Linguistic Anecdotes

One of the most remarkable things about living in west Africa is it’s diverse languages. There are many, over a dozen including several dialects, in the small country of The Gambia; they are all highly unique having evolved through centuries of culture and traditions, originating from diverse regions on the continent only to find a modern home along the Gambia river today. It amazes me on a daily basis the amount of linguistic acuity the people here have of multiple distinct languages. To top it off these are languages that for thousands of years has never been written down, and yet many of the people here, with out the aid of books, are able to comprehend several of these languages proficiently merely by spoken word. Histories and cultural tradition have been handed down orally for generation. I have decided because of this to give my own, relatively short, reflection on a few of these ethnic groups I’m exposed to here.

Let me start by trying to help you grasp the multitude of ethnic groups that have, for my peace corps service at least, become my family away from home. As you well know I, like most Peace Corps volunteers around the world, have been granted a local Gambian name. This is probably for two reasons, one, to facilitate a family like acceptance into the local community, and two, because it’s pretty much like trying to get a brick wall to do the hokey pokey that a Gambian will be able to pronounce, “Steven Snyderman” correctly. Thus I was so appropriately dubbed, “Demba Barrow”. The Borrows, of the ‘man na si’ lineage to be specific, (literally translated to, “the Borrows that never sit” a reflection of their history as hard workers or ADHD was secretly rampant in the family) who have always been of the Mandinka tribe. My ‘tooma’ or namesake, Demba (which I like to always mention means ‘warrior’) on the other hand was a punk little kid who spoke Mandinka but was actually of Sarahule origin, a tribe known for being smart and wealthy businessmen, yes I know, the Sarahule-Jewish irony is uncanny. As I moved to my permanent village I took on the Surname of my gracious hosts the Jarju’s (pronounced “Ja-ju”). Thus I’m currently known as Demba “warrior” Jarju… even says so on my “official” hospital name tag.

Jarju is a very common surname of the Jola tribe. The Gambian Jarju’s come from three distinct lineages, but the family of with I live go under the Jarju ‘mam bori qura ning bunyango’ line; ‘man bori’ meaning “the Jarju’s who don’t run”, which I can only assume means we are just way to smart to have to run anywhere, and thus send small children to run for us, and ‘qura ning bunyango’ refers to both the metal anvil base and pliers respectively used by blacksmiths, in lieu of the family’s history as metalworkers. Though my family here is Jola a majority of the modern Jolas have assimilated into Mandinkas. Jolas were the first to truly settle the lower Gambian river but when the Mandinkas of the powerful Mali empire traveled west they brought most of their culture with them, to the victors go the spoils, which is why the majority of the Gambia now speaks Mandinka. The village along the border where I live though was founded by Fula cow-herdsman in attempts to find better grazing land. Like most of the modern Gambia everyone is family, I’d like to reiterate it’s a very, very small country. Thus I like to think of myself as an assimilated Jola who speaks Mandinka living in a traditionally Fula village with a Sarahule namesake. Alright let’s speed things up a bit, frankly I’m a terrible teacher of history and rather than to let you all fall asleep reading lets just move on. How’s that for the worst literary transition ever, English teachers around the world cringe.

Fula.
The language to be politically correct is known as “Pulaar” and the people who speak it are known as Fula. They are a minority in the Gambia as well as pretty much every country in sub-Saharan Africa from Senegal to Mozambique. The Fula people are known to be highly nomadic and one of the few ethnic groups in west Africa to domesticate and care for cattle; because of this they’ve picked up a few undeserved stereotypes for being cow stealers and people will commonly joke by reminding you to tie up your cattle at night so the Fula’s don’t steal them. Also the Fula people have, like the Sarahule developed a clever knowledge of business and to this day are the sole owners of, I’m sure others would attest, almost 95% of all Gambian village shops or bitiks as they are called locally. Fulas are known to be incredibly smart and most are fluent in several local languages; as a requirement of nomadic life I’m sure, picking up languages has had to come easier for them.

Each of these languages are incredibly distinct, so to more clearly display my point I will take the words for “yes” and “no” in each as a constant. Yes, in the language of Pulaar is pronounced, “Eh”, and so I have amply christened it “the language of the Fonz”, ehhhhhhhhhhh *snap fingers in air*… I may have unintentionally dated my parents. No, then in Pulaar is “Ala”, and yes it bares a striking resemblance to the Arabic word for God, though Pulaar was already hundreds of centuries old by the time Islam graced it’s borders. The language seems to roll off the tongue smoothly and I’ve always found it quite easy to hear spoken even with a typical west African bluntness. More commonly the Fulas are known for a specific type of traditional scaring done either right below the eyes or along the temples which signifies the pinnacle of beauty. Peace Corps volunteers like to get it done as a sort of tour of service tattoo but usually on the shoulders or legs.

