The English language has a lot of words which can be used in many different ways and in many different experiences.

One such example is the word matter. In fact, matter can mean just about anything. It could be one of the most useful words in the English language.

Let’s get to the heart of the matter ---- a matter of principle(原则).

If someone says that you owe(欠) him $50, but you don’t, a friend might say, “Well, you could pay him the $50. It’s not that much money. Then you won’t have to hear him say it anymore.” But if you do not owe him the money, do not pay him the money. It’s a matter of principle.

There is another way to use the word matter. But be careful with your choices of words.

If you ask someone, “What’s the matter?”, it shows you are worried about the other person. But saying, “What’s the matter with you?” has a completely different meaning. And it usually sounds rude. In fact, when you say, “What’s the matter with you?”, you are suggesting that the person did something wrong or stupid.

Another expression that could sound rude is to say, “It doesn’t matter to me.” Here, it depends on the context, and how you say it.

Let’s say you tell someone that a friend just got a big raise at work. That person answers with, “It doesn’t matter to me.” Here, it means he or she does not care. And it sounds rude.

But saying, “Oh, you pick where we eat dinner. It doesn’t matter to me.” does not sound rude. In the situation, “it doesn’t matter” shows you are easy-going.

No matter how you look at it and what you say, matter is a very useful word. And it’s only a matter of time before you will become an expert on the use of matter.

Can you imagine there being a community where boys and girls growing up together can finally speak different languages? In Ubang, Nigeria, it really happens. It’s not exactly clear what percentage of the words in the men’s and women’s languages are different, but there are enough examples to make sentences sound different when they’re spoken by the opposite sex. For “clothing”, men use the word “nki”, while women say “ariga”; “kitchi” means “tree” for men, while women say “okweng”. These are not just some slight pronunciation differences, but totally different words. “It’s almost like two different lexicons (词汇表),” a language expert, Chi-Chi Undie said. “There are a lot of words that men and women share in common, but there are others which are totally different depending on your sex. They don’t sound alike, and don’t have the same letters. They are completely different words.”

Interestingly, both men and women are able to understand each other perfectly in Ubang, as both boys and girls grow up around their parents and get to learn both languages, but by the age of 10, boys are expected to speak in the male tongue. It seems that there is a stage when the male will discover he is not using the rightful language. When he starts speaking the men’s language, you know the maturity is coming into him.

No one really knows how or why the double-language tradition of Ubang began. Chi-Chi Undie believes the two languages are the result of a “double-sex culture” where men and women operate in two separate spheres (范围) and live in separate worlds that rarely come together. However, she admits this is a weak theory, as the double-sex culture is present in many parts of Africa, where there are no different languages for men and women.

Today, with English words constantly entering the lexicon of young Nigerians, Ubang’s two languages are in danger of being lost forever. Worse still, neither the male language nor the female language is written down, so they both rely on young people to pass them down to the next generation.