It is not “the proper” English language you hear the affluent people of this world speak
It is not the usually well-structured English you hear the white people speak so fluently
It is definitely not the kind of English that Microsoft Word can ably recognize as English language!!! (hihi)
If our teachers of English from back then heard us speak this English,
They would either cry, curse us out, laugh so loudly or do all the three!
I am so certain that Mr. Nkoola wouldn’t be happy at all, listening to this kind of English language being uttered out, for all his laboring he made to teach us to speak this language as well as he did!
Ugandan Yingilishi is the kind of English many of us here in Uganda have crafted over the years into something we understand as Ugandans, speak as Ugandans and use to interact as Ugandans.
It involves a number of aspects in it like the tone we use, our sub-consciously coordinated movement of the arms and feet when using Ugandan Yingilishi,
The number of words of English we deploy in it alongside those from our native languages here, who we are using it with, when we are using it and most of all, why we are using it!
Photo credit: UgLish
- “Both of you 1,2,3….come here!”
- “You want the police to do what?”
- “Mpa ku ssente!”
- “Today, you will know me or I will know you!”
- “Extend there…I also want to sit!”
- “For me, I want this one. Gwe for you, what do you want?”
The examples of Ugandan Yingilishi are simply too many to exhaust here.
We will have to keep on updating this list as we go by.
Photo credit: pngset.com
Do you have a form of English like this, where you come from?
I would love to hear it from you. May be, we can even trade some words, phrases, actions and memes!