Mind Your Language
English is not my mother tongue as I had to learn it as a second or third language. My parents come from different parts of Plateau State in NIGERIA and therefore speak different languages. They never spoke either to us but somehow expected us to speak both. We never did and still don’t. Growing up we all spoke Hausa in the home, the only language everyone could understand. My father however always had high aspirations for his children and would insist we only spoke to him in English. It was a bit of a struggle but it forced us to practice the language. It meant that English speaking didn’t end within the school walls. It became an extension of everyday life.
In our local African languages, there are some English phonetic sounds that simply don’t exist. One of them is the TH sound which we could either pronounce be as D or T. For example, FATHER would become FADA, SOUTH would be SOUT. NORTH would be NOT. It could get really confusing especially for “non-indigenes”. How would one differentiate between North and Not, as both are pronounced exactly alike. It was never a problem to us because we all understood what we were saying.
From an early age I however observed that my mum’s pronunciations seemed to be different. She didn’t have a problem with her “TH” sounds. She explained to me that her Missionary teachers from England had insisted on their making the correct TH sounds. She would mimic her teacher with words like, thhhrroooough, thhhhink, thhhhumb, always emphasising on the TH sounds. I was also fortunate to have had Missionary teachers who taught us Reading in secondary school. For the first time, we not only learnt about phonics but also delved into the exciting world of books. We had to do weekly book reports and have weekly vocabulary tests. We also got introduced to Idiomatic Expressions, with their twists and turns. Some of my favourite idioms were “between a rock and a hard place”, “daylight robbery” and “a storm in a teacup”.
Growing up, I never knew that non-Africans could sometimes struggle with understanding our accents. I didn’t even know we sounded different (l laugh as I write this). To be fair on them, I must confess that I sometimes also struggle with understanding various accents like the English, the American, the Scottish, the Irish, the Chinese, the Indian, the East African etc. My favourite genre of English would perhaps be the one spoken in Nigeria. We have adopted it, confused it slightly and made it our own. We are understood by very few and very far between.
For some of us, we have realised down the line our dilemma of the TH phonetic sound. Some people try to rectify the problem by deliberately watching out for the TH in words and attempting to pronounce it properly. Some would however end up complicating things further by placing a TH where there is none. I remember listening in amazement to a politician give his “Thank you” speech. He said he didn’t want to “thake tins” for granted (take things). Words like TRUTH become THRUT, Wheat becomes Weath, a water tank becomes a water thank. I absolutely doff my hat to my brothers and sisters who try to correct their TH anomaly and I’m rooting for all of us. Practice will surely make all things perfect one day, so help us God.
Other sounds we might struggle with are the CH versus SH sounds. I remember a little girl in my class back in Nigeria who would always say SHALK instead of CHALK. I tried and tried to correct her but couldn’t. She would call a WATCH a WASH, MATCHES would be MASHES. It wasn’t that she couldn’t say the SH sound, its just that something in her brain had to change it to a CH for it to make sense. Maybe the fault could be traced to her local language, I still don’t know. The reality is that a chartered accountant would be called a shattered accountant. Its hard not to laugh sometimes.
Apart from our challenges with pronunciations, so much is also lost in translation. English being a second language for a lot of us Africans, we often process information mentally in our local languages and then translate directly into English. Some of these translations can be almost horrifying or at best, rude. For example in my country, it is normal to ask a person in the morning, “how was your night?” Meaning, “Did you sleep well?” This simple phrase can be misunderstood and termed quite rude in certain quarters as it has its implied meanings. Another direct translation is “how is your body?” Meaning “how are you feeling today”? In my local African language, when a person is unwell, you show concern by asking “how is your body?”. I’ve been told its not an appropriate question to ask a lady.
Another gaff is when we say “we have something on fire”. It simply means “I’m cooking something”. I’ve once told a tradesman that I had something on fire and he looked at me funny. It never crossed my mind that it could have meant something was actually ablaze on fire.
I’ve been blessed to have lived in the UK since 2006. I remember my first trip to the Estate Agents while house hunting. I walked in and asked to speak with Bevan. I pronounced his name as Bee-van as it was my first time coming across that name. I was received and treated very politely for the whole two weeks I dealt with them. No one corrected me. Bee-van answered whenever I called his name until I signed on the dotted line. They must have been laughing their heads off. My English teacher had taught me that BE was pronounced as Bee. How was I to know that Bevan wasn’t Beevan? The English can be exceptionally polite to a fault. I made a similar mistake not too long ago with the name Katriona. It’s funny how we sometimes think we know something and we really don’t. I started calling the poor lady KATRYONA instead of KATRINA. Thank God I had the good sense to ask and to be corrected. Moral of the story, when in doubt, ask.
Everyday I seem to be learning something new. When I signed up to do a Masters in the UK about ten years ago, we the International Students had to have some extra classes to prepare us for life in the UK. We were taught that as a rule, the English were never direct in their speech. Rather than give a direct command, they would prefer to suggest or to request politely. For example, they would never say things like “close the door”, “Take a break”, “stand up”, it would be “would you like to close the door?”, “Would you like to take a break?”, “would you like to stand up?”. Those lessons were priceless as it showed me our very brusque Nigerian nature. We are a naturally intense people and are hardly ever gentle or quiet. We don’t suggest things, we give clear concise orders, preferably in a loud voice. “Give me the bag”, “Shut the door”, “Stand up”, “Keep quiet”, etc. I remember being on a train one evening and a group of girls walked into my carriage. One of them needed the toilet and casually asked one of her friends “would you like to hold my bag please?”. Wow, it absolutely blew my mind. Such courtesy! If it was me, I would have just said “take, I’m coming” and dropped the bag with my friend.
Another difference I have observed is that we Africans have a lot of brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers that are not directly related to us. Our African vocabulary doesn’t have certain familial words like nieces, nephews, great aunt, cousins, second cousins, step sisters etc. Everyone is simply a brother, a sister, a mother or a father. It sometimes confuses our white folks because everyone seems to be related somehow. I remember one of the teachers in my former school who had a little black girl calling her aunty. For us, its almost a taboo for a child to call an adult by their first name. You show respect by saying aunty or uncle.
I sometimes appreciate the difficulty African parents have in raising their children in the West, trying to blend two almost opposing cultures. To succeed, it has to be a “give and take” approach mixed with a lot of patience. They say, East is East, and West is West and ne’er the twain shall meet. Is it true?
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