On one hand, they use mediocre, overly formal, but borderline-acceptable spelling and grammar; on the other hand, they’re (in)famous for their seemingly random use of capitalizations and run-on sentences.
Is there something in the source language (and this is assuming that these letters actually originate in Nigeria or some other foreign country) that renders overall English translation a passable affair but capitalization and comma/period usage all but hopeless?
The consensus theory seems to be that they do it on purpose to make themselves appear less intelligent or educated and therefore less threatening and more trustworthy.
Praise God Yes!. iT is only Because THOU believes that i cna even ask. IT IS NOT FOR ME.
pERHAPS you have herd of me I amd Mariam Abbacha and my husband has been killed due to the serious nature of his love for god and the. And the corupted leaders have frozen all moneys and shit.
Plrease allow me to save your soul and help me get all out moneys of the country and into gods hands. we Want nothing to do wiith the EVIL moneys that are our heritage.
We take American Express, Visa and Master Card. :p:p
I’ve always supposed it’s been due to them not having a native English speaker to do the translations for them. Or someone with a not very strong ESL.
So they have to resort to their equivalent of babelfish to translate their pleas for assistance to English. If you aren’t multilingual, have one of your friends who is to rate the quality of the translations returned by the above link.
Or just take some random text and translate it to another language and then back to English. I’m sure the results will look very familiar.
But English is the primary language of business, education, and the media in Nigeria. There’s no online Ibo->English translators that I know of.
I notice a similar thing with Indian users on my message board. They kindly very much please use Formal, stilted English but ,punctuation in the Strange places and overuse of The definite articles ,random Capitalization very muchly ,do the needful with LOTS ,of exclamation points Please!!! One could attribute it to ESL but they keep making the same gaffes. Same thing with the Nigerian scammers; instead of errors of all kinds, there’s certain trademark errors and traits that are universal.
The Nigerians speak ‘pidgin’ which is a variety of English (well to be accurate there are loads of ‘pidgins’)
What they write, to them, looks sophisticated, for example they would talk about a ‘barrister’, where in the USA one would say ‘lawyer’ and in the UK ‘Solicitor’.
Similarly, reading an Indian paper/magazine, written in English, makes one slightly confused by the vocabulary and construction.
However, Nigerian scam letters, such as the bit quoted above, show little sign of being influenced by pidgin (which is rather similar to Jamaican creole). They are simply awkward standard English.
I’ve collected examples of lots of scam letters (in English, French, and occasionally even Spanish). My impression is that letters that purportedly come from government officials, bank managers, etc., are notably better in grammar, spelling, and construction (although still usually awkward and with multiple mistakes) than those supposedly sent by preachers, widows of local merchants, and so forth. This makes me think that the scammers are, at least to some degree, intentionally introducing mistakes in order to throw the potential scammee off guard, and make them think they are smarter and more sophisticated thant the scammer.
IANAIndian, but my experience interacting with Indians makes me think that Indian English owes a lot to Victorianism, because of how and when English was imposed on India. My WAG is that the style you describe comes from emulating, with varying degrees of success, the Anglophile tradition there.
My impression is that Indians get a lot of instruction on vocabulary and formalness, but not much in punctuation, especially use of commas and capitalization. They seem to drop them in almost randomly.
Indians also tend not to learn typing, because it’s still considered a low service/non-professional skill, so when they keyboard themselves, they tend to be sloppy and not pay much attention to things like proper spacing around punctuation marks.
This is another thing that makes me think they may be using some sort of online translation service. Some of the terms are technically correct, but not words that are in standard usage for conversation. They’ll put in their word for lawyer and then pick one from the returned list of “barrister, lawyer, solicitor, shyster”
And while there are no Ibo->English translators that I know of, the operative words are “That I know of.”
Wow. I get Nigerian scam letters all the time, but I’ve never gotten a Russian bride scam letter. Am I missing something? How many do they promise to send over?
The comparison to Indian English is a good one. Nigerian English branched off in colonial times. Since it is pretty exclusively a language of business, education and government, it doesn’t see a lot of usage on the street- which means it hasn’t seen a ton of change since. Lots of words have stuck around that have evolved in our version of English.
As for the formality, this is also just a part of the culture in that area. There are very specific ways to word formal documents. In French, I had to begin every letter- even a letter requesting to close my bank account- with “It is my honor to have the humble pleasure to ask of your esteemed presence…to close my bank account” There is a whole system of hierarchy and respect there that is tough to explain exactly. But surely a lot of it goes to a mix of colonialism, a rigid school system, and an heirarchal tribal tradition.
The spelling and stuff is almost certainly because even among educated people, writing skills can be spotty. It’s an oral culture, not a written culture. There is not a ton of written material around, and people rarely read and write as part of their everyday lives. In Cameroon, I noticed even college professors would move their lips as they read, and were intimidated by novel-length books. The English teacher at my school was proud that he read one book a year. Reading and writing are still specialized skills, and even people who can do it aren’t great at it.
Pidgin is a different story- it’s more influenced by local languages and to the unpracticed ear is pretty incomprehensible. Here is a copy to a delightful Cameroonian Pidgin Bible.
I’ll never forget walking on to my school campus in Cameroon and a teacher asking me if I was planning to “invigilate” exams. We looked at each other in complete confusion for a while until I realized that was the word for “proctor.”
The grammar errors aren’t that bizarre.
The capitalisation isn’t that random, for example, it’s just a few nouns erroneously capitalised.
I think it’s simply errors in the original author’s knowledge of grammar, and since the scammers base their messages on maybe a handful of originals (after all, most of these scams read almost identically), they perpetuate and spread these grammar errors.
As for the random newlines, the simplest explanation is that the message was being typed without word wrapping and justification and therefore the typist was manually trying to make the lines fit a certain width of the screen / page.
And yeah, before you say it: I’m aware that there are probably grammar errors in this post
A translation from Ibo (or any other one of the hundreds of local languages) is highly improbably. Anyone who knows how to read is also going to know English, and there is no tradition of formal writing in most of these languages.
When I was working in Nigeria in the mid 1960’s many villages had a “professional” letter-writers who would compose any formal correspondence that was needed by the locals… Most of these were old men, probably educated in the midst of the colonial period. Hence the formal and slightly old-fashioned style.
I hope this isn’t a hijack, because it’s a serious question and, I think, pertinent to the topic.
Are there ‘bots that write scam letters? I was advertising for a roommate recently, both on roommates.com and craigslist. Almost 50% of the replies were scams. The replies were very similar and shared many of the same characteristics (female, either not born in or not currently residing in my country, between 25-30 yrs old, always included their relationship status (always single), height (but not weight), hobbies and interests, some version of “I haven’t seen your place, but I trust you”, some version of “I’m not currently working but don’t worry I can afford the rent”, and some plausible (but barely) reason why we couldn’t communicate by phone) but had subtle differences (different name, slightly different height, different country of origin, different versions of the quoted examples above, etc.). It almost seemed like there were fill-in-the-blanks – name, country, height, hobbies – and acceptable content – Jane/Joan/June, CountyA/CountryB/CountryC, 5’7”/5’8”/5’9”, etc. – and they just mixed and matched content.
Does this happen with the Nigerian scam letters? “I am (lawyer/widow/gov’t official) of (firm/family/agency) with a (deal/proposition/offer) for (you kind sir/discreet business partner/new friend).” Are there ‘bots that just mix & match and send ‘em out?
