"Can someone remove himself and wipe the black board?" ..long pause.. "if you don't want to rub the blackboard we are not continuing with our maths lesson; after all, mtu akianguka hataanguka kwa compound yangu". Said my no-nonsense mathematics teacher back in secondary school. His brand of English was crudely unique. Typical of people who think in Swahili or their mother tongue and express themselves in English. Some people call it direct translation. In this regard, PLO Lumumba is guilty; how else do you explain his complex but hilarious sayings ad metaphors? Speaking of PLO, I always thought his stuff was rehearsed until one Saturday morning he was caught at a traffic red light by The Standard newspapers' staffers at they launched their new-look Saturday newspaper - just by coincidence. He waxed lyrical about the design, headline, formatting etc of the publication that he'd have easily beat some astrophysicist's analogy of celestial realms at TED Talks.
What was I saying? Yes, or as one teacher Wanjiku would say: Ndioooo.. Kenyans have some peculiar English whose origin in my view, is clearly precolonial. It doesn't take a linguistic expert or one Philip Ochieng to conclude that ours is a mish mash of indigenous dialects and the queen's language. The end justifies the means, they say. The main objective is communication and as far as I know, communication happens; specially if the audience is Kenyan.. haidhuru! My English is no better; I have my teachers', interactions and fate to blame. I deliver my English with such accentual eloquence, not entirely devoid of direct translated Kiembu sayings; me thinks one Kiraitu Murungi would be jealous. True, I do it with impunity. It intrigues me.. Your (Kenyans) English fascinates me even more, so much that it's finally earned itself a post in my "serious" blog. Ahem!.. let's sample some interesting ones. Shall we?
We often conclude our emails, chats, texts and conversations with "be blessed" which is direct translation for "barikiwa". Note: unlike Philip Ochieng, I am not giving you alternatives. Suffice it to say that I have no better or seemingly more correct alternatives.. go figure. Some examples might be proper English, but I will still quote them because they just don't sound correct, at least not to my ears. Wacha nikuambie - Let me tell you. Sounds familiar? What of this one: Sasa ona - now see!! Unajua wakati mwingine - You know at times.... Si uninunulie ka soda hivi - buy me a soda like this. Wewe ni wetu - you are ours. Wewe ni mwingine - You are another one. My memory fails me. I get to hear countless of them in a day. I should probably carry along some diary and record them. These direct translations always brighten my day; over-use of some words and phrases vex me though. I loathe them.
Here are some cliche phrases and expressions that should be banned by the president and the commander in chief of the republic of Kenya: Waititu's favourite makes it top on my list: "First and foremost..". People with limited ideas will articulate them this way: "Firstly... secondly.. thirdly.. fourthly". Perhaps to emphasize the few points that must have taken a week to come up with. Are you doubting me? Ever heard such a person say "Tenthly" or "Fifteenthly"? Never, in fact they rarely reach "sixthly". This single phrase used in almost every sentence has successfully managed to trivialize most gravest and critical of situations: "By the way.." Example: "By the way Mr so and so is dead". Shebesh is very guilty of this phrase. Remember? "By the way we are not blondes". "Last but not the least.." is used by people whose sole intention is to piss me off; unfortunately, they succeed. Grrr!! I dare you to start your every other sentence with "Actually.." and we'll all be wondering whether you are related in any way to Jelimo the athlete. "Basically.." must be the most abused word in East and Central Africa. In fact, also south of the Sahara and north of the Limpompo. Did I just start my previous sentence with "Infact.."? See now.. ona sasa..
If you think you have seen it all, wait till you encounter folk who have recently learnt a new word or phrase and are more than eager to apply it in writing or speech. They are lethal human beings and try as you can, you wont make them drop it. Back in college, we had a very young lecturer taking us through a unit called Distributed Systems. Here's a sample lecture: "Today we are going to learn about the intricacies and heterogeneity of distributed systems. Examples of these are clustered server systems whose intricacies and heterogeneity is difficult to decipher. The intricacies and heterogeneity of these systems is characterized by more intricacies and heterogeneity of blah blah.... " *SIGH!!* Well, y'all can guess what I came out with in that unit...
Nuff Said!!
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