Enhancing our mastery of Oral English

Cover of the book A review of Francis Egbokhare’s Fundamentals of Oral English for Schools and Colleges by Jare Ajayi

Next to being alive, communication is the most important element of human activities. Its significance is such that it determines a person’s existential condition and could be a signifier for his/her next status.

Among all forms of communication, orality or speech occupies a central position. Indeed, there is the contention that speech - which dates back to between 250,000 and 1,000,000 years ago - preceded all other forms of human communication; except, perhaps, gesture.

So crucial is speech that the human person begins training in it right from the cradle while the conscientious ones among them continue to learn and polish their linguistic nuances for as long as they live. They do this with a view to keeping on improving on their language competence and possibly avoiding pitfalls in communication delivery.

Misunderstanding in speech or verbal communication is not peculiar to semantics alone. Greater part of hiccups in this respect is traced to how a listener attributes an auditory character or meaning different from what the speaker intends to a received word or speech. Given that the two people are communicating in the same language, the commonest cause of this type of verbal problem is the way the given word is pronounced by the speaker.

The foregoing is important to be borne in mind as we welcome on to the bookshelves, a new book by a professor of Linguistics and African Languages, Francis Egbokhare titled Fundamentals of Oral English for Schools and Colleges. English is Nigeria ‘s official language. It is to most Nigerians a second language. Since English is not ‘mother tongue’ for Nigerians, the danger of making mistakes in this foreign medium is real.

This reality is evident in the troubles identified with many - including educated ones; the trouble of understanding what a speaker really means to say. More often than not, contextualization has been the matrix that assists listeners in understanding a speech being made.

This is one of the issues Egbokhare tries to tackle in this 111 page book published by Stirling-Horden Publishers, Ibadan . Currently, director of the University of Ibadan Distance Learning Centre (DLC), Egbokhare brings his decades of tutelage and research to bear on how he handles this technical issue.

Divided into seven sections, the book begins (Chapter one) with a ‘Background Discussion’, in which the author prepares the mind of a beholder of the book to what would be encountered on subsequent pages. Although the book is to deal with the nuances of Oral English as a subject, the author finds it imperative to draw attention “to problems of interference from the mother tongue and suggests ways of overcoming some of these problems” (p1).

Chapter two identifies the human organs responsible for speech and how they can be trained to pronounce correctly.

Chapters three and four respectively deal with ‘Consonants’ and ‘Vowels’ found in English language while ‘The Syllable’ is the title of chapter five. And that is what the chapter treats in-depth. The issues of ‘Stress’ and ‘Intonation’ are tackled in chapters six and seven.

Four appendices round off the chapters. Appendix 1 is on “Words often Mispronounced’. Appendix II gives samples of word pairs that are ‘wrongly pronounced the same way’ while Homophones are treated in Appendix III. The fourth appendix showcases some examples of words often pronounced with stresses in the wrong places. The book appropriately ends with a reference page.

Without doubt, bookshelves in Nigeria have a lot of books that deal with various aspects of English language just as there also are books both on Linguistics and Oral English. Nevertheless, there is a place for Egbokhare’s Fundamentals ... on our bookshelves not just because it is new but because of the way it treats its subject – laying bare what it takes to have a good grounding in Oral English. Its main forte being that snag that could colour (and indeed often colours) what a speaker says in the ear of the listener. This snag is called ‘interference’.

It is what is called ‘noise’ in professional (linguistic and communication) circle. We should remember that communication essentially involves the encoder (speaker, sender of a message), message, medium/channel and decoder (listener/receiver of a message. In verbal communication in which orality represents the medium or channel, the manner of speaking could and does affect what the listener (decoder) is able to make of what he or she hears.

Language specialists understand this hence the encouragement of a standard of any given language. Nigerians, especially since after Independence , have been exposed to a variety of Englishes. Not only that, citizens have managed to ‘develop’ their own form of English;  be it pidgin or a mimicry/mockery of Standard English often referred to as ‘ Nigerian English’. To avoid confusion, the variety accepted is the one known as Standard or Queen English. It is that variety that Francis Egbokhare and other scholars are promoting for obvious reasons.

Ordinarily, every speaker wants to be well heard and appropriately understood and to be regarded as a good speaker. However, the quality of a speech would only be determined by the manner of its delivery. In the words of Daniel Jones in The Pronounciation of English (Cambridge, 1962), “for speech to be ‘good’ it must not only be clearly intelligible but also ‘pleasing’ to the hearer”. But he is quick to mention what could be a drawback in practical life, since “what is pleasing to one person is not necessarily pleasing to another” because “People’s ideas of what is pleasing are often determined by associations with circumstances under which certain kinds of pronunciation are used and not by any inherent goodness or badness of the sounds uttered” (p5).

