weleabu
on Fantastic Voyage (Nigeria), 28/Jul/2010 12:43, 34 days ago
There’s always something to love about the way other people speak, particularly when it’s English, Jim, but not as we know it.  (What difference then?  Only the underlying sense / of the look of a room on returning thence.)  I think I’ve probably mentioned some of these already, but here follow some of the finer linguistic tics of English in Hausaland (and probably all over Nigeria):-well done  This is generally just a conversation filler; Nigerians we’ve worked with to date seem incredibly bad at actually assessing anything positively (though they can pick more pedantic holes than a proof reader on heat).  It seems to just be a platitude to toss around, and it makes me feel perpetually congratulated for existing.  I still use it (sannudu aikiin Hausa) to actually congratulate someone– like when anokkadadriver this morning didn’t kill a dog he nearly hit – but that’s hopefully something I’ll grow out of.- along similar lines, many conversations here start and end withyou’re welcome.  I suspect it’s not quite so common in conversations between Nigerians – but I do like the way it really clearly names my position as an outsider and a guest and establishes a sense of openness and community at the same time.  I feel much less socially awkward here than is my hovering norm in the UK, and this kind of phrase (and attitude it connotes) is why.- it’s Nigerian pidgin to toss an –oin to complete words or a statement, and there aren’t many rules about where it can or can’t go: just totally up to the speaker.  So you can haveplenty-o meat, for instance.  That’s one I like.  Or, as above,well done-o, which is just kinda musically cheery.  Best of all, particularly if you’ve actually done something bad (like got really drunk and grumpy, for instance.  Not that I ever do that), is to add it onto an apology:sorry-osounds both sincere and playful, like a piglet looking for food.- I find it both charming and frustrating that you have to ask incredibly specific questions (e.g. not‘what food have you got?’ but ‘what meat have you got?’, ‘what stews have you got?’, ‘do you havexstew?’ and so on until you’ve sucked out as much information as you’ve got energy for).  At work, I had lots of people agreeing to give me something, or meet with me, or sign something off– and it didn’t happen.  That’s until I discoveredis it possible?as a follow up to a statement of something I want, which is some kind of magic formula to trigger action.  I think it works like a challenge:‘I want this report.  Is it possible?’ (and then, unspoken, ‘if it’s possible then why isn’t it happening?’).  There’s a great bit in His Dark Materials when (I think) Will says – with alarmingly challenging logic - ‘If you should, and you can, then you must’.  And that’s whatis it possible?is like.  Used inadvertently, it can cause problems: passing the House of Assembly in Kaduna, I asked a colleague‘is it possible to go inside?’ – meaning, in a British way, that I may-theoretically-at-some-point wish to visit it as a tourist.  But he looked slightly confused, said‘yes, it is possible’ – and took me straight in to ask for an interview with one of the ministers or something.  (He wasn’t in.  We left a message.  He hasn’t got back to me.)