The first time I recognized I had the “H-factor” as a young Yoruba woman was in an English language class in my senior year of secondary school. I’m not sure who first used this term or how they came up with it, but that’s what they call it. Perhaps on purpose, our teacher had called out terms for us to spell correctly in our notebooks; words like eight, ate, hate, hair, air, hear, and ear, to mention a few. I was convinced I would ace the test, but not until he started to make corrections and I was puzzled. I had gotten almost everything wrong, and I could not understand why or how, until my classmate, Ronke, pointed out to me that we had heard wrongly because we had the ‘H-factor’. Ronke had, in fact, scored ten out of ten. English major in the actual mud. As a non-Nigerian (non-Yorubas should understand what this means, but for those who do not), having the ‘H- factor’ as a Yoruba person means you put the alphabet H anywhere you find a vowel. This means I could tell someone ‘...
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