A History of English Language

The nineteenth century and after 305
African languages carries over into Nigerian English, where beat and bit have the same
tense vowel, distinguished if at all by length: [bi:t] beat and [bi·t] bit. The absence of the
tense-lax distinction, which J.C.Wells calls “one of the most characteristic features of
African English,” produces a large number of homophones in Nigerian English and in
other African varieties: leave—live, seen—sin, and Don’t sleep on the floor—Don’t slip
on the floor, all with the tense vowel. 24 The rarity of the central vowel [ə] and of syllabic
consonants accounts for the full value of vowels in the final syllables of words—for
example, smoother [smuθa], [smuda] (where Nigerian English, like Southern British
English, is nonrhotic), bottle lesson The rarity of reduced vowels
and weak forms is typical of syllable-timed languages such as those of West Africa, in
contrast with the stress-timed rhythms of English—thus, the difference between the
Received Pronunciation and the West African pronunciation of the following sentence:
RP
[aIv sín hIm təde]
West African [aI hav si·n him tude] 25
Notice also the lack of a diphthong in today, which has the simple vowel [e] instead, a
feature that is common in African English.
The usual processes that allow for expansion of vocabulary and for new meanings of
words operate with especially interesting effect in countries where English is mainly a
second language. Typical lexical items in Nigerian English, which often reflects aspects
of the cultural background by way of borrowings or calques from the local languages,
include head-tie (woman’s headdress), juju music (a type of dance music), bush meat
(game), tie-dye cloth (cloth into which patterns are made by tying up parts of it before
dyeing), akara balls (bean cakes), white-cap chiefs (senior chiefs in Lagos whose rank is
shown by the white caps they wear). Extensions and narrowing of meanings of words
occur in corner (a bend in a road), globe (a lightbulb), wet (to water [flowers]),
environment (neighborhood), gallops (potholes), and bluff (to give an air of
importance). 26 It is sometimes difftcult to distinguish general West African usage from a
national variety—Nigerian English, Ghanaian English, Cameroon English; the following
words and expressions occur in West African English, some with quite widespread
currency: balance (change, “You did not give me any balance”), bata (sandals, shoes),
move
24
J.C.Wells, Accents of English (3 vols., Cambridge, UK, 1982), III, 637.
25
This example and several other examples in this section are from Loreto Todd, “The English
Language in West Africa,” in Bailey and Görlach, pp. 281–305.
26
See Ayọ Language and Society in Nigeria (Stanford, 1973), pp. 106–7.