The 10th edition of Africa Magic Viewer’s Choice Award held earlier this year. It is the entertainment industry’s equivalent of the CNN African Journalist of the Year Award which does not hold anymore, regrettably.
And while we watched Africa Magic Viewer’s Choice Award at home, on TV, a friend sent this note:
“Fúnkẹ́ Akíndélé committed a gaffe on the AMVCA stage tonight. She pronounced Tapestry as Tápẹ́stry. My breath galloped.”
After recovering from the gale of laughter that enveloped me. I replied, “Well, I hope your galloping breath didn’t fall into a pothole? Funke looked absolutely gorgeous yesterday. English can humble anyone.”
The burden of stardom is relentless scrutiny by the public, it is the cross that stardom casts on a celebrity, one which she must bear with mirth and grace.
Once, I went out to buy fruits in the days that I featured on TVC as a news analyst, as I haggled, a guy passed by, walked back and with a crooked smile said to me, ‘I know you’. I smiled. ‘Yes, I know you, yes TVC’. I smiled still. ‘I enjoy watching you’. I muttered a reluctant but heartfelt ‘thank you’, with a smile still. He left with gait. It was a Sunday morning.
The trader woman I was trying to buy from smiled broadly, ‘’so you be actress? Hey TV people’’. She was the reason my ‘thank you’ was a reluctant one to that guy.
Now she would inflate the price of the fruits I was haggling, I thought. But she was benevolent. ‘Oya bring money, make I sell am for you like that’. I laughed, paid and left.
The other day I attended an award ceremony for animators in Lagos. As I started to mingle, a young man came to me, ‘good evening ma’. ‘Hey, good evening’. I smiled. That smile is a ready currency for public figures.
The conversation was a small one back and forth until I heard, ‘I knew it was you when I saw your skirt’. Ah! An involuntary exclamation escaped from my mouth in utter consternation. ‘How?’
‘I know the skirt’, he went on, ‘it was the one you wore at the flag off of your pad scholarship for girls, I saw it on my friend’s page on Facebook’.
A knowing, yet surprised look took over my face, ‘I see’. I said, dryly. Then added, ‘‘But that’s unfair on me, to identify me with a skirt I rarely wear ntori Olohun, hanhan!’’
He threw his head back and laughed heartily.
I continued in my own defence, ‘But I am not a celebrity, I can repeat my dresses.’’ Yet he argued, “I understand that but no ma, you are a celebrity’’.
As we chatted, others joined and I drew them into the conversation with, “he said I am a celebrity, I have been arguing with him that I am a media professional, it’s quite different from being a celebrity.” I did not win the argument. They outnumbered me.
I remember once before, in Radio Nigeria, a former staff of mine came to my office to tell me that I was wearing a particular neck piece too frequently, it’s as if I own no other piece, and she thought she should draw my attention to it, because ‘people’ were beginning to talk about it.
Sigh. Public scrutiny is the bane of public figures. Remember the Vice President’s clothing to the Nigerian Bar Association’s event pre-2023 election. Young Nigerians were unrelenting with their criticism via memes.
Back to Funke Akindele and the movie industry. In the bonus chapter of my book, Pronunciation Guide. The Spoken Word. I wrote that, there is a need for speech consultants to be on set to correct badly pronounced words so that they don’t make their ways to the undiscerning public through movies.
We are second language speakers of the English Language, we process our thoughts mostly in our mother tongues, it doesn’t help that the language borrows words from other languages, in addition to arbitrary concord and pronunciation rules.
Back to Tapestry. Funke Akindele was right. It is tap + i + stree. Watch your intonation though. It is not mi mi do.
•Funke Treasure is a speech coach and author of two books on pronunciation for second language users of the English Language.
