Language Bloopers

Part 2

As a continuation from the last post, here are some more confusing American / British terms:

bloody - covered with blood (American), bloody -expletive used to express anger as in, “This bloody car is stalling again!”(British)

brackets - small accessories used to hold shelves in place (American), brackets - punctuation used to enclose words, what Americans call parentheses (British)

chaps - leather leggings worn by cowboys (American), chaps - men or boys (British)

dead beat -an idler/ someone who does not pay his debt (American), dead beat - exhausted, very tired (British)

international - something that is foreign to the US (American), international -something that is common in more than one country (British)

…and the list goes on. Wikipedia offers two lists: (A-L): http://tinyurl.com/dhabl (M-Z): http://tinyurl.com/36urcb5

Here are a couple of language related stories from the mission field:

A missionary aunt told me she once gave her cook instructions for preparing dinner. For dessert they were to have a fruit salad so she brought each fruit that was to be in the salad & told him to chop each one up to make the salad. But when dessert time came, he didn't bring anything so she asked him about the fruit. He responded, "Please ma, you say I should chop it - so I did." He had eaten it. ("chop it" in Pidgin English meant to eat it - "chop" is the Pidgin word for food and if you “chop it up” you eat it up.)

Another friend told of a letter his father received where the writer was asking for prayer that his wife might conceive a child. In explaining that she had not yet been able to conceive, he wrote: “My wife is unbearable. She is inconceivable. She is impregnable, like a fortress.”

But sometimes the shoe was on the other foot. My father preached a sermon in which he called Hezekiah the “monkey” of Judah, rather than the “king” of Judah. The Yoruba word for king is oba, pronounced “awbah” and the word for monkey is obo, pronounced “awbaw”. He confused the two and the little children giggled throughout his entire sermon so he knew something was wrong. But he didn’t know until it was over what he had said.

A Cheery Countenance

Mad about What?

Part 1

Growing up in a foreign country can pose a problem when it comes to learning languages. But growing up in Nigeria was especially challenging. As a child I was faced with a mix of British English, American English w/ southern colloquialisms mixed in, Pidgin (the broken English spoken in many parts of Africa) & Yoruba (the native language of the tribe where we lived.) For instance, if someone came to my door wanting to know if my mother was home, the person might ask, “Is your mother home?” - if he or she was American, or “Your mom in?” - if he was Sothern American. But if British, he would likely ask, “Your mum abote?” If he was a Nigerian, he would ask, “Momma dey fa de haus? Or just “Momma dey?” (Pidgin) or he could ask, “Momma unko?” (Yoruba) And an MK child like me had to be able to understand and converse in all of these languages and dialects.

I was especially confused by the terms, palava & wahalla. Growing up in a time of political and civil unrest, I heard both terms often and I understand them both to mean “troubling talk or discussions” as in “There is plenty palava going on!” or “plenty wahalla”. To me they were interchangeable as if they had the same meaning… but when I came back to America no one understood either word! As it turns out, “palava” is actually the British word palaver which means much discussion about something and usually implies a pointless discussion, where as wahalla is the Pidgin word for trouble. In context a conversation using wahalla might go like this:

Question: “Ah! Ah! Watin happin now, O?!”
Answer: “Me, I no sabi -O! Dat madame jus dey give me wahala!”

(Translation: Question – “What happened now?” Answer – “I don’t know. That woman just gave me a hard time!”)

And then there was my Nigerian friend who came to the states for a seminary education. He told a funny story about a controversial class discussion where based on his response, the professor asked him if he was mad. He exclaimed in no uncertain terms, “NO! I am not mad!!” This response only convinced the professor even more that my friend was indeed mad (angry). So, the professor said, “Oh but I think you are mad. It seems like you are.” Well, this just insulted and infuriated my friend further. Why? Because in my friend’s British influenced culture, the word mad meant crazy. So, the more the professor accused him of being mad (crazy), the madder (angrier) he got.

Here are some other British / American words and what they mean:

boot – shoe (American), boot – the trunk of a car (British)

biscuits - bread eaten with gravy (American), biscuits – cookies (British)

bonnet - something a woman wears on her head like a hat (American), bonnet - the front end (or hood) of a car (British)

In the next blog, I will continue with this line of thought.