All the common mistakes below and much more are contained in this section, with detailed explanations where necessary. This conspectus is just to whet your appetite ahead of syntactic surgeries (a la Prof. Adidi Uyo of Unilag)! Most of the mistakes in the print and electronic media are the manifestations of carelessness, loose thinking and ignorance. We must be consistent in the use of either British or American English—mixing up both variants in any lexical environment shows slipshoddiness.
Also note that most media audiences are sticklers for purism. For those in this finicky and fastidious class, any egregrious slip counts. Unfortunately, most people who commit these facile and fallacious blunders are persons who should know but because incorrigibility has affected them they have become ignoramuses! Why, for instance, should some journalists describe themselves as ‘media practitioners’ instead of ‘media professionals’ or ‘mass communication practitioners’? Doctors and lawyers practise medicine and law, respectively, clearly unlike the fourth estate.
I am not a linguistic diagnostician, but I can perform lexical and structural surgeries and make efficacious pharmacological/therapeutic recommendations based on knowledgeable familiarity with errors (and some of their typologies) that border on grammar, logic and rhetoric, which I had referred to elsewhere in this column as the pillars of the English language—get them right and you are on course.
Finally, I am more concerned here with the practical aspect of the English language than its critical theoretical underpinnings which are available in all standard textbooks and easily accessible. This work is a stop-gap exercise for quick resolutions of daily grammatical challenges. From my own personal experiences and encounters with people, most exonormative language users prefer easy-to-read-and-follow summaries to usually massive, boring and complex theoretical methodicalness! This is hoping that I am not inadvertently encouraging intellectual slothfulness by this remedial quick-fix intervention! For starters, let’s proceed with the following tips of the iceberg in this age of modern English:
Compiling this conspectus of media gaffes over the years has evoked salient questions in me: why are these errors egregriously or routinely committed? Is it a function of ignorance, carelessness or sheer blatant mistake? Could it be tactlessness arising from slothfulness? Should it all be attributed to the evolution of what has come to be known as Nigerian English? Staggered answers to these questions are contained in this book. I have the conviction that the following pages will enrich and edify you! If it does, my day would have been made.
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If, as they say, “health is wealth” (health is better than wealth), it follows that any serious government must be concerned about what its country’s citizens consume,
THE NATION ON SUNDAY EDITORIAL, April 5, 2015. Special note on usage: In Nigeria, they say, “health is wealth” while elsewhere in the world they say, health is better than wealth”, meaning ‘It is better to be healthy than rich, since ill – health makes a person unhappy, even though he is rich”, It is an English proverb. This is a consolation to the poor, who can very likely achieve good health as easily as the rich can,
Another special Note: A famous German maxim says it all, “health is not everything, but without health, everything is nothing”, health, good health for that matter, is king. It is the real thing! For 31 years now, I’ve been sermonizing, preaching and saying it that proverbs, like idioms, that are formal (fixed by usage) cannot be change, restructed, altered or rearranged. It is a basic rule, a prescriptive rule, decreed by priest of usage (from the priesthood), nobody has the right or the licence to do or act otherwise. No way!
Ebere, the day is still young, don’t be discovered. We are all solidly behind you in this struggle.
Bayo Oguntunase (Soloade12@yahoo.com 08056180046, 08029442508)
We have the Balogun Market and the “Iya Olojas” on the Lagos Island and other markets elsewhere across the country.
Men and women who sell their wares there are called “marketers” or traders. However, those who sell items, including petrol in this embarrassing period of fuel scarcity, on the black market are called “black marketeers” (double ‘e’ after ‘t’) and not “marketers” as in the case of “racketeers” and not “racketers”. I am a “pensioner”, savouring my retirement, and not a “pensioneer”.
My old school mate on the Lagos Island is an “auctioneer”, not “auctioner”. Most Nigerians write the way they pronounce words.
Wordsworth, please, come to our rescue as we look eagerly poised for the launch of your book, MEDIA GAFFES & ESSAYS, on May 12. I cannot wait to have (or “grab”) a copy, my dear brother and “Great Akokite”.
KOLA DANISA 07068074257