What happened to English?

By Eric Otyek

Nah; that aint English
The most widely spoken language, English, is actually a West German language spoken originally in the region that is now known as England. Just thought you should all know that in case you didn’t.

So, there you have it; English. It’s been propagated so widely all over the globe thanks to the vast influence of the British, especially in colonial times. And presently, because of the influence of another super power, the US.

We all know the long arm of British imperialism caught up with our great grannies and among other things, they were forced to learn this new tongue of the white man; the queen’s language became our own, our official language and you know the rest of the story.

It’s quite evident that the queen’s language has evolved, mutated, intermarried and been subjected to a series of unprecedented modifications over the years; whether constructive or destructive, is for you to decide. So, the language is English, and that’s about all the English there is to it these days.

I mean, think about it, how much English is there, if any, in the so-called English we speak except for the fact that the words are of English origin? Most of our accents are nowhere near English (or British; which is the same thing) and obviously our articulation and pronunciations disqualify our dialect from being English.

Here’s an example; Ask an Englishman and a Frenchman to pronounce the word ‘president’, then, get a Ugandan-bred chap as well. The three will give you different pronunciations, most notably, the Ugandan’s prezdent or pulezidenti. That alone should be all the evidence you need to see that what we speak is not English. So, is our dialect then Ugandan? By birth, yes it is.

By name, I’m still pushing for it, though the many lovers of mediocrity and those who still have allegiance to the queen call it ‘Ugandan English,’ so let’s flow with them.

Uglish
Ugandan English needs no introduction. We have heard it, spoken it; heck we are its engineers. And of course you most probably know just as well as I do, what makes it so different from the original and other breeds of English. But let’s look at them as the outstanding factors of our dear Ugandan English.

First of all, it comes in varieties, owing to the fact that most Ugandan’s speak English as a second language. Something the language experts call ‘L1’ or ‘first language influence,’ affects our pronunciation, intonation and the other aspects of our speech, basing, of course, on our first languages. 

So we have the arro (hello) boys from the west, guys who say aus (house) from the north, chics who say ploblem (problem) and kyoka Eliki (Eric) from the central region. Name it, they have all got their own little spice and flavour  to the  language, which is all so beautiful. Just imagine a Munyanks and Muganda meeting;

Munyanks: Man, you are Rrost.

Muganda: Ah no, I’m allaundi.

For convenience’s sake it should be the Ganda dude saying the Munyanks is lost and Munyanks saying he’s around since then their respective tongues would agree. 

But this thing really gets people in dogs. I’ve heard of a Soggie who doused a Muganda with water after the latter said “You-a-maadi” (you are mad) since it sounded like the Soggie phrase that means ‘pour the water.’

Grammar
Clearly, the accent zibz are localised. So let’s move to some general traits like grammar, which seem consistent with the majority. Ugandan English has its own versions of some tenses. Words like ‘bet’ (Ugandan past tense for beat) e.g. “Man, the Hungarian bet Golola,” “postponded” (past tense for postpone). Then we have sentences like, “I was wanting…”

Direct translation
Still on grammar, our English is characterised by lots of poor,  no, wrong, totally wrong interrogative phrases, still courtesy of L1. “Alice is there?” “I come and get it?” “You’re the one?” Now, that’s also as a result of this little thing called direct translation a.k.a DT, which is the next aspect I’m hinting on. Some of us are guilty of endless counts of linguistic rape (I’ve invented that one).

You force your mother tongue on poor English. Have you no shame? Some colloquial expressions from our vernacular somehow find their way into our English. Statements like ‘I cooked my head’ ‘You started me’ at times escaping the mouths of even the so-called urbanised, styled up lot.

We aren’t done yet, no, sir. Our mock dissection of Ugandan English exposes a really irritating feature,  the disgusting, unnecessary use of certain words. “Well, I was going to do it, but, well, you see, well it isn’t easy because, well…” Then there’s, “Basically, the thing is we basically have two brands which are basically…” not forgetting “Actually yo right, I was actually coming to that. Actually, you may add that…”

Now it wouldn’t be fair for you to forget the most unique thing under Uglish called Cambridge English. Brought from the queen’s very own land by a one Seya; entirely distorted and almost gibberish, but of high caliber, what with only one man in the whole world able to fluently speak it.

There you have it. That, in a nutshell is Ugandan English or Uglish. At this point, I must ask you to ponder deeply whether it is a wonderful twist of the queen’s language with a few hilarious additions or a hideous product of the ruthless defilement and abominable modifications of the queen’s language.

Okay, people, let’s get a bit serious. We all know how we’re always judging each other based on first impressions and one of the things that count a lot is eloquence or fluency in English, which in a way can say much about one’s education, exposure, and class. I mean, who wants to date someone whose English is wanting, only to become a laughing stock among peers?

And could those concerned please stop trying so hard to sound too sophisticated by saying “basically” a million times in one sentence, and mixing all languages into it with their omanyi and all their other add-ons? How Ugandan should your English be? You decide. 

In an informal setting, it’s funny. In a formal setting, which elite circle will you get into with your helepu me? How far can you go internationally when you cannot clearly express yourself in the language the rest understand? Lets’s laugh about it now and then work on it. If you ask me, Uglish aint so funky.