Destiny Udogie

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Wellsey said:
I work with Nigerians, they are fanatical football fans and English definitely their first language but difficult to understand when they are talking to each other!!
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I had a similar experience many years ago in Gambia. The only other guests in the small hotel we had just checked into were two Nigerian blokes, travelling salesmen. We joined them and the hotel owner for a couple of beers and were all soon getting on fine.

So there were bits in the conversation when the two Nigerians would say something to each other, then the Gambian chap would add something and soon they were chatting away in something that was about 20% English but with loads of strange words and a structure that didn't make much sense to us. I mean you could tell they were talking about football say but I couldn't have told you what their individual opinions were.

Pretty soon they realised we were left out of the chitchat, they reverted to standard English and apologised - no need we said, it was fascinating. The Nigerians explained they had grown up in two neighbouring villages about two miles apart, but their respective mother tongues were mutually unintelligible, completely so. This was pretty common they said, there are many hundreds of languages in the country and most cannot be understood by a speaker of another, however close they live together.

So the solution was that everyone spoke pidgin English, which is loosely based on the standard form but with a crazy mix of local words and a simplified, less grammatical structure that made communication a lot easier (but is incredibly hard for non-West Africans to follow). The Gambian bloke said that they had a similar thing there as well and the beauty was that although some of the vocab was different, the structure meant he could jump in and they'd all be chatting away in no time.

All three spoke perfect standard English but among themselves they preferred the more relaxed, more expressive and African pidgin. I guess it's perfectly possible that Destiny grew up in such an environment, his parents may well have spoke mutually unintelligible tongues and had met and lived together with pidgin as their go-to language, speaking standard English if and when required, with their children growing up in this crazy but wonderful mix of mum's language, dad's language, pidgin, standard English and Italian.
 
Destiny has pulled out of the Italy U21 squad with ‘fever’

James Franco Flirt GIF
 
Consider the difference between him and Sess. This is why the latter will never make it.

Has never demonstrated the sort of basic composure and competence that Ugodie did today.
 
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