Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Laughable linguistics

I've been here long enough, now, to be really aware of my surroundings. The first few weeks I was taking in so much, I couldn't really see the city around me -- I had no way of understanding it. Now I can recognize a shop from a distance; I know what a supermarket looks like; I can tell the difference between a player and a gentleman; I can pick cultivated land and uncultivated land, or rich from poor.

There are still a few things I have to keep in the foreground of my consciousness. English, for example, is much easier to understand when I focus on the differences. It could be as much as word selection: I say waste basket, they say dust bin. I say zee, they say zed. I say batteries, they say cells. If someone doesn't understand me the first time, I slow down when I'm talking and start using synonyms, hoping that eventually I'll hit on a word similar to what the Brits use. It usually works in four or five tries.

It helps, too, to remember the differences in pronunciation. Just like the Wikipedia entry will tell you, in one prevalent dialect, the "l" and "r" sound are the same. And maybe it's the English influence, but a lot of vowel phonemes shift. For example, "sir" can sound like "sah." Emphasis falls on different syllables -- in English stressors typically fall on the first or third syllable; here, it's the second. So Makerere university sounds like ma-CARE-reh-ray. And you can bet when folks speak they will put the right emPHAsis on the wrong sylLAble. And then there are what I think of as bouncing vowels. Terminal consonants are no good here; words are supposed to end in vowels. So you get these gratuitous "eh" and "ah" sounds at the ends of words. To my ears, it sounds like someone has thrown down the word and it bounced off the floor a little -- that's why I call them bouncing vowels. Exempla gratia, bouncing becomes "bouncingeh." Cat might become "catah." And it seems common to give words that end in "s" a second syllable. Clothes really are cloth-es, just like the entry below says. Words might be "word-es."

Then there are the little things I have learned in Swahili and Luganda. Masao means "stop," as in stop the taxi, please, this is my exit. Webale means "thank you." I learned that one last night, and it makes me feel a lot better to be able to properly thank my guests. Sevo is "sir," and nyambo is "madam." Habari gani means "how are you" in Swahili, and the answer is something that sounds like "musuri." And then, of course, there are my three words from Karamoja: Ajoka (how's it going?), ajok (it goes), and alakara (thanks).

Of course, I'm not the only person around here who has trouble with language. The evidence: Across the street from my hotel in Ntinda is a shop called "Shandard Signs." You will also find "Kololo Close" for a clothes shop in Kololo. Today I saw a matatu with the words "Prays Jesus" written in the window. Malapropisms like this are very common. And then, there are the communications that are just culturally awkward. For example, the sign "GAIN BUMS QUICKLY - no side effects." Well gee, I'm glad I can gain my bums without catching a cold or something ...

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