I felt I was good at imagination but this time I was wrong. in the midst
of an Igbo Woman and a Hausa Man, they both understand Hausa language. I
was the innocent soul, a Yoruba man who only understand his mother
tongue and the country lingua franca (English)
At first I thought it was a good mixture WAZOBIA, so we would be competing with phonetics, how fluent we can communicate with our lingua franca, showing our intellectual competence. I was smiling ready to blow some grammar to amaze these folks beside me. I never knew these two were school mate in the North. We were on our way to Abuja from Lagos state. Three of us sat at the back sit of the 15 passengers bus.
I was in the middle when they began their conversation. I first felt it was because they didn't want me to hear what they first said when they were code switching and code mixing until they finally decide on pure Hausa. I sank myself in the sit hoping I would disappear between them but it was all a false hope. So I began to cough make a "there is someone who don't understand Hausa here" signal. They didn't even bother, the Hausa man only said,"take care" and went on with their conversation.
Then I began to realize the social detriment of living in a country where more than 3 tribe exist and you are not able to understand at least two other tribe language and your tribe language and then the general lingua franca.
At first I thought it was a good mixture WAZOBIA, so we would be competing with phonetics, how fluent we can communicate with our lingua franca, showing our intellectual competence. I was smiling ready to blow some grammar to amaze these folks beside me. I never knew these two were school mate in the North. We were on our way to Abuja from Lagos state. Three of us sat at the back sit of the 15 passengers bus.
I was in the middle when they began their conversation. I first felt it was because they didn't want me to hear what they first said when they were code switching and code mixing until they finally decide on pure Hausa. I sank myself in the sit hoping I would disappear between them but it was all a false hope. So I began to cough make a "there is someone who don't understand Hausa here" signal. They didn't even bother, the Hausa man only said,"take care" and went on with their conversation.
Then I began to realize the social detriment of living in a country where more than 3 tribe exist and you are not able to understand at least two other tribe language and your tribe language and then the general lingua franca.