Nigerian English; -ate back-formed verbs

[Amy West]

Thanks much for the link: at Woo State most of our foreign students
are from Africa, and I had a student last semester whose writing had
some of these dialect markers.

The mention of "felicitate" and "jubilate" remind me of a recent
conversation with some community college colleagues, one in early
education, who noted that her students were using the verbs
"imaginate" and "observate". Logically back-formed from "imagination"
and "observation", but nonetheless surprising that they didn't
connect the verbs "imagine" and "observe" with those nouns. I
personally liked "imaginate" because it could be a blend of "imagine"
and "create".

---Amy West

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