Tag Archives: Linguistics

If you could choose your coloniser

From Joshua Keating of FP: Taken together, the moral of these studies could be that colonalism isn’t great for a country’s future political and economic wellbeing, but if a country is going to be colonized, they’re better off with the British than the French. Of course, the ideal would be not to be colonised at… Read More »

Tony Judt on the way things are and how they might be

About politicians and courage: Courage is always missing in politicians. It is like saying basketball players aren’t normally short. It isn’t a useful attribute. To be morally courageous is to say something different, which reduces your chances of winning an election. Courage is in a funny way more common in an old-fashioned sort of enlightened… Read More »

Yoruba and English, Yoruba and French

It is always interesting to speak Yoruba with Beninese Yoruba speakers. I – like most Nigerian Yoruba speakers – don’t speak Yoruba without code-mixing, and the other language in the mélange is almost always English. Therefore, when I am speaking with a Beninese Yoruba speaker, I am very careful not to add in English words.… Read More »