Education

Questions and Answers On Grammar Usage & Expressions

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Here are some valuable answers by journalist, newspaper columnist, author, and blogger, Farooq Kperogi. Some of these expressions have been constantly used wrongly by Nigerians.

Question

I had an argument about the proper definition of an orphan. Someone said an orphan is a child who has lost both parents, but I said losing just one parent is sufficient to call a child an orphan. So what is the actual meaning of an orphan?

Answer

There is an argument concerning who can be considered an orphan. An orphan is considered a person who has lost both parents.

However, there are cultural and religious clashes concerning the definition of this term. Although, in Islam, an orphan is someone who has lost only a father before the age of maturity. In many African countries, an orphan is a person who has lost one or both parents.

Losing just one parent isn’t enough to be called an orphan. That is in conversational English. However, the meaning of these changes when it is applied to an animal. An animal is regarded as an orphan only if it loses its mother.

Note, also, that in English an orphan can also be a child who has been abandoned by its biological parents, although, both of whom may still be alive.

It is also noteworthy that UNICEF now talks of “maternal orphans” (to describe children who lost only their mothers), “paternal orphans” (for children who lost only their fathers), and “double orphans” (for children who lost both parents). When speaking to someone from Britain, America, Canada, Australia or New Zealand it is advised you use the word to mean someone who’s lost both parents.

Question

Is there a difference between a boys quarters and a chalet? Can they be used interchangeably?

Answer

Contemporary native English speakers have no concept of a ‘boys quarters’. It’s a colonial concept that Nigerians still hold on to. British colonizers used to call their equivalent a ‘servants quarters’. The phase, as well as the practice of building servants quarters, went out of fashion in fashion in the 20th century.

The Americans used to have ‘slave quarters’ but since slavery was abolished in the 1800s, they no longer have that term or even use it.

Boys quarters, servants quarters or slave quarters all denote a separate housing for social inferiors. This notion would be foreign to native English speakers.

There is no relationship between a chalet and a boys quarters.

Question

People have told me countlessly that the manner in which Nigerians use the term ‘light’ is wrong. How can this be explained?

Answer

Nigerians use the word ‘light’ to mean ‘electricity’ or ‘power’. It’s not necessarily wrong. It’s just different from the rest of the native English-speaking world.

‘Light’ can definitely mean a lot of things; any device that serves as a source of illumination, a spark, an igniter. So Nigerians saying “they’ve taken light” (a phrase Nigerians commonly use). This can lead to non-Nigerians imagining many things remotely not connected with the loss of electricity.