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|  Message 296,806 of 297,380  |
|  Aidan Kehoe to All  |
|  Re: Chinua Achebe born (16/11/1930)  |
|  17 Nov 24 09:51:17  |
 From: kehoea@parhasard.net Ar an seachtú lá déag de mí na Samhain, scríobh Ross Clark: > Nigerian novelist, poet and critic. Lived until 2013. > > He wrote in English. His “Things Fall Apart” was on the local English secondary school syllabus here in the 90s, a good book. > "This English, then, which I am using, has witnessed peculiar events in my land > that it has never experienced anywhere else. The English language has never > been close to Igbo, Hausa, or Yoruba anywhere else in the world. So it has to > be different, because these languages and their environment are not inert. They > are active, and they are acting on this language which has invaded their > territory." > > So Nigerian English. But a very educated NigEng, not Fela Kuti's Pidgin or even > Amos Tutuola's indigenized colloquial. > > "...those who can do the work of extending the frontiers of English so as to > accommodate African thought patterns must do it through their mastery of > English and not out of innocence." > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinua_Achebe We’ve had a certain amount of Nigerian immigration here in Ireland; most of the Nigerians I’ve known have been doctors, but there was plenty of less-educated immigration that has died off as Ireland became more credentialist. I don’t think I ever heard one of my doctor colleague speak a non-English language on a personal call, in contrast to, e.g. the Pakistanis and the Arabs. -- ‘As I sat looking up at the Guinness ad, I could never figure out / How your man stayed up on the surfboard after fourteen pints of stout’ (C. Moore) --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05 * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2) |
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