I was having a meal with a Rwandan friend earlier today, and in the process learned that “Dufugurua” means both “We am eating a meal” (as in, meeting to eat and enjoy each other’s company, I believe is the implication, not just “We’re putting food in our mouths”) and “We are open” (as in a restaurant), depending on how you say it. Tonal languages are bad for non-natives (entrepreneurs, there’s a bumper sticker in there somewhere.), and they make me especially angry. Even if I can only say four things, I say those four things really well. I am often able to impress someone with my pronunciation of “Have a nice day” or my rapid-response-greeting, “Mwiriweho.” I kind of enjoy this. (I do not enjoy the slew of unintelligible questions that follows, when I must confess Mvugua buhoro buhoro, I only speak a little. Something about that buhoro buhoroalways makes people laugh, and that, somehow, restores my balance, at least enough to continue walking.)
But two words that mean totally different things depending on how you say them? This is why I never studied Asian languages. If I have to stop and think about whether I am saying, “I am open” or “I am eating,” I am, absolutely, doomed. The word won’t even come out of my mouth.
Which, these days, is typical. I am at the moment on a very potent version of what my sister refers to as “language crack,” which somehow blocks all of the neurons you’ve invested in studying vocabulary all day and renders you an idiot. Because I have been studying French and Kinyarwanda together, I become, in fact, a bumbling idiot.
So at dinner, I couldn’t decide how to communicate. Order in French? English? Kinyarwanda? Normally I’d just stick with the latter, because asking for food is pretty much the only thing I know how to do (in any culture, anywhere). But they had humus on the menu…spelled hammos and surely not made the way I would’ve expected. In fact, the offering was so unexpected it stripped any and all language away from me, and I wound up just pointing at the menu like a nervous child.
Turned out, of course, there was no humus-hammos, and so I picked the old standby: goat brochettes avec les frites. These I ordered in French.
But when the food came, and the fries were too bland, I whipped out my new vocabulary-for-going-
to-the market and asked the waiter, “Ese ufite umunyu?” Which is simply, “Do you have salt?” (though I wish I had the skills to add a “Pardon me, but” of Grey Poupon elegance.) He smiled, and returned with salt, and I gave myself a mental point for how correctly voiceless that ‘f’ came out.
“Wow!” my dining companion said. “Your Kinyarwanda spelling is so good!”
Language crack, perhaps like all crack, gets around.
