People are used to hearing quote worthy sentences with the dramatic flair when it comes to the likes of Shakespeare or Emily Brontë. It’s the kind of sentence structure that makes everything sound like a love affair with the English language as you imagine someone writing with quill and ink. Maybe the English language has gotten a bit sloppy or lazy over the years.
But it seems that Nigerians have never stopped having a flair for the dramatics when it comes to speaking, at least that’s what people on the internet have revealed. Recently a podcast ClxpsAndGxgs uploaded a clip to TikTok to discuss an X thread they discovered.
“Nigerians speak so poetic when they’re upset, instead of saying, ‘I’m mad,’ they’ll say, ‘my enemies have succeeded,'” one of the hosts reads before bursting into laughter.
This is apparently just how many Nigerians speak, because the comment section of the original X post which appeared in 2021 and the comments under the recent video give near endless examples.
One of the co-hosts reads out a response to the original post, “my Naija professor once said, ‘they’ve made an assassination attempt on my life,’ when he slipped on a piece of paper.” The theatrics in speech were too much for the other co-host to bear as he called out how dramatic it was to call slipping on a piece of paper an assassination attempt.
But maybe, just maybe we could have a little more fun with the English language. Clearly, Americans haven’t figured out how to give our sentences the proper enhancements because speaking this way seems much more fun. The examples of this exquisite use of self-expression via the spoken word continued in the comments.
@clxpsandgxgs Nigerians Speak so Poethically #shxtsngigs #nigerians
One person writes, “my Nigerian friend angry at another friend who’s terrible at charades, ‘he sits under the tree of knowledge, yet not a single fruit falls into his lap.”
Another says, “A Nigerian friend of mine said, ‘the image of God is expanding,’ commenting on my weight gain. I could not even be mad.”
One commenter reveals, “when I walk in with a serious look, my Nigerian mom would ask me, ‘my daughter why does your face look like a formal letter?'”
Someone said they need these little nuggets in the form of a daily calendar and they just might be on to something. Who wouldn’t love a little Nigerian wordsmithing sitting at the ready?