African Pedants

The English language is one of the few gifts that the white people of Britain have given the world. It is also one of - if not the - broadest, most flexible and experienced languages of the world which also happens to be the mother tongue of people who have a gift for naming things. Fortunately or unfortunately, these people also have a strong desire to conquer and subdue their fellow human beings. These included my ancestors and their neighbours, friends, enemies and roommates in Africa.

As a consequence, we had to learn the English language since it is and was used all across the planet and is a psychological representation of something superior to us, the descendants of the conquered.

For that reason, a good number of us take the language very seriously as a symbol of learning, education, refinement and culture. These people will therefore mock, deride, shun or laugh at those of us who are unable to handle the language the way it is written in the dictionary, taught in schools or used by the British or Americans. However, they forget three things:

1. When someone learns a language which is not their first language, they generally tend to do so using the rules of the first language.
2. When you force something upon someone, they are likely to butcher and/or abuse it for any number of reasons.
3. In the eyes of those they mock, they are also inferior because in most cases, they do not know the languages of their ancestors and are probably born town which makes them ignorant in the ways of the village which, in most respects, is superior to the ways of the white man.

Notes

Upon typing this here, I remembered the way the French are uptight about their language, and even have an institute for preservation of the language. While this may be notable, I think they are overly focused on maintaining the purity of the language at the cost of their humanity. This is probably why, in the African countries which they conquered, tribal divisions, wars, human rights violations and insecurity are more rampant overall than in those conquered by the British.

Second, I have seen cases in Francophone African countries of the same tendency and I can guarantee you it is worse than in Anglophone countries.