Federal University Gusau

Faculty of Humanity
Department of English and Literature
Course Code: ENG-305
Course Title: English language in Nigeria

Topic: Discuss the Grammatical features of the Nigerian

English.

Oguntade Olayinka Saliu 2010103016

Maria Odufa Ami okhani 1910103005
Lovina Kwandoh Danlami Danlami 1910103017
1810103013

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Introduction

The political phenomenon called Nigeria came into existence in 1914 as a result of the amalgamation of
the Southern and Northern protectorates of the British territory around the River Niger area (Babajide
2001:1). The language situation in Nigeria today is very complex. As stated by Oyeleye 1994:98), it has
been referred to as multilingual, but in purely pragmatic terms the norm has always been bilingual. He
notes further that this is justified in the sense that in any practical situation requiring language
interaction, there are two choices open to us: one of the local indigenous languages and English. The
local languages are used in informal and non-official situations while English is reserved for formal
situations. As rightly observed by Taiwo (2007:232), the increasing adoption of English as a second
language has made a hybrid language to evolve in order to meet the cultural and communicative needs
of the speakers. Nigeria has about 400 indigenous languages out of which three major ones – Yoruba,
Hausa, and Igbo have attained national recognition. According to Babajide (ibid) the choice of these
three languages was predicated on the fact that they are far more developed in linguistics and literature
than the rest and they are more widely used in the country than the others.

Grammatical features of the Nigerian English

Nigerian English is the variety of English that is broadly spoken and written by Nigeria's literary,
intellectual, political and media elite across the regional and ethnic spectra of Nigeria (Kperogi 2007).
The rapid expansion in the vocabulary used by Nigerians to translate their thought into language has
brought about different coinages and expressions to suit the situation and context of usage. The inability
of the English language to perfectly ascertain aspects of Nigerian culture has led to importation derived
from Nigerian English lexis and culture-specific vocabulary items and creativity to reflect the Nigerian
experience. Raji-Oyelade (2012) observes that Nigerians revel in the re-production of new vocabularies
and artificial intelligence which determine how they write, socialize, the way they teach, read, and how
they recreate.

As expressed by Ogunsiji (2001:157), new words and expressions are coined daily to express the
Nigerian lingo-cultural realities. Alo (2006:26) also states that coinages are newly coined words and
expressions in English resulting from the prevailing socio-linguistic factors in Nigeria. Hence, according to
Ogunsiji (ibid), we have expressions such as June 12 (the date of the annulled 1993 presidential
election), ‘step aside’ (an expression used by General Ibrahim Babangida to describe his style of quitting
office), ‘four-one-nine’ (high-class fraud) ‘operation sweep’, ‘operation wedge’, ‘presidential strike force’
(security outfits) etc. As noted by Jowitt (1991), a very large number of words belong to the registers of
food, dress, transport, religion and traditional customs. The following are some examples:

1. Akara (Yoruba) – fried cakes made of flour

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2. Buka (Hausa) – a cheap eating place

3. Ogbono (Igbo) – the name of a soup

4. Agbada (Yoruba) – a large gown was worn by men

5. Danshiki (Hausa) – gown with wide armpits worn by men.

Alo (2004:73) examines the interplay of language variations and context to explain the differences in the
usage and meaning of words. He used the word ‘head’ meaning ‘’ in the Yoruba language to show the
connotations of the word and its variation in different situations in the Yoruba context with the
following examples:

i. His head is not correct.

ii. By my head, I beg you.

He explains that an interpretation of these expressions in Nigerian English would require some cultural
knowledge of the Yoruba about their notion of human destiny, social behaviour, success etc. Hence,
differences in the word ‘head’ in English and ‘ori’ in Yoruba can easily be observed and these relate to
differences in socio-cultural contexts of the Nigerian (Yoruba) and British environments. The point being
made is that the same word may acquire different denotations and connotations and may acquire
different meanings for different language users. Akindele and Adegbite (2005:5) note that language is
connected to culture in three major ways. First, it is an aspect of culture, second, language is an
instrument of thought which helps to concretize thought and also to explore, discover, extend and
record the experiences in a culture, and third, it expresses culture.

There are a large number of lexical items and expressions which have undergone semantic change in
Nigerian usage compared to British Standard English. Some examples are highlighted below.

 Academician – used to refer to an academic person instead of an academic.

 Answer (e.g. He answers Tope) instead of ‘His name is Tope’
 Burn to ashes – meaning completely burn (e.g. The man was burnt to ashes).
 Bush meat – used to refer to the meat of wild animals killed by hunters (The British equivalent
is ‘game’).
 Colonial masters – used to refer to the British in their role of exercising political control in
Nigeria before independence.
 Correct (e.g. your head is not correct). A way of describing someone as a fool.
 Light – meaning electricity (e.g. There is no light).
 Long leg – a personal connection with an influential person to obtain favour.
 Meet me well – a polite greeting inviting a visitor who arrives at one’s house when one is eating
to come and share the meal.
 Next tomorrow – meaning ‘the day after tomorrow’
 Now now – meaning ‘now’ (e.g. I want to see you now now).

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  Quick quick – meaning ‘quickly’ (e.g. come quick quick).
 One one naira – meaning one naira each.

