Technological advancements have demystified a lot of what seemed impossible, and have also made the world feel much smaller. Beyond skin color, language can feel confounding and a barrier for much needed and well understood communication.
I love learning languages, and I can speak at least 7 of the local languages. I know them enough to get me food and a place to sleep, and also to crack a few jokes and make new friends. Sadly, I miss a lot of their jokes because I am not yet able to play around with words and express myself in the way the native speakers do.
In one of the countries I visited, I met an interesting old lady who narrated to me how (she thought) language misunderstanding had been the main cause for civil unrest in the area she lived. According to her, some foreigners who had visited the area observed that people from a particular tribe (Z) mostly worked on farms and did the security guard jobs, while the majority of employers came from another particular tribe (A). Tribe Z were skilled with the use of rudimentary farming tools, and worked long hours tilling big chunks of land. The employers reaped and earned big from the harvests. Following his observation, the visitor said to one of the workers “do you realize that all these men from tribe A, have accumulated is from your sweat? You are such hard workers, and if you did all these for yourselves, you’d probably be much wealthier”. The worker hurried to share the information with his fellow workers. He told them “Our esteemed guests have told me that these men are rich because of our hard work, and everything they posses should belong to us”. This was a disturbing realization, and together they worked out how best to compensate themselves and take ownership of the rich men’s possession. On the day of planned attack, the workers played local tunes, which was commonly done to gather the people for an event. Today there was going to be a football match, and the flute was sounded. The unsuspecting people from tribe A gathered behind the music players who were mostly from tribe Z. On the way, the musicians abruptly abandoned their flutes and pulled out their machetes and began to hack their counterparts from the richer tribe A. A counter attack was planned by tribe A, using superior weaponry. The unrest went on for a while.
When the authorities asked the foreigner about the intentions in his comment, his response was “Gosh, I said it completely oblivious of what it would result to. I meant it as a complement”. When the worker was approached, he said, the foreigner had told them that their bosses were rich because of their hard work, and everything the bosses owned in actual sense belonged to the workers.
My Dad and mum came from different tribes that do not have many words in common, and hence used mostly English at home. They both made effort to learn each other’s languages, sometimes making embarrassing language blunders.
I learnt how to speak both languages to reasonable extents. Writing in either of them however remains a challenge, as some of the words do not have an alphabetical match in English. Sometimes the perfect expressions in vernacular do not have the equivalent in English. Attempts do not capture the mood and intended expression. An example of a phrase with no direct translation in English is my blog phrase “Achao Akwap” generally translated to English as “day has come”. The translation from English back to vernacular would however be totally meaningless, with the words completely changing.
I often wonder how about blunders, frustrations, conflict, destroyed relationships and wrong responses may have resulted from language gaps, some with dire consequences.
Achao Akwap 