Wolof.
Wolof, or ‘olof as it’s said more commonly is considered the business language. This is because the Wolof’s originated in Senegal and is the most spoken language next to French in Senegal today. Due to the shared border and many shared cultures with the Gambia and Senegal when doing business it is almost always in Wolof. All this “business” on the other hand takes place in the capital where the majority of the Wolof people live. Due in turn to this fact, wolof is also the official language of Gambian television. Though Wolofs are by no means the majority in the country, they are the majority of TV owners. Let me diverge a bit. Gambian television maybe the most hilarious thing you ever watch on screen, not because of their extensive comedic talent but more along the same ways watching your high school’s rendition of the news recorded via handheld. I mean this by no offence, but when the weather reports include, “So today there will be clouds flying above the country, and our temperature will be hot.” It makes you think a little. At least they don’t lie like American weather channels. What’s even better are the commercials. The Wolof language, if I had to place it, most closely resembles Klingon and if you aren’t a star trek fan then the best way I can describe it is sounding like a person choking to death on chicken bone. So when you have the luxury of listening to this, let’s use the word unique, language spoken by a rather hefty older Wolof woman trying to sell you canned food on the TV, you should thank god that there is very little milk in the country to be bought that you could have been drinking and then spewed out your nose.

I will say that peace corps volunteers here usually end up learning a variety of languages. Most are trained in Mandinka, Wolof, or Pulaar but occasionally I’ve met some PCVs who are able to have the opportunity to learn Jola and Sarahule and more; because of this we’ve started a fun little rivalry between our ethnic groups. The Wolof volunteers will ask the Fula volunteers where they put their cows when they stole them the night before, the Fulas will scrutinize the Mandinkas for being so damn inept at language, then in turn the Mandinkas, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, love to give the Wolofs a hard time about their less than sweet sounding language… at least in peace corps circles. Eugene, or “data” as Alex and I like to call him (you know the wacky Asian kid from the Goonies that has all the cool gadgets), a Wolof volunteer living in north bank is usually our daily joke mate as we were all in the same training class. Alex and I have started poking fun of the wolof morning greeting that sound something like, “SUPA SEPI SEAAA!” and we proclaim this when ever we see him with company. Eugene, bless him, just shakes his head. In the end he has the last laugh as Wolof is probably the most useful of all the languages.

As I said I would use the words “Yes” and “No” as a constant for the eclectic nature of these languages I will proceed. Yes, in Wolof is: “Wow”. No joke, you couldn’t write it better yourself. It honestly never gets old to hear people walking around the street saying “wow” this or “wow” that, you’d think Serakunda market was just the best damn place since Disney world. The word for no, on the other hand is only slightly less amusing: “de-det”. I’ll end this section by giving you the most offensive thing you can say to a Wolof, which I learned only two well because at the time I felt it was amusing to say to annoying children, it went something like, “I will circumcise you ten times over if you don’t leave me alone”. The children then proceeded, though I was only told through translation, to threaten to beat me to death. This is probably a great time to state the Wolofs are known for their proficiency in wrestling. Truth be told every year there is a tournament of the strongest Wolof fighters, and iron men from around the world come to compete in one of the oldest and most difficult wrestling matches in the world next to ancient Greece.

Jola.
This is probably the only ethnically Gambian culture and language found in the country today. The Jola people never migrated from far away lands or expand through military conquest; they were the first inhabitants of the banks of the river Gambia long, long ago. The president himself a “Dr.” (insert copious amounts of titles here) Yaya Jammeh is a Jola. Jolas are mostly found now a days along the lower river region of the Gambia and are known for some pretty unique rituals. One includes a combination of High School disco party and sub-sequential gang bang held every few years. They’re also known for some very unique culinary dishes which most people find highly palatable… I though will in this case humbly disagree. Sadly I haven’t had the opportunity to learn much more about Jola culture but I do very much hope to in the future. It’s hard though when assimilation has forced a good number of them to find niches in Mandinka communities (even their words for yes and no are the same in Mandinka) though like all minorities there is a good group of them that has stayed very true to their cultural heritage and traditions; which is why these same people really shun their children from speaking other languages in the home as a pretty good defense against assimilation. I have learned several useful phrases in Jola: the general greetings which always come in handy and are a necessity if you proclaim your last name as Jarju, and of course “penuggi” which means, I will beat you…my only defense against annoying Jola children.

Mandinka.
If I’m familiar with any language here it’s my roughly basic yet highly utilitarian comprehension of the Mandinka language. The true ethnically Mandinka trace their lineage to the ancient Mali empire. Which is why even today if you study Bumari, a major Malian language, sounds like another dialect of modern Mandinka; sort of like Spanish is to Portuguese if Spain was Mali and Lisbon, Banjul. Mandinkas, due to the very powerful, influential and in turn imperialistic Mali empire around the time of Timbuktu, can be found from the tip of west Africa in Dakar all the way across sub-Saharan Africa to the Jungles of Uganda.