Bamgbose as cited by Banjo (1995:228) draws attention to such locutions as ‘sorry’ and ‘well done’
which are often used as greetings in Nigerian English. The former as an expression of sympathy (e.g. to a
person who sneezes) and the latter as a greeting to somebody at work. Also the expression ‘thanks for
yesterday’ is used to show gratitude to somebody for a favour done the previous day. We also have the
use of ‘not on seat’ (e.g. Mr John is on seat) when Mr John is not on hand when required and ‘I am
coming’ instead of ‘I will be back’.

At the level of lexico–semantics, the influence of culture manifests in Nigerian English such that the
meaning of some words has been broadened. Kinship terms like father, mother, brother, sister, aunt
have assumed different meanings. For example,e words like sister, broth anda and aunt are used as
terms of respect for older people; they are used to replace kinship relationships such as cousin, nephew,
niece etc. ‘Father’ and ‘mother can be used for any elderly person who may nonecessarilyry be one’s
biological parents. Akindele and Adegbite (2005:5) explain the influence of social structure on syntactic
structure with the following examples:

i. Yoruba: Ebi n pa mi (Hunger is killing me).

ii. Igbo: Aguru na agu m (hunger is beating me).

iii. Hausa: Ina jin yunwa (I am feeling hungry).

iv. English: I am hungry.

They observed that while the phenomenon controls the speakers in (i) and (i, the speaker controls the
phenomenon in (iii) and (iv). They state further that while cold ‘kills’ or ‘beats’ Yoruba and Igbo persons,
the Hausa and English persons ‘feel’ or ‘catch’ this.

Alo (2004:80) notes that variation in word usage and meaning can also be seen in the application of
greeting terms like ‘congratulate / congratulations’ and felicitate / felicitation’
www.macrothink.org/ijele 268 to express a variety of social functions. According to him, the terms
‘congratulate’ (verb and ‘congratulations’ (a plural noun are used in English to express the feeling that
one is happy that somebody has achieved something. In the Nigerian context, such forms are not only
used in this sense but may be used to express other socio–cultural functions such as a means of
demonstrating closeness, solidarity, unity, goodwill and the absence of hostility. Thus, the terms can be
used for social events like birthdays, honours and awards, house warming, national independence
anniversaries etc. Akindele and Adegbite (2005:40 observe that at the grammatical level, the system of
the mother tongue intrudes into that of the target language because the two are of different models,
and grammatical interference will depend on the level of the bilingual involved. They explain that at the
primary school level for example we can have an utterance such as ‘My stomach is very sweet’ (meaning
‘I am very happy’ and ‘They are calling you’ instead of ‘He/She is calling you’. In the second example, we

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have the use of the honorific plural pronoun ‘they’, where ‘they’ refers to a single person. This shows
further the influence of culture (Yoruba on the use of ‘they’ to show respect to an elderly person.

In the area of phonology, we have the problem of interference of the mother tongue on the
pronunciation of some English words by Nigerian speakers of English. This occurs because some sounds
in English are not available in some of the Nigerian languages. Hence, some Yoruba speakers of English
often substitute the sound /f/ for /v/ and /s/ for /z/ and thereby pronounce wrongly words like:

van /væn/ as /fæn/; zoo /zu:/ as /su:/ etc.

Also, the articulation of the English phonemes /p/ and /f/ presents problems to Hausa speakers of
English. For example /f/ is substituted for /p/ in the word ‘people’ pronounced as /fi:ful/ instead of
/pi:pul/. The Nigerian media have also introduced certain words and expressions into Nigerian English.
For example - ‘national cake’ means material wealth expected to be shared by citizens of Nigeria, and
‘bottom power’ means a favour that a woman gets through the use of feminine charms to gain social
advantage. Other examples of the use of Nigerian English are found in the following:

 The student had a carryover in GST 101. (The student failed GST 101)
 He entered the motor going to Lagos. (boarded the vehicle)
 He dropped down at Lagos. (alighted)
 Off the light/on the light. (switch on/off the light)
 There is go slow. (traffic jam)
 I want to attend the congress meeting. (congress or meeting)
 The car is overspeeding. (speeding)
 She delivered a baby. (delivered of a baby)
 Presently, I am a student. (at present)
 He was attacked by men of the underworld. (armed robbers/criminals)
 The man bought a Tokunbo car. (used car)
 John is a been to. (one who has travelled abroad, and returned)
 The old man has joined his ancestors. (died)
 Jane has put to bed. (given birth to a child)
 She has four issues. (children)

Ade bagged a degree in Engineering. (earned/received) Also, Nigerian English features expressions such
as recent (meaning recently), instalmentally (in instalments), cow meat (beef), goat meat (mutton),
globe (bulb), house girl (house help), letter-headed paper (letterhead) etc. The examples are numerous
and cannot be exhausted in this paper.

Conclusion

The fact remains that the various cultural and socio-linguistic thoughts of Nigerians cannot be
adequately expressed in the standard form of the English language. Hence, the different lexical
derivations, innovations and improvisations to suit the situation and context of usage of the language.
Researchers are still inconclusive about the characterisation of Nigerian English, but it is obvious that

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there is Nigerian English with its peculiarities which are conditioned by the Nigerian socio-cultural
environment (Ogunsiji 2004:87). As noted by Kperogi (2007), Nigerian English is not bad or substandard
English; it is a legitimate national variety that has evolved out of our experiences as a post-colonial,
polyglot nation. English has become an important language which cannot be easily discarded in Nigeria.
It has become a Nigerian language which has provided another means for Nigerians to express their
culture. Its use in the educational sector will remain as long as there is no alternative to replace it.

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