Lazy and conceited people often come up with a number of excuses for being deficient in their language delivery. The excuses range from ‘English is not my mother tongue’ to ‘Na English we go chop’ (Is it the ability to speak correct English that would provide us a meal?). Once we start learning a language in an educational environment, we should endeavour to learn the ‘acceptable’ or standard version of that language. This much Egbokhare pleads:  “Every teacher should enlighten his/her students on the importance of Oral English.

Goverment should encourage local art works - Buraimoh

Tunde Oyekola, Osogbo

Chief jimoh Buraimoh Chief Jimoh Buraimoh, foremost artist and the Asojuoba of Osogbo recently celebrated his 65th birthday. The internationally renowned artist who has made his mark in art exhibitions with his unique works blending western and Yoruba styles has visited over 28 countries where he has exhibited his works which are mostly oil paintings, etchings, bead paintings and mosaic murals.

Born in Osogbo, Osun State in 1943, Chief Buraimoh who early in life trained as an electrician and worked with the late Duro Ladipo started his foray into art in 1964.

A pioneer in the history of modern art in Africa, Chief Buraimoh is the continent’s first bead painter having in 1964, created a contemporary art form inspired by the Yoruba tradition of incorporating beadwork designs into ceremonial fabrics and beaded crowns. He represented Nigerian artists at the First All African Trade Fair in Nairobi, Kenya in 1972 and his work was presented at the Second World Black Arts Festival (FESTAC) in Lagos in 1977.

In 1983, he became the first Nigerian to be awarded a membership in the Contemporary World Association of Mosaic Artists (Associazione Internazionale Mosaicisti Contemporanei) based in Ravenna, Italy and contributed to a global public-art statement for world peace in Ravenna’s Parco Della Pace. A 1996 recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Center for African and African American Art and Culture in San Francisco, California, Chief Buraimoh has enjoyed international acclaim and worldwide popularity throughout his career. His 1997 mosaic mural, The Elders, commissioned by the City of Atlanta, Georgia USA and installed in the City’s Howell Park, received an Award of Excellence from the Atlanta Urban Design Commission as The Best Mosaic Mural of the Year.

Chief Buraimoh’s works, widely exhibited in solo and group presentations, continue to be shown at the world’s finest galleries: In 2002, Buraimoh was featured in Visions of Yoruba, a two-artist show at the October Gallery in London, England . Important retrospectives in the United States include Colours of Africa, Contemporary Art from the Continent at Diggs Gallery at Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina in 2003; The World Moves – We Follow: Celebrating African Art at McClung Museum in Knoxville, Tennessee in 2002; and a Concrete Vision: Oshogbo Art in the 1960’s at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington DC in 2000. His works are central to Beads, Body and Soul: Art and Light in the Yoruba Universe, a traveling exhibit organized by the Fowler Museum of Cultural History in California and shown at Carlos Museum at Emory University in Atlanta. Georgia in 1999.

While advising Nigerians to be dedicated and patient in their chosen career during his birthday celebration, Buraimoh said that “in those days when we came into the arts, people thought it was for unserious people. But today, art is known as a creative enterprise and it is one of the things that can give a brighter future to Nigeria. If the government can do more for the arts, artists and encourage owners of art galleries, it will earn foreign exchange needed for the development of the country”.

The Asojuoba of Osogbo who said that most of his art works are based on Yoruba culture and tradition, described Yoruba culture as very interesting. “It is community based because people don’t live in isolation. They relate the past with the present. Culture is interwoven and transcends religion. It is embedded in both Christianity and Islam”, he said.

A polygamist, the Osogbo based chief said that the system has advantages. “If a man marries many wives, he has to be a politician”, he said adding that though every woman one marries has her own advantage, it is better in present day Nigeria to be a monogamist.

He said his most joyous day was in 2005 when he had a very successful exhibition in Atlanta, Georgia. “I was happy because of the massive attendance at the exhibition. The four mayors, including the mayor of Atlanta attended. State Representative of Arts, the Nigerian Embassy, Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary Club of Atlanta, all attended.

Chief Buraimoh said that his most embarrassing day was the day he missed his flight in Amsterdam because of a change in the time of the flight. “The flight was originally scheduled for 10 o’clock but because of a change in the weather, it was changed to 9 o’clock and I had to stay till the second day, thus incurring more expenses.”

The renowned bead painter said he was encouraged to go into the tourism and hospitality business about 25 years ago as a result of the experiences acquired in foreign countries during exhibitions. He advised that tourists visiting Nigeria should be made to feel at home through provision of “decent accommodation, creation of awareness through music as well as provision of good entertainment.”