Sunday, March 9, 2008Nigerian English: Yahoo-Yahoo boys, with cutlasses! Last week the International Herald Tribune ran an AP story on Nigerian English.Nigeria, it says, has evolved a Dickensian patois, in which Victorian words and phrases inherited from the colonial era (urchin, gripe water, cutlass) combine with structural and syntactic elements from the hundreds of other national languages to create a unique melange. Good stuff. [via AWADmail] Labels: Apartment Therapy, cutlass, International Herald Tribune, Nigeria, Yahoo-Yahoo
posted by John McGrath @ 1:45 AM
 
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Without reading the article yet, I am reminded of the common use of the word dacoit (burglar, highway robber) in Northern India. Saw it there in the newspapers a decade ago, read it again recently in some interview of an Indian notable.
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Ooops, I just bothered to look it up, and it comes from Hindi to begin with. But since it comes from the time of the British Raj, I associate it with Victorian English, since that's the context in which I probably first read it. # posted by
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