“By sheer dint of hard work ladled out with much delight, the English Team (of Wesley Girls’ High School) have managed to mould their girls into a very rare breed of prodigies who clearly are a cut above their run-of-the-mill peers. How else would teenagers ask for more reading pleasures, off their own bat, if they were not a pack of the bunch? To the young ladies of Wesley Girls’ High School, I say, ‘It’s been a delight writing with you in mind’. Let me whisper something secret in your ear, though. The grapevine has it that your peers in St. Louis Secondary School in Kumasi, and those in Archbishop Porter Girls’ Takoradi are making giant strides to catch up with you. Not to talk of the young ladies of St. Mary’s Secondary, Accra and Holy Child School, Cape Coast! To all of you young mistresses of tomorrow, the advice is the same. Double up your reading ambitions, so that you will continue to be tops”.
Professor Naa Afarley Sackeyfio: “Morally Speaking? In English?? ”
IN THE INTRODUCTION to her book, ‘Morally Speaking? In English??’, Professor Naa Afarley Sackefio, a Professor of English and a one-time vice-presidential aspirant had this to say; “if there is one occupation that makes an adult humble, it surely must be parenting. Much too early inside the venture, a mother has to grin and bear, at least, three shocks. (a). That her onetime feeble bundles of joy have suddenly grown into whizz kids, the workings of whose brains take her way out of her league; (b). That these pixies can unriddle ecstasies and reduce to unromantic scientific drab fantasies which had, barely a generation ago, dazzled and thrilled her old hat, out-of-the-ark olde worlde (c) That this hypersonic transformation from helpless babies to smart alecs must have happened within the very few seconds that she was not looking their way”.
K.B. Asante has passed on, and the nation is in tears. If KB was alive and he had seen certain inscriptions, he would certainly have commented on them. He would have told us about ‘stoping’ not being an alternative to ‘stopping’, but as a District Assembly’s way of telling drivers not to ‘stop’ at certain portions of the road. ‘No stoping’, I.K. Gyasi would draw one’s attention to it. Who says I.K. Gyasi has dropped his pen. His hands are itching-to the point that we should not be surprised to find him still ‘bluntly speaking’ to tell us: ‘No stoping’ is a grammatical inexactitude- in the context it is used. I.K. Gyasi must have seen the sign at the Roundabout near Georgia Hotel, Kumasi. Don’t judge I.K. Gyasi as being fincky, fastidious or punctilious. Nor should you judge him wrongly for nit-picking. You know what a ‘nit’ is? It is the egg of a louse, (edwie). Judge the size of lice, (plural of ‘louse’) and if you are accused of nit-picking, you can judge what impression you create in the minds of the interlocutor.
You see, ‘stope’ whose gerund is ‘stoping’ is the process of extracting ore or other mineral from an underground mine, and an open space left is known as ‘stope’. The ‘stope’ is usually held up to stand by an artificial support.
And, what about this word, ‘to loiter’. It means ‘to linger without any purpose’ OR ‘to hover over an area’ OR ‘to take one’s time to act slowly’. A person who lingers about is a ‘loiterer’ The ‘gerund is ‘loitering’. So, if Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) would like to prosecute offenders for loitering, they would state something like: ‘Loiterers will be prosecuted’. Thus, they may use the word ‘loiter’ in the same manner as they use the word ‘gather’-hence, those who ‘gather’ things may be referred to as ‘gatherers’!
And did I read it right; a complaint from Ajoa Yeboah-Afari (Ms) of Dansoman Estates in the Daily Graphic of December 11, 2017 on ‘What makes a farmer ‘gallant’? She started sonorously: “For as long as I can remember, every year the observance of the National Farmers’ Day has come with countless references to ‘our gallant farmers”. She continued poignantly: “So where has this Ghanaian fixation with ‘gallant farmers’ come from?” A friend’s explanation, said in a tongue -in-cheek fashion, makes the use of the expression more ludicrous. Ajoa Yeboah Afari stated emphatically; “In the forest zone, a ‘gallant’ farmer is one who hunts the most snakes, rats and grasscutters. In the savannah, it’s the one who drives away pythons and leopards from the cattle and ruminants”. She ‘seriously’ concludes; “But on a more serious note, I ask again what is the reason for the odd twinning of farming with gallantry? Who or what has left us with this misnomer legacy?” Does this observation not set the tone for critical analysis, should it be discourse analysis? One would have heard ‘hardworking farmers’, ‘industrious farmers’, ‘small holder farmers,’ ‘progressive farmers’ ‘successful farmers’, ‘estimable farmers’, ‘humble farmers’, ‘ingenious farmers’, ‘warm-hearted farmers’, ‘prosperous farmers’, ‘enterprising farmers’, ‘sturdy farmers’, ‘self reliant farmers’, ‘hard-pressed farmers’. Any of the above expressions could have cooled down Ajoa and others who think like her- on the positive side for a ‘Farmers’ Day’.
‘Gallant’ (adjective), to a greater extent means ‘heroic’ or ‘brave’. Gallantry (noun) has to do with heroism or bravery demonstrated by someone with a greater strength to save another with less. Soldiers usually demonstrate this when they face danger. They may be chivalrous or knightly.
One may ask if it is ‘obsession’ that drives us this way? Or could it be something else. We may call ‘momone’ stinking fish when indeed it is ‘salted fish’. And our students copy us ditto-ditto, if you like
These may appear to be peccadiloes, which do not put bread on our tables, but do we not risk cutting ourselves away as non-professionals with these foibles? For, as noted by Metcalfe and Astle:… good English distinguishes the professional, from the amateur…”And do we want to continue to be amateurs?
Don’t be surprised about the mention of Professor Naa Afarley, I.K. Gyasi and Ajoa Yeboah-Afari in a eulogy to K.B. Asante. These are among the people who had had great impact on me as a student/examiner of English Language.
P.S. The part about Colonel Zanlerigu and General Bawa in my last article ‘So, K.B. Asante is Gone?’ should read:”…. the latter of whom was killed and the former surrendered…” In fact, Colonel Zanlerigu lived to be an MP and later Minister under Dr. Hilla Limann. He died in 2016.
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Africanus Owusu-Ansah