Why do Nigerians,
including educated Nigerians, pronounce Google as "goggle" and
WhatsApp as "WhatsUp"?
As I pointed
out in my 2015 book titled Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of
Nigerian English in a Global World, two "O's" either make the /ʊ/ or
/u:/ sound; that's why we pronounce book as "buk," good as
"gud," hood as "hud," soon as "suun" etc. What
explains the choice of Nigerians to pronounce Google as "goggle,"
which, among other things, means to look stupidly? I'm sorry, but people sound
really stupid and illiterate when they call Google "goggle."
And WhatsApp
as "WhatsUP"? What's up with that? Who comes up with these grating,
uneducated pronunciational habits in Nigeria? Since Nigerians don't call phone
apps "ups," why do they call WhatsApp "WhatsUP"?
Yes, the
inventors of WhatsApp were clearly creatively playing on the informal American
English expression "what's up?" (i.e., "how are you?") in
the choice of the name for the app, but the name clearly has "app,"
not "up," in it.
Nigerians are
the only people in the whole world who call WhatsApp "whatsUp." Did
people miss the letter "a" in the name of the app? What sort of mass
carelessness is that? Who did this to us? Before anyone says it's about
differences in accents, this isn't an accent issue. It's simply carelessness.
What's difficult in saying "whatsApp" and "Guugul?
© Farooq
Kperogi