maboopya

HA! Hahahaha. Man, I was in a really crappy mood about 10 minutes ago, then decided I would write a blog entry about the languages I use here when i'm NOT writing on this thing, then I picked 'maboopya' to be the name of the entry, then I started laughing. It is one of the dumbest sounding words I think I've ever heard. And it's meaning is 'loofah', not too far off in ridiculousness.

Speaking of which, I grew loofah sponges at my house. Have never used one before, nor do I much care to (though I will). I planted them because they grow on a vine, like wildfire, and have nice big leaves that will hopefully provide me some shade if my guard ever gets around to building a little outdoor hut like I asked him to.

The national language of Tanzania is Kiswahili (Swahili - the 'ki' is used to denote languages and to make adjectives). It is a beautiful language which I'm proud to say I'm pretty much fluent in. It's a whole lot easier than Russian (silly cyrillic and crazy ass grammatical rules) or German (unsettling umlauts, nonsensical noun-class groups, and just plain stupid separable prefixes). There are 8 or so main groups of words which take varying modifications in different parts of speech, and come with varying prepositions and possesives and demonstratives (this/that/etc) - so that's a bit hard to memorize. And the word order is different than in English [adjectives follow nouns - 'Jina langu Brian' = 'Name my is Buhlayani'].

But two things make Kiswahili super simple, and are very pleasing to people like myself who like structure and consistency. One is that everything is written phoenetically, so even if you have no clue what a word means, you can still say it (this has saved my ass some embarassment more than a few times). The notable exception to this would be the L/R dilemma that has been a recurring theme in my life here and in my blog entries. The other thing that makes Kiswahili so simple is that there are really pretty much NO exceptions. If you learn how to decline a verb in the past tense, you know how to decline ALL verbs in the past tense [here is where English sucks]. If you want to name a person as a direct object in a sentence, you ALWAYS insert an 'm' into the middle of the verb. And ALL words are stressed on the second-to-last syllable, another handy faking-it tool when giving speeches. The construction of a sentence, though I doubt many Tanzanians realize it, is a very structured and orderly process in Kiswahili, much more elegantly put together than American English.

Now that I have elaborated, boringly, on the structure of the language itself, lets have some fun looking at my favorite words in Kiswahili (maboopya is Kisukuma, the tribal language. 'Loofah' in Swahili is 'madodoke')

theme one - repetition and alliteration
a lot of Kiswahili words do both of the aforementioned.
barabara - road
wasiwasi - problem
kizunguzungu - dizzy
kutukanana - to insult each other
Also, a whole ton of verbs can have a modified meaning if repeated. for example,
'tembea' - to walk, tembeatembea - to walk around
cheza - to play, chezacheza - play a little bit
zunguka - to go around, zungukazunguka - to make rounds

and an example from Kisukuma: (Sukuma - Swahili - English)
igoko - kuku - chicken
igogo - kiti - chair
igolo - jana - yesterday

theme two - dipthongs
first, let me just say that the word 'dipthong' makes me proud of English. HA!
Kiswahili has lots of dipthongs, as every letter is pronounced.
au (ah-oo) = or
ua (oo-ah) = flower, fence, or to kill (HA!)
ijayo (ee-jai-yo) = next (for certain noun classes)

theme three - multiple meanings
ok, so actually we just saw this in theme two. One word for flower and to kill!!! Sweet!! Kiswahili has much fewer words than in English, and many of these are borrowed from Arabic (eg 'safi', meaning clean, but also like saying 'Cool'). Sometimes this is really awesome and convenient, sometimes frustrating (there are just a few words for 'good' - nzuri, njema. in Kisukuma, there's one - mola. it gets kinda boring during greetings. How are you? Good. How is your family? Good. How is work? Good. How are other things? Good.....)

theme four - hard to say ng words
there are a whole ton of really freakin hard to say words that have the Ng' sound.
Ng'ombe - Cow
Kung'ong'oneza - to tell a secret
If the ng' has an apostrophe, it's supposed to be pronounced like the ng at the end of an English participle (going). If not, it's two distinct sounds. Hard!

theme five - ji's and other fun words
there are just some words I think are fun for no apparent reason.
almost any verb can be turned into a noun, often by adding U in front and JI at the end
kutekeleza - to implement
utekelezaji - implementation
kuendesha - to drive
uendeshaji - driving
kuyeyshua - to digest
uyeyushaji - digestion (HA! I love that word)

my favorite word so far
is also one of the longest and most complex i've seen here. but it is a great example of why I love the structure and sounds of Swahili.

kitakachowachangamsha - that which will make them energized


Ok, sorry so long, I'm out of words now. Check out the new link I added to a Kiswahili dictionary. Back to all English next time.