Peace Only: Reflections on Learning an African Language

So I may be a bit of a language nerd, and I'm going to embrace that and write an entire post about Jaxanke.

Our language group

Greetings: Get ready for a long handshake

Greetings are an uber important part of Senegalese culture.  Here is an example of a greeting that could occur with practically everyone you meet on the street (with literal English translations because I think they are funny).

Salouma: Fanta, Inin sege! (Fanta, you are with tired!—this is how you say thank you as well as greet people)

Fanta: Ansi, Cissokho (Ansi has no direct translation, but basically means “I am female and I recognize that you have greeted me.”  Cissokho is Salouma’s last name and can be inserted at any time during the greeting process)

Salouma: Sakiliba (The female version of the last name Cissokho)

Fanta: I saxoma (You are the morning)

Salouma: Amba (I am male and I recognize that you have greeted me).

Fanta: Kor tanante? (Are you without evil?)

 Salouma: Tanante (without evil)

Fanta: Heera siita?  (Did you spend the night in peace?)

Salouma: Heera doron. (Peace only).

Fanta: Tanamansii? (Did you spend the night without evil?)

Salouma: Tanawomansii.  (I really spent the night without evil.)

Fanta: I be di? (How are you?)

Salouma: Mbe jan doron (I am here only).

Fanta: Luomo moxolu be dii? (How are the people of the house?)

Salouma: I be jee. (They are there.)

Fanta: Al ham dillilay (Thanks be to God.  This can be interpreted as a sign that the greeting can end, but don’t pause for too long, because it might start over.)

This is just the standard and can be varied and extended, and any of the greetings can be repeated.  (I have heard “kor tanante” said at least five times during one greeting exchange.)  You can ask about all of the individual people of the house, the animals (the response is that they are there).  Seasonal variations can occur (you and the mosquitoes/rain/heat/cold are together?)  Most of the responses are set, except that you can substitute “heera doron” (peace only) in response to most of the questions.  This applies even if peace is not even there at all.  One volunteer said that she went through a long greeting with a woman from her village with plenty of “peace only” only to find out that the woman’s child had died the night before.  One of my goals is to learn how to say “peace only in all of the languages of Senegal.  When people say things to me in Wolof, my go-to response is “Jamm Rekk”.  They typically laugh at me, indicating that peace only was not the correct response, but at least they know that I’m trying.  We have been told that spending the first few months at our site simply greeting people is the best way to lay the groundwork for what Americans deem to be “actual work”.

Oral Intensity (Sorry…Glee reference)

Learning a language that is not used in writing by those that speak it is a completely new experience.  I am very much a visual learner.  I can’t just hear something and remember it, especially when practically everything starts with either K, N or W.  This seems to be difficult for Africans to understand, since they don’t write things down in the local languages.  I try to keep a notebook handy to write things down in, but there is really no correct spelling of things.  We do have a dictionary which was put together by a missionary group, but almost a third of the words have question marks.  Schooling, and thus writing, is conducted in French.  Our host family is very well educated overall, but they cannot read anything I write in Jaxanke.  They have to ask me to read things out loud in order to know what I’m trying to write.  It’s definitely making me stretch my brain!

Linguistic Colonization

I am fascinated by linguistic anthropology and what a language can tell you about a culture.  The most obvious way of exploring this in Jaxanke is by looking for words that are clearly just French words with an o added on at the end.  These are the things that did not exist in the culture before Senegal was colonized by the French.  For example the verb “to be late,” is “xa tardee”, which implies that the concept of being late is foreign to this culture.

Another example is “neijo” which comes from “neige” and means snow.   While the Eskimoes may have 17 words for snow, the Jaxankes probably have that many ways of saying it’s hot.  My favorite literally translates to mean “The sun is sour.” 

Because of the fact that our language teacher is a farmer and we spend a lot of time outside of language class gardening, an inordinate amount of our vocabulary so far has been gardening/vegetable words.  It is pretty clear that “pomme de terros” and “carrottos” are not native to West Africa.  Peanuts however, hold a special place in the Jaxanke lexicon.  There is a different word for peanuts at all stages of their existence.  The village chief is referred to as the “village peanut”, and the word for rich people literally translates as “things that have peanuts”.  There are also different verbs that mean “to carry” based on what part of the body you are carrying something on, such as carrying on the back or carrying on the head.  Here is an example of “xa bamboo” which means “to carry on the back”.

Pat and I trying our hand at carrying a baby on our backs.  Papa was not happy about having his hands strapped in because he couldn't pull my hair.

Colonization also brought the franc.  Now, the currency is called the Franc CFA.  Because of a complicated economics-based explanation that I did not fully understand, the colonizers wanted the African currency to have a lower value than that of the French franc, and somehow this has had lasting effects in how the values of different coins and bills are expressed.  If I have a 500 CFA (about one dollar), and I choose to say that in French, I say that I have five hundred CFA.  If I choose to say it in a local language like Jaxanke, I divide the number by five and say that I have one hundred dalasi.  This does not make sense!  I do not understand how this started and much less why it persists, particularly in a country where education levels and therefore math skills are low!  If I have two thousand CFA, I don’t want to have to calculate that I have 400 dalasi!  Why not just read the number on the bill??  In whatever language you choose?  I wonder if any postcolonial studies papers have been written on this issue.

Yes, I am sitting

Senegalese culture is a great culture in which to do immersion language study, because it is a cultural practice to continually point out the obvious in order to show someone that you are paying attention to them.  Realizing this was a huge light bulb moment with my host family, because I realized that I could infer what they were saying based on what I was currently doing.  “Fanta, you are taking a shower.”  “Fanta, you are sitting.”  “Fanta, you have come home from school.”  Once I realized that they just wanted me to respond by saying, “Yes, I have come home”, they thought my level of Jaxanke was much higher than it actually was.  (All you do is say yes, and flip the you to I and repeat exactly what they just said.)  Lately, I have embarked into new linguistic territory by pointing out what my family members are doing.  It felt a little awkward to say, “Ami, ibe sigirin!” (Ami! You are sitting!) like it was the most exciting thing in the world, but they were actually pretty excited that I had caught on.

Foot in Mouth

My dear friend Lisa who lives in Norway does blog posts every once in a while called Foot in Mouth, where she recounts funny Norwegian language mistakes.  Here is my best Jaxanke Foot in Mouth thus far:

Mady: Salouma be minto? (Where is Salouma (ie Patrick))

What I thought I said: Salouma be buno xono.  (Salouma is in the bedroom).

What I actually said: Salouma be buwo xono.  (Salouma is in the poop.)