All about English

Studying or teaching locally is hard, so is studying or teaching abroad but you have to choose your 'hard.' Hard work pays and it's crowned by excellence. On this day, I got the Academic Excellence Award. I am grateful to my creator and many thanks to everyone who has been a part of this eventful journey. If you need advice or any related information on this, like and comment on the post and I'll reach out to you.

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Short Vowel /e/ fully discussed with example of commonly mispronounced words containing or not containing the sound. A must watch for every second language speaker of English.

Vowel /e/ A detailed description of the short sound /e/ with examples as well as commonly mispronounced words containing and NOT containing the sound.

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Lindengates Academy, PHC in conjunction with All about English is organising a FREE English Language revision class for WAEC candidates. Join us live on Zoom. Session will include review, as well as questions and answers.

Date: Tuesday 25th August 2020
Time: 5.30 to 6.30 pm.

Zoom ID: 85965017962

It promises to be fun. Come and let's tackle all your questions.

Kindly share with those who may benefit from this.

For inquiries, call 08091368888 or WhatsApp 08022341150.

The panacea to the problems encountered by students and teachers in Oral English is here. 'Emeritus Oral English" is the solution. Recommended for all lovers of English Language. Order your copy now. 08022341150

IS 'ACCENT REDUCTION' BAD?

I have, for the past three years, written extensively about ACCENT, and I realised that many people have not fully cottoned on to the concept.

Whenever I talk about ACCENT REDUCTION OR NEUTRALISATION, I am often met with stiff resistance from many people. They ask this question: Why do I have to change my accent? I often reply, ‘do you think you actually speak with your natural regional accent?

Well, they, honestly, do not understand this.

If you are here and you are reading this, please it is important that you share this post to help other people make informed decisions of what it is they want to achieve during the course of learning the English language.

Let’s take a look at accent as a concept in sociolinguistics. An accent is a manner of pronunciation peculiar to a particular individual, location, or nation. In other words, when we talk about accent, we look at the style of pronunciation: we look at the differences at the segmental level (individual sounds) and suprasegmental level (the entirety of the prosodic features of the language: simply put, the rhythms of the language).

If you have got to this level, then I would like you to do a simple test to know whether you have the full-blown accent of a true Nigerian or whether there has been an ACCENT REDUCTION in your case.

At the Segmental Level:

A true Nigerian will pronounce ‘th’ sounds as either ‘d’ or ‘t’: As in ‘tins’ for ‘things’and ‘de’ for ‘they’.

Depending on the region he is from in Nigeria, he might pronounce ‘Junction’ as ‘yunction’, ‘child’ as ‘shaid’, ‘Jesus’ as Zhizos, ‘rice’ as ‘lice’, ‘late’ as ‘ret’, ‘hate’ as ‘et’, ‘all’ as ‘hall’, and so on.

Remember that the majority of Nigerian languages do not have diphthongs, so if you have mastered some of the diphthongs, you cannot say you have the typical Nigerian accent. A typical Nigerian person pronounces ‘bake’/beɪk/ as /bek/, ‘beer’/bɪə/ as /bya/, ‘fear’/fɪə/ as /fja/, etc.

Also, since Nigerians do not distinguish between lengths in their respective ethnic languages, that should also be noticed in our accent. One should not be able to tell the difference between your pronunciation of these pairs, ‘fit and feet’, ‘pull and pool’, ‘cot and court’. Many of us cannot correctly differentiate between the two. A Nigerian says, 'he is a great cook, but a native speaker hears, 'he is a great kook'. A kook is a stupid or mad person. (I sincerely hope this makes sense)

At the Suprasegmental Level:

When we talk about suprasegments, we talk about rhythms that help the musicality of a language. If you pay attention, you realise that you don’t need to speak Yoruba, Hausa, Indian, Italian, French, and Dutch to know when a native speaks them.

Through exposure to some of these languages, we have internalised the linguistic information of these languages and are able to distinguish them from one another.

In English, there are three aspects of rhythm: Word stress, sentence stress and intonation. Knowing word stress will help you communicate better, knowing sentence stress will help you emphasise certain points in your speech, and knowing intonation will you help add the right emotion to your speech.

As Nigerian, if you stress some of these words properly, then you have a ‘reduced accent’: Realise, communicate, cement, estate, fabricate, compensate, and response (noun).

(How many did you stress well? That should tell you the current state of your spoken English)

You see, once someone has passed the formative years, no matter how proficient the person has become in the use of a new language, the remnants of his or her first language will still be there; they will be there, most especially, in the rhythm of his or her speech. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a classic case in point.

Do native English speakers still go through accent reduction?

Definitely they all do, especially when they want to communicate with other people from different regions(both native and non-native English speakers).

