Hypercorrection in Nigerian English (II)

But he is perfectly off the mark. Strike action, which is often simply shortened to “strike” in everyday English, is the outright cessation of work to register employee grievances. Industrial action, on the other hand, has two related meanings. First, it is used as an umbrella term for all kinds of industrial protests, including strike […]

But he is perfectly off the mark. Strike action, which is often simply shortened to “strike” in everyday English, is the outright cessation of work to register employee grievances. Industrial action, on the other hand, has two related meanings. First, it is used as an umbrella term for all kinds of industrial protests, including strike actions. The second and more specific meaning is that it is a form of industrial protest where workers merely deliberately slow down their productivity without an outright cessation of work.

 

In the United States, “industrial action” is called “job action.” Industrial action, moreover, is not necessarily always job-related; it may sometimes be politically-motivated. Other terms for the second sense of industrial action are “go-slow” in the UK (which incidentally means traffic jam in Nigerian English!) and “slow-down” in the United States.

The last example I want to give is from a reader who questioned my use of “Nigerian” without preceding it with an indefinite article. The reader who “boasts a library of 5000 books, mostly on English” thought I was wrong to write that “I’m Nigerian.”

His argument is summarized thus: “When a linking verb like ‘be’ links a subject with a complement, the latter takes an article if it is a common noun. E.g. ‘I am a teacher,’ not ‘I am teacher.’ But when it’s a proper noun, there is no need for an article. E.g. ‘I am Ibrahim.’ ‘Nigerian’ is both an adjective and a noun, but in your own case, ‘Nigerian’ is used as a noun which is obviously a common noun that requires the article ‘a’.”

This reader’s analysis is spotlessly correct in many respects but wrong in others. As is often the case with the English language, there are exceptions to the rule he brilliantly articulated. And as I pointed out here sometime ago, it is these tricky exceptions that often differentiate native and/or proficient speakers of the English language from non-native and/or non-proficient speakers of the language.

Let me cite one exception to the rule that the reader mentioned. You can say, for instance, “I’m a Mutallab” and be correct. “Mutallab” here, of course, would mean something beyond the name of a person; it may mean a religious, ethnic, or familial identity. In the West, for instance, when someone is called “a Muhammad” it’s often a handy way to say he’s a Muslim.

Another example: When Hillary Clinton said, in February 2008, “It did take A CLINTON to clean after the first Bush and I think it might take another one to clean up after the second Bush” [emphasis mine] during the last Democratic presidential primaries, she clearly violated the rules my reader adverted to (i.e., she preceded the mention of a proper noun, “Clinton,” with an indefinite article, “a”) but she was perfectly correct nonetheless.

Here is another exception: An indefinite article can precede the name of a person as a way to indicate uncertainty over the identity of that person. I can say, for example, “A Daniel came here to see you.” “A Daniel” here means someone I don’t know who identified himself as Daniel.

There is also an exception to the rule that justifies my use of the phrase “I’m Nigerian.” In instances where demonyms (that is, names for the residents or citizens of a locality or a country, also called gentilics) also function as adjectives for countries (e.g. Nigerian, American, German, Filipino, etc.) indefinite articles can be dispensed with.

But I think it’s problematic to call a demonym a common noun. Informally, demonyms like “Nigerian,” “American,” “Ghanaian,” etc. are called “proper adjectives” because they are derived from proper nouns. (Professional linguists don’t use that term, mind you).

So it’s customary to hear Americans either say “I’m an American” or “I’m American,” “he is a German” or “he is German,” etc. When Americans want to confirm my nationality here they usually ask, “Are you Nigerian?” A few ask, “Are you a Nigerian?” But, often, the omission of the article shows informality, friendliness, fluidity, chattiness, etc. while its inclusion can sometimes suggest stiltedness and even stuffiness, depending on the context.

There is, in fact, a popular song in the U.S. titled “I’m American” by an Atlanta-based heavy metal music band called “Stuck Mojo.”

But it is also entirely possible that the omission of articles before demonyms is a consequence of the absorption of “headlinese” (that is, English usage peculiar to newspaper headlines) into conventional English usage. One of the conventions of headlinese is to dispense with articles and conjunctions wherever possible. That is why, for instance, the idiom “in the soup” is often rendered in newspaper headlines as “in soup.” In Nigeria, “he is in soup” is now the standard way to say “he is in the soup.”

Well, no one is immune to errors when it comes to the English language. As Steve Rivkin and Fraser Sutherland aptly observed in their book, The Making of a Name: The Inside Story of the Brands We Buy, “English is a slippery language, strewn with homonymic banana peels, slapstick mondegreens, and tongue- twisters. Even fluent speakers of English constantly make mistakes.”