How Cool are You?

It all began a few years ago with lol on yahoo messenger, some translated lol as ‘laugh out loud’ and other as ‘lots of love’.

Today, with the intoxication of Blackberry messenger, the list is endless and they say if you don’t know what these acronyms stand for, then you are sooooo not cool!

Aiit – Alright
ao – how
Brb – be right back
Gud – good
HBD – Happy birthday
Hw – How are you
HML – Happy married life
kk – Okay
LMAO – Laughing my a… off
OMG – Oh my God
DP – Display picture

And the list goes on and on and on…

Ao seems to be the way people with the ‘h-factor’ pronounce HOW, and I am surprised that that’s suddenly cool.

Just in case you are unaware, the h-factor refers to the inability of certain people to correctly pronounce words which begin with ‘h’ because of their local accents. So you hear them say ‘ouse’ for HOUSE, ‘ome’ for HOME, ‘hi’ for I and so forth.


While being cool has a feel good factor especially for those older ones who still want to feel young, what worries me is that the quality of spoken and written English continues to deteriorate among our youth.


I recently heard a most bizarre conversation on the radio. A lady called to complain about having not been admitted into the university and she claimed she didn’t know why? Surprisingly, when the OAP (on-air personality as they called) enquired about her JAMB score, it turned out that she had scored 105 in the previous year and declined to 99 in current year. How then was she expecting to have been admitted into a university?

It is absolutely ridiculous. The entry level cut-off mark back in the day was 200 which meant that universities would admit only students who scored above 200 in JAMB and the stakes were higher with different courses for instance, intending medical students had to score about 260 and above, and my older ones complained that our standards had fallen as that time. I wonder what they would say now.


I feel like this posts is a repetition of the last considering that my last post was about language and spoken English. However, I guess that’s the whole idea behind this blog, I get to unleash whatever bothers me!


It continues to worry me how education standards are falling in Nigeria because in truth, there’s only so much development we can attain as a nation without Education.