....... around matters such as English Vocabularies and Grammar
The NDC General Secretary, Mr. Johnson Asiedu Nketiah, aka General Mosquito, is once again on the news for bad reasons as usual. He has questioned, and made mockery of, the intellectual integrity of the minority NPP MPs in parliament. He accused them of ascribing intellectualism and the knowledge of the Queen's language to themselves for being principally lawyers, and highly educated Ghanaian individuals with PhD degrees.
Mr Asiedu Nketiah, a native of Seikwa in the Brong-Ahafo region, with comparatively minimal formal education, doubts if the NPP MPs are actually versatile in both spoken and written English.
Ghanaians will recall that on Friday, 22 February 2013, the minority NPP MPs in parliament worked out on President John Dramaini Mahama of the "Ebe dii bi keke" political faith. When President Mahama went to Parliament to deliver his "Nation's Address" to Ghana, the minority NPP MPs peeved at him for stealing election 2012, were not prepared to listen to any messages coming from an alleged thief.
They walked out of parliament during his delivery of the Nation's address brandishing leaflets with "STEALERS" conspicuously written on them. This attitude did not only compel the NDC majority members of the House to shout "SHAME" at them but also, Asiedu Nketiah to exhibit his ignorance and lack of English understanding. Asiedu Nketiah quickly hit the Ghana airwaves claiming the word "stealers" has no place in English dictionary and doubted how the self-acclaimed knowledgeable NPP MPs, amongst whom are Professors will be brandishing such words. "It shows how horrible their English is", he snapped.
"Stealers" is the noun form of the verb "STEAL". As steal is a doing verb, stealer becomes the doer performing that act of stealing. Anyway, the word is in the dictionary and I suggest Asiedu Nketiah goes online to check it to save him from becoming a cynosure for displaying his complete ignorance of issues and vocabularies he deceptively claims cognisance.
English is a dynamic language that keeps changing with the passage of time. New words are created very often with some vocabularies and expressions passing into oblivion, often tagged as "clichés" but not really "colloquial". Even in our own Twi language or dialect, some words and expressions are no longer acceptable to people hence, replaced with new ones,
"Stealer" was until now unknown to Asiedu Nketiah but not to the other highly educated Ghanaians and especially, those of us living in the United Kingdom and the United States of America. In this part of the world where English is their native language, we the foreigners are shocked at the volume of words the youngsters are coining everyday. Some of the new words finally find themselves in the English dictionaries, even the Oxford English dictionary.
Asiedu Nketiah should please get off his "ignorance horse"; cease making a fool of himself. He should stop going public, sharing views on issues he is less knowledgeable until he has conducted appropriate research into such topics or issues. The English youth have been saying expressions or phrases like, "Was you there", "We was not there…" Almost all of them say this except their highly educated ones. Do we go about lamenting that they are spoiling the Queen's English and that they have to be teased? They are never ready to accept or say, "Were you there", "We were not there". They claim employing the relative verb "was" sounds much better than "were". There you go. It is their language and you cannot teach them how to speak their own language, a foreigner as you are. I cannot imagine how Asiedu Nketiah will go mad drinking gallons of "Akpeteshi", going on air if they will allow him, to scream his voice hoarse at the English youth.
Was it not this same emaciated Asiedu Nketiah whose ugliness cuts across bones unlike beauty that is only skin deep, who recently said, "Any idiot can go to court". Now as the nominated "chief Idiot", he prayed the Supreme Court to allow the NDC of which he is a General Secretary to join the suit Nana Akuffo-Addo & Co. has instituted against President Mahama and Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan. He always gets knifed on his own sword, as intellectually deficient with slimy mouth as he is.
I will arrange to have his Intelligence Quotient (IQ) tested because he unceasingly amazes me, how he portrays himself as though he has the brain of a four-year old in his skull.
Rockson Adofo