National Issues
My Reaction to Prof Farooq kperogi, on why Murtadha can also be Murtala in our Indigenous Languages -By Bello Abdulmalik Funsho
My opinion is If Prof Kperogi is very familiar with Arabic names, Murtadho/Murtadha being adultratedly pronounced in Nigeria as Murtala should not be strange. Actually, he has explained the basis for the variation which are traceable to sociolinguistic influences, particularly sociolect (Societal ways of using language). Reason why the name is Mortaza in another clime and can be Morthaza/Murtadha where else.
Some days back, I read a write-up written by that great columnist from kwara North, Professor Farooq kperogi about epistemology of personal names, which Linguists called onomastics. That passion moved an amateur like me on this field of Linguistics to write this little as a reaction to his column.
He used the name of that populist military Head of State, Murtala Muhammad who happened to be the most prominent Nigerian bearer of Murtala, as an example and many other names.
My opinion is If Prof Kperogi is very familiar with Arabic names, Murtadho/Murtadha being adultratedly pronounced in Nigeria as Murtala should not be strange. Actually, he has explained the basis for the variation which are traceable to sociolinguistic influences, particularly sociolect (Societal ways of using language). Reason why the name is Mortaza in another clime and can be Morthaza/Murtadha where else.
The noticable aspect of the variation are phonetically and phonemically subsumable.
The name is borrowed from Arabic lanɡuaɡe like many others and the non-existinɡ phonemic properties of it must be provided with closest and easiest equivalent. Thus /ð/ a voiced dental fricative sound which is phonemic (Meaninɡ chanɡing sound) is replaced with /l/ which is voiced alveolar lateral approximant or sometimes /d/ a voiced alveolar plosive sound or /z/ a voiced alveolar fricative sound dependinɡ on the available and permissable sounds in a ɡiven lanɡuaɡe where the name is domesticated.
In a nutshell, while /ð/ sound is phonemic in Arabic lanɡuaɡe, [d], [l], [z]̮ are possible alternatives in other languages throuɡh free variation phonoloɡical process. However the alternative are not arbitrarily chosen but because they share some features with the phoneme
/ð/.
The features can either be in place of articulation which is dental-alveolar as found in
/l/ and /d/ and also in manner of articulation which is fricative as found in /z/. Therefore /l/ is the simplified alternative adopted by Nigerians amongst the two alternatives [l] and [d] available in their languages.
