I’m writing this with my full chest as a Nigerian, accepting the total possibility that it will be judged as written by chat GPT.
But what’s wrong with ChatGPT and why do I have to puff my already inflated Nigerian chest so loudly as we are known for.
I will get to that.
Disclaimer, any big English you read in this article was either inspired by my Nigerian primary school teacher, my pastor or one of my uncles who made us run for the dictionary every time he comes visiting.
Let’s delve into the story.
In American billionaire investor Paul Grahams voice and words “You don’t seem to grasp the distinction between having a limited vocabulary and choosing to write simply. From the midwit peak, all you see is lowlands surrounding you.”
Incase you are still wondering where this article is going, it means you have been under the Olumo rock in the past 2 days since Paul Graham, the founder of YC started a problem all by himself on X when he tweeted this – Someone sent me a cold email proposing a novel project. Then I noticed it used the word “delve.”
In a tweet that generated over 13 million impressions it was met with fierce rebuttal by Nigerians who in Twitter parlance dragged the American billionaire leading to a conclusion that he lacks robust vocabulary, leading to his response above on defense of his scarcity of vocabulary.
This matter has lead to the recent classification of Americans in general as deficient in necessary English vocabulary and badly spoken. This would be the sum of the assertion of Nigerians who used the opportunity to remind the UK that they should finally be exempted from the requirement to take the IELTS.
Infact another user of Elon Musks App claimed that Nigerians are actually Native English speakers. The End Sars activist tweeted “My major contribution to all of this is that Nigerians are native English speakers. The end”
At a point it seemed the American was fighting furiously like a wounded tiger as he backed back at his accusers who did not rate him favorably and spared no opportunity to school him in his first language using their second language.
In the tech investors bid to defend himself, he continued to blunder with the crowd as he decided to cite himself in the argument, as a user writes
“Paul G citing himself in his arguments makes this whole thing a lot more fun. Someone said he would never admit he was wrong. That’s okay. But bringing links to essays that he wrote to defend himself from accusations of bias is not something I saw coming.”
Let me discuss who Paul G is and his connection to Nigeria. He’s been to Lagos before and definitely is a household name in the tech circles as he founded one of the most active Venture Capital firms in the world. A lot of Nigerian founders have been funded through his firm. Infact it’s a dream come true if as a founder you get into one of the YC cohorts. You get a mouth watering investment of $500k in safe note, some of the strongest networks and you can get across the founders world. YC is usually the take off point to accessing more investments and investors for your startup. The accelerator program is the definitive zenith of accelerators world wide, with the most unicorns and notable startups having been funded by them, AirBnB, Reddit even Chat GPT, stripe, Drop box, and in Nigeria flutterwave, paystack, TAP and many
more.
YC leads accelerators in unicorn creation rate. An estimated 4.5% of startups that have gone through YC since 2010 have become billion dollar companies according to Pitchbook.com
So you would wonder why Nigerians decided to drag their benefactor and provider in the mud because his English vocabulary is found wanting.
It is no news that almost all startups in the Nigerian tech space are American companies and a-lot had been significantly funded by YC.
So what’s happening, is there a possibility this hits beyond his poor vocabulary?
As it would become clearer in the course of the exchange, Nigerians have come to the conclusion that a lot of their applications into YC must have been unsuccessful because their style of communication must have been deemed to be aided or done by chatgpt, and because Americans are low on vocabulary they passed on from it.
In the words of Timilehin who wrote
“now i know why i got denied from YC last year”
The user alluded to the gap in communication blamed on the use of big words like “delve” which is too big for Americans like the billionaire investor.
Now to Nigerians, is it true that our use of words could indeed be too flowery and the words too big? Or are we just a gracious race who can speak the language of our colonial master better than our fellow colonized race- the Americans?
To be honest we use a lot of flowery words, but should it be a fault. To us it is not, it is music to our ears as another user attempts to point out to Mr. Graham.
Yinka Obebe writes “True. Unnecessary words are a pain.
But there is beauty in the use of words aswell. They shorten explanations and convey perspective.
As with most African languages, the Yorubas enjoy using words and while a lot of same spellings might mean very different things, the power of words is beyond basic communication. For us it’s also the music of it.
The British do well using English in some of the most amazing ways that Americans may never understand, but Africans do, call it colonial but it’s beautiful none the less.”
But Billionaire Paul thinks this is about “the midwit peak” and concludes saying “all you see is lowlands surrounding you.”
Bosun Tijani, Nigerias Hon Minister for digital economy joined the conversation too saying
“Paul G. collected the AI roasting baton from me this week. Now that we have another case study, can we “delve” into the possible bias and lack of inclusion in AI dataset?”
As what will follows the ministers bias another writer on Twitter says “Pls don’t ship this GPT detection bias… people don’t want it. It’s too contextual to be precise”
I will close this article by sharing from an article written on BBC.com on 5th Feb 2017 titled Letters from Africa: Nigerias Art of Flowery Langauge.
The writer Adaobi Tricia Nwabani wrote of the letters between lovers
“And so, the typical love letter that many of us Nigerian girls received went something like this:
“My dearest, sweetest, most magnificent, paragon of beauty, I hope this letter finds you in a current state of sound body and mind.
“My principal reason for writing this epistle is to gravitate your mind towards an issue that has been troubling my soul.
“Even as I put pen to paper, my adrenalin is ascending on the Richter scale, my temperature is rising, the mirror in my eyes have only your divine reflection, the wind vane of my mind is pointing north, south and east at the same time.
“Indeed, when I sleep, you are the only thought in my medulla oblongata and I dream about you…”
If these sweet nothings were from a boy in whom you had absolutely no interest, the thing to do was to set his letter ablaze, enclose the ashes in an envelope and promptly return to sender.”
Do people still write love notes like this in Nigeria or they have exchanged that for short message on social media DMs. Let me know how you do it.
In the ensuing saga on the discourse (Americans get your dictionary), it’s the 3rd day and Paul Graham is not backing down.
He says
“Using more complicated words than you need isn’t using a language better. Rather the opposite.”
And trust that Nigerians are just getting started.
Jasiel Martin-Odoom writes “I am very glad we’ve come together as a people to remind @paulg he can’t mold the world into his image because his vocabulary is limited.
The world is not Silicon Valley.
Mr. Al Tech investor and writer of words – do better. Maybe read more non-American writers”
Who else could take on the worlds almighty Americans but the giants of Africa. People who have experience do not take on Nigerians online, this is a fact that you cannot win an argument with Nigerians online.
[URIS id=4463]
When two equally loud and aggressive people go at it, others take a comfortable seat as spectators.
Any wonder why the owners of the language themselves the people of Great Britain have been quiet since this debate.
Someone said they, the Britons always knew Americans can’t speak English. It’s the colonial energy for me and it’s both ways.
Share your thoughts and join the conversation on X.
