You not speak my language?
Oct 29, 2004
ONE of the scares about travelling is how to communicate with people who don’t speak your language. It is made even worse if you’re not just passing through a place, but staying on for sometime.
By Bob Kisiki
ONE of the scares about travelling is how to communicate with people who don’t speak your language. It is made even worse if you’re not just passing through a place, but staying on for sometime. You have to find your way around, make essential purchases here and there and greet people. It is only good manners. But you don’t know their language.
If you are lucky, you will end up like the fellow we read about, who went on a long journey in a foreign land and wanted to know everything about the area he was travelling in. Whatever he saw, he asked people around whose it was… all manner of houses, vehicles, farms, name it. And to each question, he received one answer: Angazi. Oh, how rich Mr. Angazi must be, he thought to himself.
Well, he went along, and as he returned in the evening, he met a group carrying a hearse. He asked who the dead person was, and he was told: Angazi! Oh goodness, Angazi; that fellow who owned literally everything, was dead.
How futile life could be! What he did not know was that the word ‘angazi’ meant ‘I don’t know!’ This seemed to be a land of people who did not know much.
If you are unlucky, some notorious fellow will teach you all the crude words in the language, and oh, the shame that will follow wherever you go, calling matooke some word only gynaecologists use, or asking for the way to an act nobody mentions in public!
Yet there is worse than this, as far as language in alien places goes. Many places have got names they call strangers by. In many cases, these names are far from flattering. They will coin a word that, in their minds, best brings out the awkwardness, rawness or some other nasty trait in a given tribe, race, gender or other category of people to which a stranger belongs.
They will actually go ahead and use such words in the hearing of the stranger and the poor fellow will not even suspect it is s/he they are insulting, let alone know that what they are saying is insulting.
For example, I have lived in a place before, where pretty nubile girls were called Melons. So men in that place would talk about a woman in her presence… even saying terrible things about her and poor fellow would think they were talking about a melon.
I am told that in Buganda, the word Munyoro did not mean a person from Bunyoro, but anyone who was a stranger, and especially one they considered of low social standing.
So even when the Banyoro themselves say ‘Omunyoro George Bush’ to mean ‘Hon. George Bush’, the Baganda just scoff at them, for to them it is an insult to Bush to call him a Munyoro.
In Busoga, all northerners are called ‘badokolo’. The name is probably onomatopoeic, sounding rather like the way they are perceived to talk, by the Basoga. It all sounds like dokolo-dokolo. And the Luo will call Bantu speakers anam or luloka… a not-so-mean reference, but even then, it is not what Bantu are supposed to be called.
Bazungu have now got used to being called so, but I wonder how many of them take the trouble to find out what the term’s etymology is! It is a derivation from kuzunga, a reference to aimless movement. In a way, it means they are vagabonds, people moving from place to place without purpose.
But in reality, they got the name because the local people did not know the purpose for which the whites had come ‘loitering’ about. If only they had known!
A friend was recently studying in Pretoria, South Africa. She used to hear people talk about makwerekwere, and did not know what it meant, till one day when she was travelling by taxi, and a non-S. African she was on the taxi with had to disembark. She asked to be dropped at a given point, but the staff disregarded her call, and left her some place further ahead. After she disembarked, the talk turned to how makwerekwere can be chaotic.
In another incident, a Musoga, who was called ow’ogunene wondered how a South African had known he had large genitals. But later found out that it was Zulu for “your honour.â€
It is downright rude, and all the tribalism and racism many bear in their breasts is carried on wings like these, of names attributed to people for what they are believed to be.
ONE of the scares about travelling is how to communicate with people who don’t speak your language. It is made even worse if you’re not just passing through a place, but staying on for sometime. You have to find your way around, make essential purchases here and there and greet people. It is only good manners. But you don’t know their language.
If you are lucky, you will end up like the fellow we read about, who went on a long journey in a foreign land and wanted to know everything about the area he was travelling in. Whatever he saw, he asked people around whose it was… all manner of houses, vehicles, farms, name it. And to each question, he received one answer: Angazi. Oh, how rich Mr. Angazi must be, he thought to himself.
Well, he went along, and as he returned in the evening, he met a group carrying a hearse. He asked who the dead person was, and he was told: Angazi! Oh goodness, Angazi; that fellow who owned literally everything, was dead.
How futile life could be! What he did not know was that the word ‘angazi’ meant ‘I don’t know!’ This seemed to be a land of people who did not know much.
If you are unlucky, some notorious fellow will teach you all the crude words in the language, and oh, the shame that will follow wherever you go, calling matooke some word only gynaecologists use, or asking for the way to an act nobody mentions in public!
Yet there is worse than this, as far as language in alien places goes. Many places have got names they call strangers by. In many cases, these names are far from flattering. They will coin a word that, in their minds, best brings out the awkwardness, rawness or some other nasty trait in a given tribe, race, gender or other category of people to which a stranger belongs.
They will actually go ahead and use such words in the hearing of the stranger and the poor fellow will not even suspect it is s/he they are insulting, let alone know that what they are saying is insulting.
For example, I have lived in a place before, where pretty nubile girls were called Melons. So men in that place would talk about a woman in her presence… even saying terrible things about her and poor fellow would think they were talking about a melon.
I am told that in Buganda, the word Munyoro did not mean a person from Bunyoro, but anyone who was a stranger, and especially one they considered of low social standing.
So even when the Banyoro themselves say ‘Omunyoro George Bush’ to mean ‘Hon. George Bush’, the Baganda just scoff at them, for to them it is an insult to Bush to call him a Munyoro.
In Busoga, all northerners are called ‘badokolo’. The name is probably onomatopoeic, sounding rather like the way they are perceived to talk, by the Basoga. It all sounds like dokolo-dokolo. And the Luo will call Bantu speakers anam or luloka… a not-so-mean reference, but even then, it is not what Bantu are supposed to be called.
Bazungu have now got used to being called so, but I wonder how many of them take the trouble to find out what the term’s etymology is! It is a derivation from kuzunga, a reference to aimless movement. In a way, it means they are vagabonds, people moving from place to place without purpose.
But in reality, they got the name because the local people did not know the purpose for which the whites had come ‘loitering’ about. If only they had known!
A friend was recently studying in Pretoria, South Africa. She used to hear people talk about makwerekwere, and did not know what it meant, till one day when she was travelling by taxi, and a non-S. African she was on the taxi with had to disembark. She asked to be dropped at a given point, but the staff disregarded her call, and left her some place further ahead. After she disembarked, the talk turned to how makwerekwere can be chaotic.
In another incident, a Musoga, who was called ow’ogunene wondered how a South African had known he had large genitals. But later found out that it was Zulu for “your honour.â€
It is downright rude, and all the tribalism and racism many bear in their breasts is carried on wings like these, of names attributed to people for what they are believed to be.