CNN concludes through this mysterious poll that the Nigerian English accent is the 5th sexiest in the world but didn’t forget to coat the ‘honour’ in cheeky stereotypes. Meh.
I got this mail from Nick about another personal peculiarity in English pronunciation in response to my recent post. Enjoy.
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I enjoyed your post about spotting Nigerian accents by the pronunciation of “man/men”
(https://www.ktravula.com/2011/
This doesn’t have anything to do with Nigerian English, but I know you like American English accents, so I thought I’d write. I ran into something similar to the “man/men” issue when I moved from my home town of Portland, Oregon to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (you should visit both cities if you get a chance). Having lived in Pittsburgh for ten
years I still find myself having to consciously use more of a “aa” sound, particularly with the word “bag”, which my wife tells me I pronounce too much like “beg”. I do it pretty automatically now, but I actually find myself exaggerating it to prevent comments. I think I sound like a sheep, going “baaaaaa-g”. The vowel sounds more open and I hold my tongue farther back in my throat than I would naturally.
This might not be exactly the same as the “men/man” thing, but it seems similar.
This is just my experience and not evidence of a regional accent issue, but at least one of my friends reported something similar after moving from Portland to the east coast. Other significant factors are that I may have picked up a bit of my mom’s New England accent, and also that Pittsburgh is home to a slight local accent and some cool local vocabulary like “yinz” instead of “y’all”.
Thanks for your always-interesting blog,
Sincerely,
Nick.
_____________________
Notes
This mail reminds me of one other distinct pronunciation difference in Nigerian and Ghanaian English. Growing up in the early to late eighties, I remember a common assumption that Ghanaian English sounded closer to the British standard than Nigerian English, and Nigerian parents paid more to send their children to private schools that had Ghanaian teachers rather than ones that didn’t. And though they paid so much for the “privilege” for us, we never understood much of the obsession beyond the fact that our teachers insisted on pronouncing “Church” as “cherch” (as it rhymes with “perch”), the as “the” (as rhyming with the “e” in “wet”, hamburger as “hamberger”, luck as “lack”, and but as “bat” rather than the Nigerian “bot” among very many others that I can list if I get the time. We students also didn’t gain much from the hubris that the teacher brought with them either. It however provided plenty moments of comic relief in classroom sessions when it didn’t come along with punishments for deviation. We had some good laughs as I am sure did Ghanaians who had listen to us speak English as well. I have been to East African and I think that the English there – along with its own amusing peculiarities that knocked Nigerian and Ghanaian versions to a corner – comes the closest to British English pronunciation standard in all of the Englishes I’ve heard on the continent. But then, I’ve never been everywhere.
Thank you Nick.
Sincerely,
KT
Watching a cover of Rihanna’s “Man Down” yesterday, I noticed something curious: one of the girls in the video pronounced the word “man” with a familiar consistency. I became intrigued and went to see other videos by the young ladies. Eventually I found one in which they answered questions from their fans, and I got what I was looking for. They were born to Nigerian parents, raised partly in Nigeria and in the United States. It’s unmistakable. That pronunciation of “man” in the video is of someone who has lived in Nigeria at one point or the other in their life. Watch the song cover here.
The last time something like this happened to me was four weeks ago on the streets of Chicago. “Are you from Nigeria?” I asked the taxi driver who had spoken just a few words to me through the window as I complained that his fares were too exorbitant. “Yes, in fact,” he responded, to the astonishment of my company. “There was something in his pronunciation,” I told her later. It turned out that the man had grown up in Nigeria but had lived in Chicago since 1979. Like her, he was also astonished to hear that I had guessed his nationality from just a few words in a big city.
There are some very distinct peculiarities in Nigerian English pronunciations observable usually only to compatriots, residents or regular visitors. This must be why all comedic imitations of African speech by American actors seem to be funnier (or sillier, depending on how you look at it) for being too inaccurately generic. (Chris Tucker does another one of those impressions at the end of this video, and Steve Havey in this one.)
PS: Here is a related video in which we played around with the perceptible difference in “man” on a Nigerian or an American tongue.
I ran into a few new accents during my visit to Joplin at the weekend. Some more than others I had to listen to three or more times before being able to understand at all. “You said what?” And, as always, it was as hard as ever to ask people to repeat what they’ve said without feeling guilty. My accent also became the subject of a few random stares, and eventual conversation starting prompts: “You speak good English” and a few more variants of the same compliment/curiosity. That was Lauren, the beautiful American from Tulsa who was excited to meet people from different parts of the world – especially from the faraway places like Nigeria and Benin where Mafoya and I come from. She thought that our accents sounded “different” but “cool”. Tulsa Oklahoma is about a hour and half from Joplin. And now, we have a standing invitation to visit there whenever we find ourselves again in that part of the country.
Who has seen Justified, the tv series featuring Timothy Olyphant? The accent that the preacher at the church service on Sunday spoke was similar to what I heard a lot from watching the series. Musical, a little slurry, and definitely pleasant to the ears, a distinct Kentucky-like flavour that delights a stranger’s hearing perhaps more than anyone else. Maybe a style of dressing too, but that’s beyond my specialty. But it is more understandable that those who live in rural, farm areas dress in a particular way, especially in the summer. And what do I know. I’m the guy who wore chinos rather than jeans to a work site.
Tulsa (Oklahoma), Topeka (Kansas), and Fayetteville (Arkansas) were some of the famous little towns from which the people we met came from, bearing gifts of the different ways of speaking and, no doubt, looking at the world. (PS: The writing on the garage door in the photo above reads U loot, we shoot. Click to enlarge. I won’t count that as just a kind of Joplin humour.)