses to these conversations form the core of today’s column.
Is the word “outrightly” an illegitimate word even though some online dictionaries have an entry for it? Why don’t native English speakers use “faithfuls” as the plural form of “faithful” even when some online dictionaries have an entry for it? How about “graduand”? Is that a real word?
“Outrightly” is bad grammar
The use of "outrightly" as an adverb is nonstandard. In standard usage "outright" is both an adverb and an adjective.
In a December 31, 2009 article titled "Adverbial and Adjectival Abuse in Nigerian English," I wrote: “Chief among these are the words ‘outrightly’ and ‘downrightly.’ They are probably not strictly Nigerian inventions, but native speakers of the English language don’t say ‘downrightly’ or ‘outrightly.’ These adverbs don’t take the ‘ly’ form. So where a Nigerian would say ‘Yar’adua’s handlers are outrightly lying to us,’ a Standard English speaker would say ‘Yar’adua’s handlers are lying to us outright.’ Where Nigerian speakers would say ‘he is downrightly hypocritical,’ a Standard English speaker would say ‘he is downright hypocritical.’ So, although these words are adverbs of manner, they don’t usually admit of the ‘ly’ suffix.”
People who were told “outrightly” wasn’t Standard English pointed out that online dictionaries, including Oxforddictionaries.com, have an entry for the word. There are two things wrong with this. First, the printed editions of all Oxford dictionaries don’t recognize “outrightly” as a word.
Second, lexicography (i.e., writing of dictionaries) isn't always synonymous with grammar; dictionaries merely notate the lexical components of a language and don't necessarily make judgments on usage and correctness. With the rise and popularity of web-based corpus linguistics, if enough people use a word it will have an entry in most online dictionaries. But the fact that a word has an entry in an online dictionary doesn't necessarily mean it's "correct."
You sometimes have to go beyond the dictionary to figure out if the word is standard, nonstandard, regional, formal, informal, colloquial, slang, uneducated, etc. (OK, I admit that learners' dictionaries like the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary and others have usage notes on some words and expressions. Incidentally, even the online edition of the Oxford Learner's Dictionary doesn’t recognize "outrightly” as a legitimate English word).
The use of "outrightly" as an adverb started life as learner's error. It arose from the notion that the adverbial form of the word “right” is “rightly.” This morphological logic was extended to all words that have or end with “right.” Thus, “outrightly” and “downrightly” were born. The reasoning is perfectly sensible and logical. It’s just that grammar, especially English grammar, isn’t always sensible and logical.
The superfluous addition of the “ly” morpheme to “outright” and “downright” has emerged as one of the features of non-native English usage. You won't find an educated native English speaker write or say "outrightly." The Corpus of Global Web-Based English shows that "outrightly" appears disproportionately in Nigerian English.
It’s OK to say or write "outrightly" when you communicate with Nigerians. But if you are communicating with educated native English speakers and don’t want to stand out, avoid it. Always remember that “outright” is both an adjective (used immediately before a noun, as in, “That’s an outright lie”) and an adverb of manner (used after a verb in a sentence, as in, “Lai Mohammed lied outright.”)
“Faithful” Has No Plural
People also got into an argument about the expression “Muslim faithfuls.” Someone pointed out that it was solecistic and another person defended its correctness by pointing out that an online dictionary has an entry for it.
Well, I once wrote the following in response to a reader's question challenging me that "faithfuls" is a legitimate plural of “faithful” because an online dictionary says so:
"The standard plural for 'faithful' when it is used as a noun to mean staunch followers of or believers in a faith, ideology, or creed, is 'the faithful,' not 'faithfuls.' It should be 'millions of the Christian faithful,' 'millions of the Muslim faithful,' 'thousands of the party faithful at the PDP convention,' etc. I have never heard any educated native English speaker say 'faithfuls.' In fact, there appears a wiggly red underline beneath the word when you type it on Microsoft Word, indicating that it’s not recognized as an English word. Plus, the world’s most prestigious English dictionary—the Oxford English Dictionary—says the plural of 'faithful' is 'the faithful.' It does not list 'faithfuls' as an alternative plural form for 'faithful.'
"I am aware that the online edition of Merriam-Webster Dictionary says that when 'faithful' is used outside religious contexts, it can be pluralized to 'faithfuls.' It gives the expression 'party faithfuls' as an example. That means while it does not recognize the pluralization of 'faithful' in reference to religions as legitimate, it tolerates its pluralization elsewhere.
"However, when I searched the British National Corpus, the definitive record of contemporary spoken and written British English, I found only two records for 'party faithfuls,' but found thousands of records for 'the party faithful.' The Corpus of Contemporary American English— which has been described as 'the first large, genre-balanced corpus of any language, which has been designed and constructed from the ground up as a "monitor corpus", and which can be used to accurately track and study recent changes in the language'— did not return a single record for 'party faithfuls,' but had thousands of matches for “the party faithful.'
"What this tells me is that 'faithfuls' as a plural of 'faithful' is rare or non-standard in British English and completely absent in American English. I would never advise you to use 'faithfuls' in careful writing or in polite company. It would make you sound illiterate." (This was first published in my February 24, 2013 column titled, “Q and A on Nigerian and American English Expressions—and More”
There are many more examples of popular words in Nigerian and other non-native English varieties that have entries in online dictionaries but that are never used by educated native English speakers. “Academician” is another example.
In a December 6, 2015 column titled, “Academician”or “Academic”? Q and A on Nigerian English Errors and Usage,” I wrote:
“So what is the difference between an ‘academician’ and an ‘academic’? Well, an ‘academic’ is someone who teaches or conducts research in a higher educational institution, typically in a university. In British and Nigerian English, academics are also called ‘lecturers.’ In American English, they are called ‘professors.’
“An ‘academician,’ on the other hand, is a person who works with or is honored with membership into an academy, that is, an institution devoted to the study and advancement of a specialized area of learning such as the arts, sciences, literature, medicine, music, engineering, etc. Examples of academies are the Nigerian Academy of Letters, the Royal Academy of Arts, the Royal Academy of Music, the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, etc.
“Not all academics are academicians and not all academicians are academics. In other words, you can teach in a university, polytechnic, college of education, etc. and never be made a member of an academy, and you can become a member of an academy without ever being a teacher or a researcher at a higher educational institution. Note that while most academicians are also academics, most academics are never academicians.
“A little note on pragmatics is in order here. Although many [online] dictionaries have entries that say ‘academician’ and ‘academic’ can be synonymous, this isn’t really the case in actual usage, at least among educated native English speakers. It is considered illiterate usage in British and American English to call higher education teachers and researchers ‘academicians’; they are properly called ‘academics.’ Many dictionaries merely capture the entire range of a word’s usage without discriminating socially prestigious usage from uneducated or archaic usage.”
Is “Graduand” a Nigerianism?
No, it’s not. Someone wondered why Nigerian newspapers use the word “graduand” even though the word doesn’t have an entry in many print dictionaries. Well, it’s because it’s a Briticism. That means it is unique to British English and the heirs of its linguistic heritage, such as Nigerian English. It means someone who hasn't graduated but is about to graduate. It is entirely unknown in American English.
Related Articles:Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Journalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & MediaSocial Science Building
Room 5092 MD 2207
402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State UniversityKennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.comTwitter: @farooqkperog
Author of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World
"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will--
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Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
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Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
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To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
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Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
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To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
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Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
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To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
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Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
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