language issues

I’ve made it to the point now where most people can understand at least 50% of my French. Throw in my wild gesturing and some creative miming and I can start to seriously be understood around town. That doesn’t stop some sincerely amusing miscommunication, like the time I had a sinus infection a couple weeks ago and told the doctor that I had monkeys in my mucus (I get the word for “blood” and “monkeys” confused a lot…you’d be surprised how often the need for both those words arises here).  Of course by the end of the day, or if I’m sick, I’m lucky to get out the simplest phrase in French.

 

My learning of the local languages, like Fulfulde has stagnated as I’ve found that since we do work all around the department of Kadey, which includes everything from the border of the Central African Rep. to almost Bertoua, every 10 miles down the road you go there’s a whole new language spoken. So although learning Fulfulde would help me around Batouri, its limited applicability to my job makes it hard to justify the effort needed to learn it when I still haven’t mastered French. Also, after learning their counting system I am even less motivated to try.

 

Most French students have been frustrated once they encounter the base twenty system that dominates the numbers in the 80’s and 90’s. the number 80 becomes quatre-vingts, or four-twenties. 90 becomes quatre-vingts-dix, or four twenties and ten. Supposedly this is left over from the pre-Latin Celtic inhabitants of France who had a base-twenty system instead of the base-ten that we have inherited from the Latin system. I don’t know why the French only kept this Celtic vestige in part of their numbering system, but then again, they’re French.

 

The Fulfulde use a base-five system. So there are separate words for the numbers 1-5 (go’o didi, tati, nay, jowe), then 6 becomes five-and-one (jowe-e-go’o). With small numbers its no problem, but it quickly becomes more complicated, such as 18: ten-and-five-and-three (sappo e jowe e tati). Ok looking now I realize that doesn’t look too complicated but I’m sure higher numbers are worse, I just haven’t learned them yet. Also having to do a little mental arithmetic (not my strong point) while translating everything really slows down the (already painfully slow) process on my part. And of course I have to live in a country where the currency is ~430 CFA to the dollar so I can’t get by with just learning the numbers 1-20. At least it’s not as bad as the counting in the Senoufo language (thankfully not spoken in Cameroon but in southern Mali and southwestern Burkina Faso). Their word for 100 translates to “two-times-five-times-two-times-four-plus-two-times-ten.” (and yes I did check that math to makes sure that works out). But I mean good god, it’d have to take a calculator along to the market just to calculate the right word to say.

 

By the way, old-school English also retains some irregularities like this. Take Lincoln’s intro to Gettysburg address….”Four score and seven years ago” (87…or four twenties and seven and the French say it).

 

Ok, so maybe some of you are wondering what I’m doing writing about counting systems when there has got to be so many more exciting adventures going on in my life in Africa. But, perhaps surprisingly, my life is not chock full of wild crazy adventures. Work seems to finally have found some sort of rhythm. Just today I gave my first presentation on PACA, a system designed to teach local communities how to help themselves. Though, seeing as how public speaking has never been my strong point, (and in fact it terrifies me only slightly less than death) public speaking in French in a foreign culture falls somewhere between getting a spinal tap and getting a spinal type while simultaneously getting a root canal without anesthetics on the unpleasantness spectrum for me. Usually when you fear something you build it up in your mind so much that by the time you come to face your fear its not nearly as bad as you’ve been expecting. This however, was- and so much more. Be that as it may, its looks like my job is going to involve a lot of public speaking. I am quite proud of myself though because you would be hard pressed to find something that I feared doing more (except maybe dancing and singing publicly…in my underwear) but I gritted my teeth (a lot) and did it. The hard part now will be going back to do it again.

 

I was incredibly thankful for my post-mate who helped me and (hopefully) will be working with me on more of them. Not only was it great to have her help for the presentation but at the end her simple, but heartfelt “good job” was sorely needed. It also felt really good when one of the members of the group we were working with really seemed to grasp the point of our presentation and was able to translate my ‘french’ into real ‘french’ for the benefit of the whole group. I never knew you could translate within one language.