Red Black Nonsense - It's NOT a tongue thing

So, the Euro Cup ended with the predicted winners and defending Champions lifting the trophy, much to my dismay. Don’t get me wrong; I have nothing against beautiful football. I simply thought their reign was close to over. However, the football itself was not my entertainment. Where people like my brother Sana Sarr found certain things frustrating, I found them interesting. In fact, I preferred watching the football on our most reliable G.R.T.S rather than opt for one of the DSTV channels. Why? You might ask...Well it was simply amazing watching the Presenter (I think from one of our GSM giants) call the Poles, Polish and the Swedes, Swedish! This is not an English lesson. It is rather a lesson on research in a time where information is so easily accessible and readily available. How attentive are we to detail? You listen to a foreign person doing the commentary during the game. You’re watching it in anticipation of a half-time analysis and you definitely heard the commentator say, “The Poles are struggling to make this game theirs” but no!! You’re right, and they’re wrong and so at half-time you decide to further cement your perception by calling them “the polish” and “the Croatians”. Now “polish” is a substance used to coat a surface. It is not to be mistaken for a person from Poland. In actual fact, I would feel insulted if anyone called me “surface coating”! I was hoping he or one of the other presenters would call the Danes, the Denmarkians. Lucky for him, he called them the Danish! This is not an attempt to ridicule anyone, but rather an attempt to correct a heinous wrong! Television is a tool to EDUCATE and ENTERTAIN. Young Gambians watching a presenter see him as a teacher of sorts and will take ANYTHING he gives. We will continue to argue that English is not our mother tongue whilst we fumble with some words and confidently pronounce words wrong on national television. Who are we fooling? I wish people would understand that, as soon as you sit before a camera on national television, you no longer represent yourself but an entire profession which requires work and dedication to even seem presentable. Since this is supposed to be a lesson on research, I will stay clear of commenting on the arrogance that went with the entire presentation. There were so many things wrong with the entire presentation surprisingly from one of the most innovative companies in The Gambia with regards to television and publicity. However, “they dropped the ball on this one”. It was an arrogant display of rolling tongues and misplaced words save for some amazing football analysis from “a foreigner” who is not supposed to be a technocrat but seemed to know more about the game than any other person I saw on television during the whole Championship. We should learn to get our research right and take everything a little more seriously. Mr. Ponse...we salute you! I could not believe the confusion surrounding the last day of the group stages in my favourite group of the tournament. With Italy struggling for qualification during the first half, the table showed them top of their group followed by Spain and then Croatia. However, our Gambian brothers and uncles in the studio felt UEFA had made a mistake!! They were looking at goal difference instead of looking at a three-way head to head at level points!! I almost flew into the television set to bite off their right ears like Mike Tyson would have done. Do your research!! After the game, they gave the usual apologies and life was back to normal. Dega la! We all make mistakes. No one is perfect...true. However, we must always endeavour to be better. The problem here is people don’t take correction lightly. I have always made it my duty to do the normal grammatical and pronunciation correction with my friends and it has created this cyclic game where they look forward to my gaffes just so they can pounce and make me look terrible. It’s fun and we all learn from these things. However, the few times I have tried to correct people outside my circle, I have received cold stares that could have sent me to my grave. On a certain facebook group I am part of, we call it “grammar police”. Is it a Gambian thing to call husband and wife “beautiful couples”? Arggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh (tearing my not so long hair out!!!). You’re safely browsing through your facebook newsfeed and you see a lovely picture of a guy and a lady and beneath it you find the comment, “nice couples”. Now I do not blame them. Some teacher in primary school forgot to teach them that “a couple” represents two! It reminds me of the friend of mine who in making fun of another friend, said the right word for quadruple was “fourple”. Don’t we just like the easy way out? So now when I give a number with the same digit four times, I say quadruple and then I watch the confused face before I “correct myself” and say “fourple”. There’s this ignorant arrogance we carry on our shoulders. I visited one of our hotels recently for a fact finding mission and one fact I was greeted with was that we notice certain errors in very popular establishments and we simply laugh these things off only to see them there again ten years later. A sign-post in the hotel spelt “salon” as “saloon” and by the look of the archaic pole supporting the post, I wouldn’t be mistaken in assuming it had been there for at least a decade. Did I walk over to hotel management to show them the error? No, I didn’t. Instead I decide to write about it without naming the hotel hoping that by some divine intervention, a member of management would read this and notice the fault. I guess I am as much at fault as everybody else. It is not borne from a desire to be “toubab”. I believe if you’re going to attempt anything, you should give it your best shot. We can argue that our schools are not doing enough to educate our young ones or this new generation of school going children do not value an education as much as previous generations. However, we must understand that young minds look up to television and public figures a lot and learn more from these than they do from text books and teachers. All over the country, billboards with gross grammatical errors flat over-head. I believe in ancient times, whoever did such blunders would have been hung by the neck. So society is no longer that violent but a serious “cleaning of the nation” must be ventured into. How expensive is it to get someone who knows the language better to do your signs? No I am not looking for a side job! (cheeky reader!). I will easily threaten anyone who dares say to me “the two twins”. This is not a joke! Twins equals two g**amm*t! Then of course there is this “usual delayance”. The word is still delay you thick skulled homo-sapien! That is besides all the patois slanging people that don’t even speak the language right and end up sounding like they’re speaking Aku. For heaven’s sake, get the main language right first and then feel free to dissect it as you wish. Today, being in a good mood, all pronunciation errors will be excused. True, our tongues are built differently and so it is understandable if someone pronounces Qcell as “Chucell” but how on God’s green earth do you justify calling Comium, “Comminium”? Isn’t it so much easier to pronounce the two syllable version of the word? This is not about illiteracy! It’s about making an effort to speak right. You need not sound like a tongue rolling Brit or a heavy tongued Canadian to speak properly (An Englishman would have just said “proper”) but making an effort to learn how to speak and the right words to use will do everyone a wealth of good. For the GSM company that did the analysis of the Euro Championship, I hope your presenters will do better to not only understand the rules of the game and presentation style but also things as simple as the names for people from different countries and that speaking CLEARLY is one of the rules of production. The main presenter would do well to treat all customers that make it to the studio with humility and respect as every butut that goes into the company comes from those same customers. This is my attempt to correct an “error” without sounding arrogant or disrespectful. But “xam nga rek...deka bi dor dae xam”. Now on a totally different note, I would like to thank all those that contributed in one way or another to a successful night of creativity, “Rhythmic Vibrations”. It was a perfect display of Gambian talent and the support received from people was just perfect. I only wish corporate bodies AGAIN learn to support these ideas and remember that it is not a favour being done but a RESPONSIBILITY which should be taken seriously. The development boat will go on with or without corporate support. For those that realize that this country is ours and will require everyone to make it better for our kids and their kids, I will continue to thank you. This boat has set sail... T.G.B.A