One usually doesn't realize how important it is to one's basic contention to be able to express oneself freely. To just interact with the people around you on a normal level and speed. Even as a tourist in another country one might run into the odd occasion where one has to resort to signing and rudimentary words to be understood. But usually one is surrounded by other tourists with whom one shares at least one language in which one can communicate more or less competently (i.e. English).
Now, I have been studying Kiswahili for quite some time and I manage to make myself understood most of the time and I am now at the point at which I understand a great deal of what is being said to me if the person takes care to speak slowly enough. Yet it is at times very tiring and frustrating to be able to communicate only on a very basic level and quite slowly. To be unable to contribute more complicated thoughts to a conversation. On the whole, to feel like a kid in kindergarten again.
I am in the quite wonderful situation to be surrounded by Swahili native speakers, who, for the most part, are only able to communicate with me in their native tongue and only to a little extent in English. My vocabulary grows by leaps and bounds and every day it becomes a little easier to make myself understood. Yet, I sometimes long to have a real conversation where the words flow freely and there's no stumbling along in half sentences and groping for the right word...
Think about this next time you have a conversation with someone or even if you just go to the bakery to buy some bread. And think about it when next time you meet a foreigner who might not appear very intelligent by the things he or she contributes to a conversation. He or she might be just groping for the right word, and instead of being a stupidly grinning dingbat she might be a grad student at university....
The Piece of Antiquarian Knowledge of the day:
While there are oodles of loanwords from English and Arabic in Kiswahili and even some Portuguese words, there is only one German loanword that I am aware of: shule (i.e. Schule or school). I wonder what that says about us as a colonial power....
I am in the quite wonderful situation to be surrounded by Swahili native speakers, who, for the most part, are only able to communicate with me in their native tongue and only to a little extent in English. My vocabulary grows by leaps and bounds and every day it becomes a little easier to make myself understood. Yet, I sometimes long to have a real conversation where the words flow freely and there's no stumbling along in half sentences and groping for the right word...
Think about this next time you have a conversation with someone or even if you just go to the bakery to buy some bread. And think about it when next time you meet a foreigner who might not appear very intelligent by the things he or she contributes to a conversation. He or she might be just groping for the right word, and instead of being a stupidly grinning dingbat she might be a grad student at university....
The Piece of Antiquarian Knowledge of the day:
While there are oodles of loanwords from English and Arabic in Kiswahili and even some Portuguese words, there is only one German loanword that I am aware of: shule (i.e. Schule or school). I wonder what that says about us as a colonial power....
1 comment:
I know the feeling---when I spent three weeks in Costa Rico living with a local family and studying Spanish, the "Ticos" are sooo patient and courteous with Spanish students. But my brain got so tired---at the end of my stay, I went to a hotel on the Pacific Coast , really hungary for both news and English, flipped around the tv channels looking for both--and the only English station I could find was----Fox news. GRRRRRRRR.
The photos are beautiful.
love da Mum
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