No doubt the phrases ‘un-
derprivileged’ and the ‘less
privileged’ have lived with
us for several years right from when
some of us were in the kindergartens
or nursery schools. It followed us
to elementary and primary schools
up to secondary then finally to the
tertiary institutions. The media
also embraced it, that most writers,
journalists and reporters relished it
so much that a day hardly passed by
without the reading and listening
public being fed with the once popu-
lar statements ‘under privileged’ and
later on ‘less privileged,’ phrases that
highlights the level of poverty in t)
he country.
Growing through the media
myself I was also caught up in the
craze of engaging the phrase ‘under
privileged’ when I am tempted to
speak and write about the dreg of
the society, those people at the rung
of the ladder who can hardly afford
the basic things of life. We report
them as the ‘under privileged’ of
the society. Later on, the pendulum
swung in favour of the expression
‘less privileged’ when the purists and
masters of the language discovered
that the phrase ‘under privileged’ has
been thoroughly weakened as a re-
sult of overused and should therefore
be rested. Editors and gatekeepers
in the Newsroom were instantly told
to yank it off whenever it crops up
in the script of the roving journalist
and reporter, that is for the serious
and popular press that are quick
to learn about it and move on with
fresh developments in the creative
industry as they break.
And so to prove the dynamism
of language, ‘less privileged’ would
soon fall out of favour as we saw in
the statement ‘under privileged.’ Syn-
onyms are words that mean the same
as another or phrases in the same
language as explained in the Oxford
dictionary of current English. One
must always be guided and use them
in order not to sound boring and
monotonous. What next or where
else can one turn to for succour now
that ‘less privileged’ has completed
its assignment and now exited? The
answer can be found in synonyms.
Creative writers and even the ad-
venturous journalist or reporter rely
on them as we depend on oxygen to
stay alive. In other words, synonym
is the oxygen of the writer if he or
she must sound right and write right.
Now that we know let’s navigate the
synonyms that could possibly replace
‘less privileged’ statement.
The closest of them are ‘poor,’
‘deprived,’ and ‘masses,’ words that
are not only short but direct and
functional. So, we can correctly write
and report about “Poor Nigerians
in dire need of a leader who could
salvage the situation.” Similarly, the
synonym ‘deprived’ may be pre-
ferred instead of the adjective ‘poor’
something of low standard or to tell
of someone who has no money or
paint a sympathetic picture of one
who is maltreated. “Mr. Bonny sent
the poor woman away empty handed
without giving her a second chance.”
The noun ‘deprivation’ from the
verb ‘deprive’ tells us about hardship
resulting from lack of basic necessi-
ties of life, to prevent one from hav-
ing or using something that could
possibly better his or her condition.
As we often hold our leaders respon-
sible for the lack of or near absence
of basic amenities in our villages
or rural areas thereby encouraging
what is commonly referred to as
the rural urban drift characteristics
of the present day society. Govern-
ment should now focus more on
making the rural areas habitable by
providing basic amenities such as
water, roads, hospitals, cottage and
agro-based industries among other
conveniences to stem the tide of
urban migration.
However, of concern to me is
the manner we engage the noun
‘deprivation’ particularly the spoken
form. Like the verb ‘derive’ and the
noun ‘derivation’ many wrongly
pronounce ‘deprivation’ and ‘deri-
vation.’ They attempt to vocalize the
nouns ‘deprivation’ and ‘derivation’
the same way the verbs ‘deprive’ and
‘derive’ are pronounced. So, we tend
to hear people speak the words, cor-
rect though, ‘dipraive-deprive’ and
‘diraive-derive.’
Not so for the nouns ‘deprivation-
dep-ri-vay-sh’n’ and ‘derivation-
de-ri-vay-sh’n.’ The RI is correctly
pronounced ‘depRIvation’ and not
‘depRAIvation’ as some would have
it vocalized. In the same vain in
‘derivation’ the RI takes the form
of ‘deRIvation’ not ‘deRAIvation’ in
pronouncing the word.
