Hi George you have just made my day with this hilarious piece by the dutch lady
struggling with Lugbara. It is amazing! She really knows how to write
reflections. I would be glad to access her blog if you don't mind. I would like
to follow the discourse.
Regards.
Sam
--- On Thu, 25/4/13, George Afi Obitre-Gama <gobi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
From: George Afi Obitre-Gama <gobi...@yahoo.com>
Subject: [WestNileNet] Learning the Lugbara Language - A bloggers 2 cents-a
good read!
To: "A Virtual Network for friends of West Nile" <westnilenet@kym.net>
Date: Thursday, 25 April, 2013, 14:12
A new year, a new language, more confusionWhy can't everyone speak English?
16.01.2013 30
°C Learning a new language and culture is like
discovering a new world, opening your eyes and mind to completely amazing and
strange ideas, some shocking, some fascinating, most unexpected.
Since
the beginning of the new year, we have a new teacher, Eunice, who is hoping to
make us into fluent Lugbara speakers within a few months… Lugbara is the local
tribe in Arua, one of the 10 largest tribes in Uganda (out of a total of 34
ethnicities). The Lugbara are a tribe descended from Nigeria to settle here.
Their territory extends around Arua and into the Democratic Republic of Congo,
so families have been split by the arbitrary political boundaries drawn by the
Europeans in Berlin in 1884.
Disconcertingly, we seem to be a source of great amusement for most of the
ex-pats when we tell them we are taking this time to study Lugbara. “Good
luck”, they tell us. They then go on to tell you a story of someone who has
been attempting the language for many years and haven’t gotten very far. Some
compare the language to Chinese, saying it is one of the most difficult
languages in the world to
learn. It is quite depressing hearing this, obviously… Additionally, having
grown up in Congo and learning Swahili there, having lived in Malawi and Kenya
and trying to learn the languages there, while being exposed to various other
African languages, it is frustrating to have to start at zero like a baby once
again….those languages are nothing like Lugbara!
Most whites don’t even bother to learn Lugbara especially since this tribe is
only one of 5 in the close vicinity of one another. For example, the Alur are
settled on the outskirts of Arua town. Their language is close to the Luo
language which we were learning in Kenya. To make it even worse, there are
sub-sections of the Lugbara tribe with variations in the way words are said.
Whoopee to learning a difficult language which is only spoken by a few and
which is nothing like any other language we have ever heard!
Eunice, in action, confusing us
Eunice is a good teacher, though, having patience with us as we sit on the
veranda trying to repeat what on earth she has just said. As a Lugbara, she is
also good at turning up late, demonstrating how a Lugbara should act. As
Lilian, another Lugbara who works for us says, “Lugbaras is not following time,
ha!” and laughs out loud. So, anyway, she is almost an hour late today, but
since we live in Africa, you never know what may have happened. It could be a
relative has just died and she has to go to the funeral.
Despite the issue of time-keeping, which especially bothers Emma, Eunice has
been effective at moving us on in the language. Emma and I already feel more
confident using some simple phrases and greetings. For example, I was
particularly proud when I asked for 10 eggs the other day in the local wooden
duka close to our
home. “Ife mani augbe mundri”. The word for egg 'augbe' is spoken as though
you are swallowing an egg...One of the problems of learning Lugbara is that the
same words can mean completely different things. So, for instance, the word for
sauce, “tibi”, is the same word for ‘beard’, just with a different tone. Emma
wonders if this has anything to do with someone’s long beard dragging in their
gravy once upon a time. There are other examples, though the best so far is the
word ‘ago’, which if intonated differently, can either mean ‘husband’ or
‘pumpkin’. A phrase like ‘my beautiful fiancée’ can also come across as ‘my
beautiful warthog’, so any wannabe suitors need to be pretty careful in this
town…Emma also uses a lot of imagination when it comes to remembering the
Lugbara phrases or words. So, for instance, the word for peanuts is ‘funo’
(foon-oh). Emma thinks of little peanuts bouncing
around and having a lot of fun. It can be a bit of a tentative or weird link
at times. She is constantly whispering to me how I can remember a word. Awupi
(A-whoopee) is the word for Aunt on your dad’s side. Obviously, this conjures
up thoughts of playing a trick with my Auntie Barbara with a whoopee
cushion…’Fetaa’ (feta) means gift and so it is remembered by thinking of giving
someone a gift of cheese. I often wish I had had Emma as a study partner for my
IGCSE or IB exams in Holland as I would not have spent so many lost hours
staring blankly at walls trying to cram boring information into my struggling
mind.Alongside Emma's visual mind, we are also discovering that Lugbara is
quite a visual language. The word for ‘fingers’, for example, is
‘hand-children’. This also works for ‘toes’ (foot children). The word for door
translates directly as ‘house-mouth’. The floor is the ‘house-stomach’. Today,
we learnt that
veranda is the ‘joeti’ or ‘house buttocks’!! You can’t make this stuff up, eh?
It’s great!Onomatopoeia is often used as well in the language. 'Kulukulu'
(koo-loo-koo-loo) is the name for a turkey and on hearing the sound a turkey
makes the other day when passing a homestead, I really thought it described it
well. Barking is ‘agbo-agbo’, crying is 'owu- owu' (oh-woo) and laughing is
'ogu- ogu' (oh-goo). I can’t remember any of these sound words properly and
instead guess by making any noise that I think would fit. It unfortunately
doesn’t work. One of our favourite onomatopoeiatic words is the word for
butterfly ‘alapapa’, just like the sound of little wings beating! Language can
also be an intimate doorway into the culture. We couldn’t believe t, when
Eunice explained the word for ‘girl’ is made up of 2 words in Lugbara, ‘za’
meaning ‘meat’ and ‘mva’ meaning ‘child’! 'Meat-child!' Girls
have been seen as great little earners in a family by providing a dowry of up
to 20 head of cattle and 15 goats and extras like bows and arrows and
hoes.However, so many of the traditions have been changing here as the pressure
of our Western culture pervades and invades. Loin cloths have been out since
the 1950s or 60s (Maybe this is a good thing. I can’t see the Craig family
sauntering down the road semi-nude in Arua, and it would make an embarrassing
family photo). Instead, though, everyone is wearing second-hand Western
clothes. Out is the tradition to remove your 6 front teeth using only a hammer
and some herbs to encourage healing of your mouth afterwards (I’m also thankful
this is not practised anymore), and marking the skin by cuts with a razor in
adolescence is now stopped. However, as Eunice explained, the rather
exaggerated buttocks size in women is still favoured by the culture, especially
if the buttocks also jiggles while
walking. All-in-all, though pretty tiring, it is really interesting learning
the language and culture. It definitely does show how very different we
Westerners are (especially compared to the recent past) and so will help us
understand how to approach people more effectively. We are hoping knowledge of
the language can help us build relationships and get alongside people better
(until we meet others from the next tribe along who don’t have a clue what we
are saying…).
Eunice, Lilian and all of us outside on the 'house-buttocks' in the
'house-mouth'
Amelie in the jokoni
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