What do these mean? "Begome Gadolig"/"Begome Ordodox"

[do_justly_love_mercy]

I’ve been seeing on Twitter, Reddit, etc. these phrases where people say “begom(e)/begum gadolig/ordodox”. I get that they are trying to say “Become Catholic” or “Become Orthodox”, but why is it written in this funny way? Is it a phonetic way of transcribing non-standard English pronunciation? Is it supposed to be, hmm, Indian? Some kind of African pronunciation? There are hundreds of results for it on the internet, but the context never explains what it’s about.

 

[Annie]

This article is about the launching of a BBC service for people in West Africa who, they say, use pidgin with those with whom they do not share a language.

However, they say some children have learned it as their first language, so it is becoming or has become a creole language (if you want to get technical).

Why people are doing this? I don’t know, but the internet is international, maybe some West Africans are posting?

 

[Tis_Bearself]

“Begom” is associated with Spurdo Sparde cartoons and memes, which began on some Finnish message board and spread around the Internet. As Spurdo in his English incarnation is often politically incorrect and insulting to Catholicism, Christianity, Judaism and other religions, I’ll leave it at that. I do think however that the “Begom Gadolig” has taken on a life of its own and many of the people are just using it as a catchphrase and not in any attempt to insult or demean at this point, as people often don’t go tracing all the associations of viral Internet catchphrases of the moment.

 

[do_justly_love_mercy]

Thanks, that is interesting to know. I would never have worked it out for myself!