Just like An Igbo man from Awka finds it difficult to understand an Igbo man from Nsukka, so does an African-American who speaks ebonics exclusively finds it difficult to understand certain accents, like the Texas accent. I just remembered a Madea’s film where Madea was arguing with the father of her friend’s daughter’s husband (Phew! Such a hilarious description). You realise that the little fracas ensued because the man could not understand Madea, and Madea could not understand the man. I, on the other hand, understood Madea due to my early exposure to ‘Black American films’, but I simply struggled to understand that Texas accent.

What about the UK?

Have you ever heard Cockney accent?

I watched a series on Youtube, ‘Mind Your Language’, about foreigners from different parts of the world learning English at a language school in the UK. The students understand their teacher because he speaks with the Received Pronunciation, but they cannot understand the cleaner who speaks using a Cockney accent. Yet, the cleaner speaks with a British accent. They always wondered whether that was English

Should we even talk about Australians?

He says, ‘it’s your fate to be great’, but you hear, ‘it’s your fight to be grite’. ‘My mate’ sounds like ‘Mo mite’.

Funny, right?

You see, even English speakers try to reduce their accents in order to communicate effectively.

Have you ever searched for something on YouTube and immediately you finally find that, you feel so terrible after having been tormented by an Indian accent you could not even understand. The Indian accent we understand and appreciate are the accents that have undergone major accent reduction.

So, what if one day, you got a job in a company where your colleagues were an Indian, a Kenyan, an Arabian, a Japanese, and an Italian, all of whom never bothered to reduce their accents, would you be able to communicate effectively with them? You definitely know the answer.

Finally, I did a little survey on my Whatsapp. I recorded an Igbo passage using English rhythm. I Introduced the idea of stress into the Igbo language; then, I shared it to 21 Igbo speakers. Their reactions ranged from hilarious to irritating. They complained it took them time to decipher what was being said. Two persons said they would appreciate the English speaker for making an effort to speak the Igbo language.

I sent another audio; this time around, I reduced the English rhythm and introduced the Igbo rhythm. One hundred per cent of them agreed that it was so much better, and with that new accent, he could easily communicate with any native Igbo speaker. When you flip this situation, the sentiments are all still the same. ( If you want to hear and compare the audios, contact me so I can send the audio to you to make your judgements too)

You may not have lost your entire accent, but believe me, our accents are getting neutralised as the years go by. If I do a simple accent comparison of 100 persons on Facebook, I will discover that some people have more ‘reduced accents’ than others.

One of the reasons why people refuse to see any need to change their accents, according to one of my students, is this:

‘The problem is because it is a language of the Western world; and with people being averse and woke about white supremacy and other social issues arising in recent times, they tend to abhor anything “excessively white”’.

Honestly, I could not agree more. I will always say: ‘Whatever is worth doing is worth doing well’.

Reducing an accent is different from changing an accent. I know that some of you think I sound one hundred per cent British, but the truth is I don't. I speak with a near-native accent, and that is all I need to communicate effectively. My English, sometimes, still has some subtle Igbo undertones. You might not hear it, but someone who owns the language or someone who has studied suprasegments really well will hear it.

Nobody should discourage you from polishing your English. Celebrities will go about making you feel complacent about changing some of these things that can potentially set you back in your endeavour. Imagine if you wanted to be an actor or actress but you had a thick Anambra accent, you think the directors would give you any role if you didn’t neutralize your accent to a certain extent where it would become generic or what we could ,at least, call the ‘conventional Nigerian accent’?

Wanting to reduce your accent while speaking English is not a sign of inferiority complex; rather, it is a sign that you want to communicate effectively and be heard by people all around the world, not just native English speakers but other foreign speakers of the English language.

At the end, I will candidly tell you that it is not bad for you to want to ‘reduce your accent’.

- Written by King Ifey
Language Specialist

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WHAT ARE CRITICS SAYING ABOUT EMERITUS ORAL ENGLISH ?

Mr. Olorunfemi has shown by his efforts in writing this book (Emeritus Oral English) that there is hope, as young Nigerians can rise above the cult of mediocrity and appropriately pursue excellence by writing really well. I commend him the more for his lucid, straightforward and enjoyable style, which clearly enhances the readability of this work. The author's approach to teaching the speech sounds is remarkably instructive. I cannot but recommend it unreservedly to readers interested in improving their speaking and communication skills in English. My heartfelt anticipation is that all categories of potential readers will largely derive the same kind of joy, excitement and fulfilment which I got on first reading the manuscript.
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The signifying skill of the author in eliminating the cognitive tension usually experienced by learners is uncommon. _Emeritus Oral English_ , no doubt, will send cold shivers down the spine of other books in this category.
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Finally, the panacea to the phobia of Oral English in internal and external examinations has been found. _Emeritus Oral English_ aptly simplifies all the knots a student preparing for WASSCE, NECO and even UTME Test of Orals will encounter in the examination hall with copious exemplifications. With the book, WASSCE English Language became a walk over for all my students.
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