ktravula – a travelogue!

The Origin of “Oyinbo”

I have come across the most convincing story yet of the source of the word oyinbo. Of all the previous stories about the source of the word, the current entry in Wikipedia makes use of cognates and probable historical anecdotes. See below:

it… means “white person” generally used in the country, which originates from Igbo Language . The first “White people” to settle in Nigeria as colonial masters were the English people. In Igbo language demonym takes the form ” onye + the place of origin” of the person, hence, and Igbo person is called ” Onye Igbo”. A Yoruba person is called ” Onye Yoruba”. A German is “onye Germany”. Thus the first white people were called “onye ocha” for singular and “ndi ocha” for plural meaning “white person and white people” respectively. This was because the Igbo people of those days did not know from where the white people came. Interaction between the Igbos and the white people resulted in the white people trying to refer to the Igbos with a name similar to what the Igbos called them, but there was problem in pronouncing Igbo words due to presence of double lettered alphabets which involve nasal pronunciation,in some of the consonants such as ‘ch’, ‘gb’, ‘gh’, ‘gw’, ‘kp’, ‘kw’, ‘nw’, ‘ny’, ‘sh’. These were not present in English language hence the difficulty in the white man’s effort in giving the Igbos similar demonym as the Igbo people had given to him, instead a name resulting from a mutilation of Igbo words was produced “Oyi ibo’ instead of ” onyi igbo’ meaning ‘Igbo person’ just as he ‘the white man’ was called ‘ onye ocha’ meaning ‘white person’. It was this ‘oyi ibo’ that the Igbos later started referring to as ‘white person’ in a way of mocking the white man for his inability in saying “Onye Igbo”. This would later be adopted by other Southern Nigerian tribes as the standard name for the white man and coupled with dialect variance one obtains different pronunciations such as “Oyinbo’ in Yoruba and other western Nigerian tribes…

As a linguist, this makes more sense than any other story that breaks the word down as “oyin + bo” or any other permutation.

Dying in Many Tongues

One of the things that worried me a couple of days ago while watching the immigration debate in the US Senate press conference was a seeming consensus that ALL intending immigrants wishing to benefit from the quasi-amnesty/path-to-citizenship MUST learn to speak English before they can qualify. The discomfiture eventually turned to laughter when the senators making the point at the conference then began to speak in Spanish, in turn, to get the message across to their desired audience across the land. My sense of outrage, being sufficiently neutered by that irony, went away, and I went on Facebook to poke fun at my American friends who promptly defended the country’s one-common-language policy. They had a point: for every country/civilization to survive, and for the sense of unity, it must have a common language. (Never mind that people who already live and work in the country probably already speak the language or a version of it, or would do so eventually, to survive, without having to be compelled by law. And that if they don’t, their children would eventually do as it had been for generations, and the generations after them).

Today, however, I came across another second level of outrage, this time coming from American parents who were riled up that their children were reciting the American Pledge of Allegiance in a different language, this time in Arabic! Also important: the pupils, members of a social club, had already spent previous weeks reciting the same pledge in French and Spanish, with no uproar. The problem: the phrase “under God” is impossible to translate into Arabic without the word “Allah” appearing in it. Outrage! Sound the alarms: the children are now batting for the terrorists!

Watch a “discussion” about it below, via Fox News:

I was beside myself with laughter at the end, this time at the Chyron on the screen that read “Pledge of Allegiance to Allah?”

So instead of this post being about the needlessness of outrage, and the benefits of multilingualism, or even the beauty of childhood innocence and experimentation, or – horror of horrors – the importance of an open mind that assimilates instead of dictating, it shall merely be about the pleasures of sampling the varying shades of American outrage.

To end, here’s a VW ad that has now also spawned a lot of American cable tv outrage for the use of Jamaican accent by a white American dude from Minnesota. Judge for yourself.

These are interesting times for lingua fracas.

Chika Unigwe in Lagos

…on January 31st, 2013.

But before then at the University of Nsukka on January 29th to read from her works.

Chika is the winner of the NLNG Nigerian Prize for Literature 2013 and the author of On Black Sister’s Street.

For Jahman at 50

Jahman Anikulapo was 50 on January 16, 2013. This period also coincides with his exiting a long, stellar career at Guardian newspaper group as the Sunday Editor. In the last two decades or so, Jahman has pressed his talent, position and material means to service in aid of the development of the cultural sector in Nigeria.

It is in light of the foregoing that the friends of Jahman Anikulapo, under the aegis of Committee of the Friends Of Jahman @50, have planned a month-long programme of events to celebrate this cultural agent. The Committee has now released the timetable for the celebrations, with the overall theme: ‘3D-Jahman: The Three Dimensions of a Cultural Change Agent – Artist, Activist and Art Journalist.’

Full Details of Events and Activities:

January 13, 2013: Arthouse Forum
Arthouse Forum For Jahman Anikulapo At 50: A panel conversation around how the Interplay between Art Advocacy, Art Journalism and Art Practice has shaped the evolution of cultural propagation in the last 25 years. This will be followed by two other events later that evening:
– Tributes and Readings For Jahman Anikulapo
– An evening of songs, theatre skits and performances

Time: From 4.pm.
Venues: Kongi’s Harvest Gallery (Second Floor), Freedom Park, Broad Street, Lagos.
RSVP: Ayodele Arigbabu (08033000499).

FRIDAY, 18th of January, 2013, 7PM
iREPRESENT INTERNATIONAL FILM DOCUMENTARY ( Friends of CORA) celebrates Jahman Anikulapo. Freedom Park, Broad Street, Lagos

RSVP: Sam Osaze 08036554119

January 20, 2013: Invitational Dinner
Jahman’s colleagues in the Guardian group of newspapers host him to an evening of dining and tributes.

RSVP: Andrew Iro Okungbowa (08023152195)

January 25, 2013: Stripped Bare: Jahman Anikulapo, Warts and All
The celebrant in an intimate conversation with a whistleblower about childhood, upbringing, between area-boyism and ajebotterhood, the promise of youth, the gap between expectations and middle age reality, hooliganism, the secrets of journalistic success, the challenges of advocacy, the hopes of culture advocacy, a peek into life after the Guardian.

Time: From 5pm.
Venue: Quintessence Book and Artshop, Falomo Shopping Centre
RSVP: Sam Osaze (08036554119).

It should be recalled that on December 30, 2012, Committee for Relevant Art (CORA) of which Jahman is Programme Chairman held a celebration for him at its annual year-end party in Festac Town, Lagos, at which there was a symbolic cutting of cake and a pouring of libation superintended by Mr. Benson Idonije, patriarch of Nigerian art critics.

Also, the artists Nkechi Nwosu-Igbo and Toni Kan have already launched call for submission into a poetry collection to be published in honour of Jahman Anikulapo, just as we understand that the call for contribution of papers into a festschrift for a similar purpose will be made in the next few days.

We look forward to your active participation in this season of celebrations.

Thank you.

Yours,

Deji Toye

Re: Translating Twitter

I have been told that a backlog of more popularly requested languages will make it harder to get Yoruba to the top of the line in the Twitter Translation Lab as fast as I’d earlier thought.

Anyone still interested in translating the social media platform should make requests directly to the Translation Lab here: http://t.co/DL7VvVrM.

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