Naija Dey: Toward a Decolonial Description of Naija
Since 2023, the Naija Dey working group has been meeting nearly every week to try to imagine and create user-friendly, open, and inclusive descriptions of Naija that begin to unsettle the colonial gaze on language and upend colonial ways of describing language.
In the process we have faced many challenges, because it is not easy to make a clean break with the theoretical, methodological, terminological and practical ways that we have been taught to describe language in the tradition of Western/ Northern linguistics.
Rather than replacing one grand colonial scheme that pretends to have a monopoly on ‘the truth’ with another, we have decided to just “make the road by walking” instead, that is, we face each challenge as it presents itself.
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Inclusivity: Two Orthographies
Every single passage in our descriptions is written in Naija twice before it is translated into English using two different orthographies:
1) one orthography that is almost identical to the orthographies used to write ancestral Nigerian languages, such as Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo:
Naija na won langwej we get laif nyafu-nyafu, and as im get laif, im no go jos de ste for won ples, we im no go gri muv, o im no go gri chenj atol-atol. Naija na won langwej we im de chenj everi taim eni pesin de tok am. Na-im mek pipul de yus Naija for plenti difren-difren stail. I no bi laik se won stail i gud pas anoda stail. I no bi laik se won stail i korekt and anoda stail no korekt. Evri stail de gud and evri stail de korekt.
2) another orthography that is almost identical to the orthography used for writing English:
Naija na one language wey get life nyafu-nyafu, and as him get life, him no go just de stay for one place, wey him no go gree muv, o him no go gree change at all-at all. Naija na one language wey him de change every time any person de talk am. Na-him make people de use Naija for plenty different-different style. He no be like say one style he good pass another style. He no be like say one style he correct and another style no correct. Every style de good and every style de correct.