By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D. Twitter: @farooqkperpgi Last week, I started a conversation about some of the stylistic markers that co...
By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
Twitter: @farooqkperpgi
American Ponzi Schemes Versus Nigerian 419 Scams
Twitter: @farooqkperpgi
Last week, I started
a conversation about some of the stylistic markers that computational
linguists and information systems specialists use to identify 419 email scams,
and pointed out that all of these markers are drawn from the vast repertoire of
idiosyncratic Nigerian English. I continue the conversation this week with more
examples.
4.
“Be rest assured that…” Typical 419 email solicitations entreat
their would-be preys to “be rest assured” of the authenticity of the scam they
are proposing. “Please be rest assured and feel free to go into this
transaction with us,” one recent 419 scam email to me read. This frequently
used 419 scam email lingo is actually mainstream Nigerian English.
The fixed
English idiom that this Nigerian English expression apes is “rest assured.” It
means to be certain. As I pointed out in several previous articles, it is rare
in Nigerian English for the expression to be rendered without the pointless and
intrusive “be.” The following sentence is an example of how the phrase
regularly occurs in popular Nigerian English: “You should BE rest assured that
I will not disappoint you.” The “be” in the phrase is superfluous. Native
speakers of the English language don’t include it.
I can’t locate the source of this lexical
distortion, except to point out that what grammarians call the habitual,
uninflected “be” (that is, where the verb “to be” doesn’t change form under any
circumstance) occurs a lot in Nigerian Pidgin English (such as in the
expression “I be don see am today,” i.e., “I have seen him today”), in
African-American Vernacular English (such as in the expression “she be mean to
me,” i.e., “she is mean to me”) and in many English-based pidgins and creoles.
I am tempted to argue that the addition of “be” before the idiom “rest assured”
in Nigerian English is attributable to the influence of Nigerian Pidgin
English. Or, perhaps, it is inspired by a false analogy to expressions like
"be careful," "be nice," etc., but in Standard English two
verbs don’t usually follow each other. In the phrase “be rest assured,” both
“be” and “rest” are verbs. But in “be careful” and “be nice,” “careful” and “nice”
are adjectives, so the analogy is false. Since no Nigerian says “be sleep well”
or “be go knowing that,” etc. it’s hard to fathom why the expression “be rest
assured” emerged and took firm roots in Nigerian English.
5.
“To enable me do something.” Email scams that
originate from Nigeria or from Nigerians who may be outside Nigeria typically
ask their marks to send them bank account numbers, etc. “to enable me [sic] transfer
the money to you”—or such other phrase. Native English speakers don’t write or
speak like that. I am not even sure that any other non-native English variety
in the world omits the preposition “to” after the noun or pronoun that comes
after “enable.”
This is what I wrote about this in a July 17, 2012
article titled “Prepositional
and Collocational Abuse in Nigerian English”: “Many scholars
of Nigerian English have identified the tendency to omit the preposition “to”
in the collocation “enable someone/something to do something” as one of the key
features of our dialect of the English language. ‘Enable’ and ‘to’ are
indissolubly ‘married’ in American English and British English; one cannot
appear without the other. So where Nigerians would write or say ‘I hereby apply
for a loan to enable me buy a car,’ British or American English speakers would
write or say ‘I hereby apply for a loan to enable me TO buy a car.’
“Professor [Herbert] Igboanusi, a prolific and
well-regarded University of Ibadan scholar of Nigerian English, once pointed
out that American English, like Nigerian English, also dispenses with the
preposition ‘to’ in the phrase ‘enable someone/something to do something.’ That
is wholly inaccurate. Only Nigerian, and perhaps Ghanaian, English omits ‘to’
where ‘enable’ occurs in a phrase.
“A non-Nigerian who has followed my writings on the
distinctive stylistic imprints of Nigerian English was saved a potentially
devastating 419 scam because he remembered my previous mention of the
peculiarly Nigerian tendency to never let ‘enable’ and ‘to’ to co-occur in the
same sentence. He said he received a well-written notification from a US State
Department letterhead that he had won the Green Card Lottery. He was naturally
overjoyed, he said, until he got to the end of the letter where this phrase
appeared: ‘to enable us process your ….’
“He said the omission of ‘to’ after ‘us’ in the
sentence activated memories of one of my writings on the subject and caused him
to doubt the authenticity of the letter. And, sure enough, when he called the
US State Department to confirm if the letter originated from them, he was told
that no such letter was sent to him; that it was a scam. So, you see, awareness
of the rules of grammar can save you from certain troubles.”
6.
“With due respect.” This phrase often appears in the
subject lines of 419 email scams—and in the subject lines of legitimate emails
from honest Nigerians. It also regularly appears as a prefatory remark before a
419 scam proposition. Typical expressions with the phrase go something like
this: “With due respect to you, I crave your indulgence for the unsolicited
nature of this letter.” Native English speakers find this typically Nigerian
English usage of “with due respect” bewildering.
First, the usual rendering of the expression is
“with all due respect.” Second, native English speakers use the phrase only
when they want to politely disagree with someone, as in “with all due respect,
that statement is not accurate.” Whenever the phrase “with due respect” is
uttered the people to whom it is addressed always prepare themselves for a mild, tempered
criticism. So when Nigerians write “with due respect” and don’t follow it up
with a criticism or disagreement, native English speakers are often befuddled.
They have no clue that in Nigerian English “with due respect” simply means “in
a respectful manner”; that the writer wishes to convey the sense that he holds
the addressee in high esteem. (Indians say “respected sir” where Nigerians
would say “with due respect”; both are strange to native English ears).
I receive tons of fan emails from my Nigerian
readers that go something like: “With due respect, I have been following your weekly
articles, and I am very happy to be among the fortunate and lucky ones that
read and learn a great deal from you.” Almost always, I brace myself up for a
mild critique, when I read emails that have “with due respect” as a subject
line or that start a sentence with the phrase, but the emails are often very laudatory
and gracious. Incidentally, Gmail and Yahoo Mail send all such emails to my
spam folders. I don’t know why. Perhaps their spam filters have also associated
the phrase with 419 email scams.
To
be concluded next week
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