What is "Bad English 'Cost' Lives"?

The famous Nigerian novelist and distinguished professor of English and Literature Chinua Achebe has often remarked that he, Professor Achebe, does not suffer fools gladly. He probably anticipates the scabrous likes of the Ghanaian Internet critic who had the temerity to impugn the linguistic integrity of yours truly by writing an article imperiously and stolidly titled “Bad English ‘Cost’ Lives” (Ghanaweb.com 9/23/07).

It is almost certain that the presumptuous critic has no dressing mirror in his place of abode, else he would have stopped to ponder twice about the title of his article. But what is even more significant to stress, herein, is the apparent refusal of some Ghanaians who claim to be literate, and proficient, in the English language to accept the plain fact of their being, at best, tentative in their usage of the English language.

And, needless to say, there is absolutely nothing wrong with such honest admission, since even speakers of our indigenous languages do not all have the same command of their respective native tongues. What is unpardonably annoying, however, is the flagrant pretense of these critics to the right of adamant insistence on the bold and wrongheaded pursuit of linguistic solecism.

And so, we must ask once more: What is the meaning of “Bad English ‘Cost’ Lives”? And just what is ‘bad’ English? Or even bad Twi, for that matter?
Needless to say, if one does not appreciate the fact that the word “English” is a singular noun which takes the third-person singular pronoun of “it,” one would almost definitely not know how to construct a simple sentence with the word “English.” The latter must as well be Greek or Chinese. And this is exactly what the author of the aforementioned article, published in the Ghanaweb.com edition of September 23, 2007 did.
The tragedy lies less in the fact of the writer’s pretense to knowledge he obviously does not have, than his fatuous insistence on boldly passing off his abject ignorance and downright imbecility to the rest of us Ghanaians, in particular, and the proverbial international community, in general. For Ghanaweb.com is arguably the website of choice on our beloved country to both Diaspora Ghanaians and the international community at large.
Here again, we are prompted to ask: What is “Bad English ‘Cost’ Lives”? Obviously, the grammatically challenged critic mistook the object of this simple sentence, which he chose for the title of his article, for the subject of the sentence. This strikingly reminds yours truly of that likable Akyem-Asiakwa lunatic, of yesteryear, who used to wear his briefs over his pants, and singlet over his shirt. We schoolchildren liked him a lot because even under the shadow of a hermetic military dictatorship, Mr. Abongo Frafra (not his real name) insisted on his inalienable right to self-expression; couturier self-expression, that is.
Unfortunately, in presuming to possess the only key to Standard English Usage, “Mr. Bad English Cost Lives” had shamelessly forgotten that it was his arrogance that stood to cost him a great shame and embarrassment; and, significantly, also the fact that the only “Bad English” is that which cavalierly ignores the civil and esthetic rules of grammar by pretending that there, in fact, exists no functional difference between a tailor and a carpenter. Perhaps not, if you are smugly naïve enough to believe that it is a crime against global linguistic sensibilities to begin a sentence with the conjunction “and.” And (yes, you read it right), if you are cognitively dissonant enough to presume the American variation of the English language to be the less felicitous or grammatically sound, or rational, of the same.
In sum, what else but “colonialisomiasis” could the writer of “Bad English ‘Cost’ Lives” be suffering from? Of course, I am also waiting to hear Mr. Malaprop tell the rest of the proverbial “International Community” of English speakers that it is incorrigibly “Bad English” to end a sentence with a preposition.
If, indeed, you are a Ghanaian-born human being and you believe that it is “Good English” for a Ghana News Agency reporter to report the “assassination” of a night watchman, or security guard, during the course of an armed robbery gone awry, you must be that classmate of mine who chose catapulting birds over doing his English homework assignments. How about “Nollywood” and “Bollywood” for “Hollywood”?
And now, don’t you go about screaming some crap about your parents not having had enough money to pay the 25-pesewa token fee it took to keep you behind the quiescent and manicured hedges of Akyem-Asiakwa Presbyterian Primary School.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., teaches English and Journalism at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@aol.com.

Views expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect those of GhanaHomePage.