Pidgin is language of laughter ? Victor Ehikhamenor

BY MORENIKE TAIRE

It is virtually impossible to predict what Victor Ehikhamenor will do next. From getting repatriated home (to Nigeria) on the team of Next, the newspaper that was to fulfil the integrity yearnings of the idealist Nigerian, as a Creative Director, he morphs to being a big player in new Media publishing with Zazugist.com. Best known as a roving visual artist albeit based in the United States, he is to the arts a natural, as comfortable with the pen as with the scapula. Chatting with Sunday Vanguard over lunch, he tells the reasons why he thinks pidgin English has come of age.

SOME parties have attributed the country?s socio economic woes on the inability of all to converse in the English language properly. What is your take on that?

Everybody is a purist in their profession. When it comes to language I would not say Nigeria?s problem begins with the language because commerce is going on. People trade. Yes, you can say because everybody does not speak the same language there is a problem somewhere but we can not lump the entire thing on it.

Speaking same language
There are countries that speak the same language and have similar problems.

Like which one?
UK has one language, but I?m trying to see an African country that does not have segmented language?
I was going to come to that. In Sierra Leone for instance everybody speaks the creole no matter where they are from?
Pidgin has one of the commonest structures of a developing language.

Every language goes through phases. It has been there for quite a while but it came when the missionaries came so you cannot really say it?s old or mature enough to say it has the nuances and structure it should have but you must not undermine the fact that you have American English, Scottish English, English English, so why can?t we begin to treat it like a proper language. People have been writing novels with pidgin.

Recently, even younger writers such as Uzodinma. These are published by high end, mainstream publishers. Not to go too far, let?s look at Sozaboy, written in rotten English as Ken Saro Wiwa put it. I feel it is one of those languages you can easily speak outside the country. If you and I were to be having a conversation in a London cafe and we don?t want anybody to hear what we are discussing, we?ll switch to pidgin.

But in the case of pidgin there are so many kinds of it. If you are from Warri you might not even understand what someone from Benue is trying to say and then in the North they hardly even speak any pidgin at all.

Not that much but I guess that is where the challenge is because you can?t technically say it?s a nationwide language but it?s the closest thing we have to what you can say is a little bit indigenous and cuts right across. The market woman in Umuahia, you have to speak pidgin to her iF you don?t speak Igbo. If you go to Kano, the spare parts guy selling to the mallam, they are not speaking Hausa.

Victor Ehikhamenor

Pidgin runs along the coastal line in West Africa because they are the first to interact with the explorers and missionaries before it passes on to the hinterland so when you see Warri, Sapele, Sierra Leone, Liberia speaking the language it?s because that is where it came from. Everyone keeps saying pidgin can?t do this and that then WAZOBIA came and everybody started listening to them. It?s almost like saying now that everybody has to understand Wole Soyinka?s type of English.

Proper English
Even the proper English- putting proper in quote- there are people that speak it differently. The English that Patrick Obayamen- former house of rep lawmaker from Edo State- speaks, is different. If you don?t put a dictionary near you, you?ll not understand it. Every language has its variance. I have seen different ways people speak it and write it, which is very interesting. It has a standard, a structure.

It?s not written down?
Among my writers, when they send me articles I have to edit them. What am I editing? Something that has no structure cannot be edited. The white man has not put it in a big book and written about it and all that, we begin to say pidgin is not structured. You just have to learn it, master it the way you master the English language, write about it too. Not all the people who can write it can speak it and not all the people who can speak it can write it.

But there has to be some sort of structure?
When it comes to the written form it has to be able to communicate and anything that needs to be able to communicate must have a structure.

Whose job would that be. Do we just allow it to develop naturally or should we have departments for pidgin studies in universities?

When I was in Ekpoma where I read English as my first degree, we had pidgin English as a second language. Professor Longe taught us that, but until we start doing certain things? then there was no newspaper that used pidgin English as a form of writing. People tend to think it?s only spoken and should not be written.

I think we are the ones that will start it from somewhere. What I?ve started is a forum where one can take a deeper look at this language, with which you speak to everybody, from your maiguard to the president. ?ol? boy, that your hat get as e be o?. It should have a home and that is what I?ve done. People can come and have a conversation that is peculiar to us.

It?s all well and good, though it?s easier on one?s imagination to think of pidgin as a language that is used for comedy or even commerce, music and so on. It cuts across. In terms of news, there is actually a lot of meaning lost when news is translated into pidgin, but that is one side of it. The other side, the way people perceive pidgin in contemporary times in terms of the way people look at WAZOBIA and so on. They don?t perceive them as serious. When they want serious news they go for English.

Again it depends on how you form it. I listen to WAZOBIA a lot. When I first came into the country it was my channel of choice. It was exciting. Why do people say French is a sexy language? The language of love? And they have been able use that. Why can?t we say pidgin is a language of happiness. Does it mean a lot of people don?t hate in France. Does it mean their news is all about love?

When you listen to news on WAZOBIA, the sombre ones, the newscaster is able to tone it down. What we are doing with ZazuNews.com, we look for the news that pertain to the people who are speaking this language. I am not really targeting the upper class who if they hear their child speaking pidgin they will probably slap the child.

Can these people read?
There has been a Yoruba newspaper forever and we have people reading it. We also have to find a way to deliver it to these people. People that you don?t think can read, how many times have you sent them recharge card number or text: abeg check carburettor. How much you go pay for my UBA account.

They read these things. Nigerian literacy rate is about 30 per cent. We are looking at the sms and mobile platforms. We are going to look at applications eventually that will be deployed to android so that people can have quick access. News is just about 2% of what I intend to do with ZazuNews. I want it to be a community, almost like a wedding party.

They are eating food one side, they are drinking one side, the other side is appreciating somebody?s gele, the other side is gossiping: you no see am, e don marry second wife again. That is where you will hear about contract. There are those who say: ?make I go dat wedding sef, make I know as I go take arrange my own?.

You go there to learn as well. Which is why we have a dictionary. It?s not exhaustive but it?s a growing document. We are going to open it up like Wikipedia so that people can add new words. Language is almost a living thing. It?s not static. We want a reference point.

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Source: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2012/02/pidgin-is-language-of-laughter-victor-ehikhamenor/

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