Top hilarious differences between American and Nigerian English (II)
6. “I’ll knock you up.” In British English, from which Nigerian English derived, this phrase literally means you’ll knock on somebody’s door. In American English, however, it’s a colloquial expression for “I will get you pregnant”!So don’t say you’ll “knock up” an American woman who isn’t your wife. You could end up in jail for […]
6. “I’ll knock you up.” In British English, from which Nigerian English derived, this phrase literally means you’ll knock on somebody’s door. In American English, however, it’s a colloquial expression for “I will get you pregnant”!So don’t say you’ll “knock up” an American woman who isn’t your wife. You could end up in jail for attempted rape!
7. “Girlfriend.” In Nigerian English, “girlfriend” only means a woman with whom a man is romantically involved. But it means more than that in American English. It can alsomean a woman’s female friend. The first time an American woman told me she would be meeting with her “girlfriend,” I thought she was an in-your-face lesbian. So I told her she didn’t need to be that direct. She then explained that she merely meant her female friend. I wonder why American men don’t also call their male friends their “boyfriends.”
American women also use “girlfriend” as a form of address when talking to women who are not necessarily their friends, as in: “look here, girlfriend!” I must mention that contemporaryBritish English also uses “girlfriend” to mean a woman’s female friend. My daughter still says “Ewwww!” when her friends call her “girlfriend.”
8. “Offer a course.” In Nigerian English, students, not schools, “offer” courses. A Nigerian reader of my columns recently wrote to tell me that an American university admissions officer was bewildered when she told him she wanted to “offer a course in petroleum engineering”! I told her in America—and in Britain—students don’t offer courses; only schools do. To offer is to make available. Student can’t make courses available in schools; they can only take or enroll in courses that schools offer. A slightly related but by no means humorous usage peculiarity is the tendency for Nigerian English speakers to “write” tests or exams where Americans “take” them, or for Nigerians to “run a course” where other English speakers are “enrolled in a course.” (I should point out that students in India, Pakistan, Ghana and other Commonwealth countries also “write,” not “take,” tests and exams, indicating that this usage has British origins or influence).
9. “You’re welcome” vs. “welcome.” In American English—and increasingly in British English—the expression “you’re welcome” functions only as a polite response to the expression of gratitude through the phrase “thank you.” In other words, Americans only say “you’re welcome” when someone says “thank you” to them. But Nigerian English speakers say “you’re welcome” where a simple “welcome” would do. An American friend of mine once told me how bemused she was when everyone in Lagos said “you’re welcome, madam” to her upon being introduced to them. “I didn’t say ‘thank you’ to anybody. Why were they saying ‘you’re welcome’ to me?” she recalled.
After the “you’re-welcome-madam” pleasantries became unbearably omnipresent, she quickly figured out that it’s the Nigerian English way of saying “welcome ma’am.” It should be noted that British grammarians initially sneered at the expression “you’re welcome” in response to “thank you.” They preferred the cold, curt, detached “don’t mention it” or “think nothing of it.” Now they have fully embraced “you’re welcome.”
10. “We are managing”/ “we are surviving.” As I wrote in a previous article, in Nigerian English “managing” means struggling to make ends meet, i.e., not doing well. Example: “My brother, the country is hard. I am just managing.” In American and British English, however, to be managing is to be successful. So where Nigerians would say they are “managing,” Americans and Britons would say they are “just surviving.” In Nigerian English, however, to be surviving is to overcome, to be in control.
An American researcher called Rachel Reynolds who wrote about the Nigerian immigrant experience in America for an academic journal was struck by this intriguing dissimilarity in our usages of these expressions. She interviewed Nigerian immigrants in the Chicago area in the course of her research. Even though her interviewees didn’t seem content with their material lot in America, they said they were “not surviving”; that they were “managing.” She was initially dumb-stricken. When she finally figured out that Nigerians use “managing” to mean “surviving” and “surviving” to mean “managing,” she titled her article: “‘We Are Not Surviving, We Are Managing’: the Constitution of a Nigerian Diaspora along the Contours of the Global Economy.”
11. “I will flash you.” This is my favorite Nigerianism. Every Nigerian knows “flashing” to mean a split-second call to another’s person’s phone with no intention to have a phone conversation. It’s usually a subtle way to say, “I have no units in my phone; call me back” If the “flashing” takes place in the presence of the recipient, it usually implies: “that’s my number; store it.”
Although “flash” has a multiplicity of meanings in American English (see my previous article titled “In Defense of ‘Flashing’ and Other Nigerianisms”) the first thing that comes to the minds of American—and British—speakers of English when you say you will “flash” them is that you will briefly expose your naked body or genitals to them in public! That was precisely what happened to a white American Baptist missionary friend of mine by the name of John Dunaway who was born in my hometown in the early 1950s and who, sadly, died last year. (I wrote about him in my Weekly Trust column on May 1, 2010). When he visited Nigeria in 2008, a long-lost friend of his asked for his Nigerian phone number. After getting the number, the friend said, “hold on—let me flash you.” My friend said he ran for cover as fast as he could. “I didn’t want to see the naked body of an old man!” he recalled. He later learned from reading one of my articles in 2007 that in Nigeria “flashing” doesn’t mean indecent exposure. In fact, that sense of the word is completely non-existent in Nigerian English.
12: “I will ring you up.” This expression became a part of Nigerians’ demotic speech since the late 1990s when mobile phones became the single most important instruments of communication. When people don’t “flash you,” they “ring you up.” Of course, the expression came into Nigerian English by way of British English where it means to make a telephone call to somebody. However, in American English, “ring up” has a completely different meaning. It means to check out purchased items on a cash register. When you buy things in American stores, the cashiers “ring up” what you buy and tell you how much you need to pay for your purchases. In my first few months here, I recall telling an American friend of mine that I would” ring him up.” His response threw me off balance. “When did you become a cashier? In what shop do you work?” he asked.
13. “I passed out.” Nigerians “pass out” from secondary schools. The British only“pass out” from military colleges, not secondary schools. In both senses of the term, nonetheless, “pass out” is used to mean “graduate” from some kind of school. But when Americans “pass out” they always need to be resuscitated by a doctor. As you’ve probably guessed (if you didn’t already know, that is), the only meaning of “pass out” known to American English is to “faint.” This sense of the term is completely absent in Nigerian English, but it’s present in British English.