There is one place in the Mandinka language that sometimes my friends in village get confused when I speak. Often I am fronted with openly comical inquiries such as, “let me borrow your bike” or “when will you take a Gambian wife” and not to exclude the, “Take me back to America”s and “America is pretty much paradise isn’t it?” of which I will always respond with, “Ha!”. This presents a particular problem, because the word for yes in Mandinka is coincidentally, “ha”. So I have more than often had to clarify that I was actually just laughing and not agreeing with the said statement. No, then is “hani” but a useful early concept to learn was that of strongly agreeing or disagreeing with something by adding a, “de” (pronounced: day) to the end of yes and no. So, “Ha-de!” or “Hani-de!”. One other very interesting little snidbit is the word “Baa”. “Baa” works in the same sort of way you can use the word “fuck” in so many diverse ways (I refer you all to one particular George Carlin routine) except Baa is by no means derogatory word. Baa can mean almost a dozen different things which includes but is not limited too these few examples: to go at, mother, river, goat, the sea, a form of large or big, great river, father, termites, man, and a common local surname. It gets so ridiculous that there is a completely grammatically correct sentence you can say though few rarely do that goes something like, “N ka taa Baa baalu baa, baa baa baa Baa aning Baa”… yadda yadda yadda I forget how it was first told to me but roughly translated to going to the big river with your goats and your father.

You can find these linguistically confusions everywhere, I remember keenly when I was learning Hebrew accidentally telling a girl she should perform cunnilingus on me when honestly trying to talk common and completely innuendoless American smack talk on the soccer field, “your going down” in this case was unfortunately taken literally. Sadly I would be humbled by these types of common confusions following me to west Africa. I’ll start with “understanding”. This concept is difficult in Mandinka I’ve found as I must look like a complete idiot on a regular basis as I repeatedly use the phrase, “M ma moy”, I did not hear you; but to the natural Mandinka speaker they would translate that to, he didn’t understand, he didn’t hear, while I always mean it literally, I did not hear you. This is because in Mandinka when you talk about speaking a language you talk about hearing it, not understanding it. Hearing here is understanding; but to a westerner the concept of hearing something does not necessarily have any precedence on if you’ve understood it. So now being here a while I know that if I want to say I didn’t hear you with out looking tremendously inept at the local language I must say, “e ko nyadi?”, You said how? (how in this case meaning what)

It doesn’t stop there because if someone in the community tells you to do something “teriyaki” they are not asking you to head to the nearest Chinese restaurant but telling you to do something, “quickly”; and be careful when you call something un-healthy because locally that’s known as calling it crazy. Be careful always when being clear you are discussing farming and not sleeping. Just the other day a woman called me lazy because, exhausted after a long morning of weeding in the family garden, I had been walking home and asked by a passing woman, “E taata minto?” Where are you coming from? And I responded with, “M be nung sinoo.” I was sleeping. The word for farming being “senoo” (pronounced seh + no) and the one for sleep, “sinoo” (pronounced sea + no). As far as the woman was concerned I had slept till one in the afternoon. These same misconceptions can be taken for the words: Pepper and Love (Kaanoo and Kanoo), and a Crow and the word for Don’t (Kaanaa and Kana). Where lengthening the last syllable could mean the difference between telling a child to throw a bird or telling him not to throw things. This goes with stating how much you like peppers or accidentally saying how much you’d like a little loving. “Fing” means something is black, but “Feng” means a thing. Not to mention the word for to forget and to say something is beautiful are almost impossible for a foreigner to differentiate properly. To this day when I’m saying I forgot something I have to pretty much scream the first syllable to the point where it’s not even worth me using the word and I get around it by negating “to remember”. On that fact no one really uses the word “bad” they just say it’s “not good”… then again few people ever utter the word please either.

These though are not the worst confusions you can make, I’ve found that the last thing you ever want to do is to talk about your water bottle, firstly, because this is a stereotype of white people, always carrying their water bottles, and secondly and more importantly you may confuse that word for water bottle, “Jeakabo” with, “Jukabo” roughly meaning your anus. Not exactly dinnertime conversation. I’ll end with this, when in The Gambia never ask someone to take a hike in the woods with you, the bush is only used for hunting, cashew picking, circumcisions, and fighting and it will probably be assumed you want to do the latter of the two.

Though I joke, language is known in many circles as the new endangered species, as spoken languages on a yearly basis fades into oblivion along with the thick culture that it protected. They’re lost to assimilation, religious conversion, and modernization; history is written by the victor it is said after all. In some cases no fault can really be placed. Certainly some words had no place in an ancient world; words for airplanes and bicycles, modern medicines and electronics, it gets to the point where it becomes easier to slowly use English words if you in the least bit want to be excepted in a modern world and grant your children the same advantages in education as others are given. It is because of this that I hope all of you, in your own way, seek out and explore these lesser known languages and the cultures they reflect. Traditionally these cultures have been known for a long line of story telling as histories were passed down through the generations orally. Unfortunately because of this twenty years from now they may not be there to be appreciated and the protectors of their histories long laid to rest.