Numbers

Got 16,987 cattle to sell as a Fulani herder in Cameroon? Well take a deep breath cause to say 16,987 is: ujineeré sappo e jowé go’o bee téméré jowé nayi bee chappan jowé tati e jowé didi….phew! That’s literally One thousand of ten and 6 and one (16,000) with one hundred of 5 and 4 (800) with 10 five and fours (90) and 5 and 2 (7), which of course adds up to 16, 987! Oh how you never realize how great the Arabic numbering system is until its gone! Next time you complain about your math homework, just imagine doing it in Fulfuldé…

Of course now that you’ve counted all your cattle you still need to agree on a price, so to simplify matters Fulfuldé has a whole new system of counting just for money, one which I only vaguely understand. It works by somehow dividing everything below 200 CFA (about 45 cents) by 5 and saying Dola (no relation to Dollar) before. Thus while 185 is usually téméré bee chappan jowé didi e jowé, with money it becomes dola chappan tati e jowé didi (literally “dola 37”). Then everything above between 200 and 999CFA you use the same system as regular counting (unless your from the north of Cameroon in which case you stay with the “Dola” system up to 500CFA), then above 1000CFA another system. Much simpler eh?

Ok, I’ll stop about fulfuldé now. I realize that while I find most of this stuff about languages endlessly fascinating, I am usually the only one. Though as interesting as I find studying languages academically speaking them in real life situation continues to prove next to impossible and sometimes downright dangerous. Of course it doesn’t help that once I finally got up the nerve to start a conversation with a local shopkeeper, I promptly inquired, with perfect inflection, “will you fuck tomorrow?” (Jango a wattan na?) instead of the much more quotidian “will you come back tomorrow” (jango a warttan na?). He did not come back. I don’t ask about people coming back anymore. Nor do I use to verb “to be able” as I usually end up informing people that I just farted (fotugo vs. fotugo). I’m making quite a name for myself here in my village…