Thursday, December 8, 2011

Out of the Mouths of Babes...

If you know me at all (and I think most of you do), you know that I like children and babies. A LOT. I think that they also have a special affinity for me as well, because I’m something of a kid magnet (I once described babies as being drawn to me because they can “sense my love for them.” I stand by that statement).
I say all of this as a sort of introduction to the topic of this post. Like most volunteers I know, I tend to have a lot of small children constantly hovering around my house, trying to talk to me, play with me, or ask for things (or should I say DEMAND things: “Madam, give me a pencil!”). Unlike many other volunteers, however, I probably indulge these children too much. I’m quick to give them a drink of water from the novelty that is the water spicket in my kitchen or invite them to sit on my porch and draw using my endless supply of crayons and paper, and sometimes I pay for this kindness by having 30 kids rush my house and continue to bother me until I threaten them with something along the lines of, “I will BEAT YOU ALL unless you leave right now!” (it’s actually a very common threat that adults utter to children here, I never actually resort to violence…) . Anyway, when I’m not feeling grumpy due to the number of children who are rattling the screens on my windows and demanding things from me, I’m actually quite amused by their hilarious ways of manipulating the English language to try to express themselves.

Now, while I would never go as far as to say I’ve grasped the language of Dagbani, I do have enough confidence in my language skills to hold basic conversations with children in their local language. I often DO converse with the kids in Dagbani, but they also like to practice their English with me, so I encourage kids to speak to me in English if they can. After all, their grasp of my native tongue will probably prove to be far more helpful in the long run than my grasp of theirs (Call me crazy, but I just don’t envision a future employer saying, “Oh perfect! We’ve been searching for an applicant who can speak Dagbani and we’ve finally found you… The job is yours!”). After a couple of humorous episodes with the children over the last couple of weeks, I thought I’d share a few of the funny things that village kids have said and done recently. Overall, I’m really proud of these kids and their grasp of English. It is, after all, their second language, and I know from personal experience that many American kids make similar mistakes when they’re young, but I’m sure you’ll agree with me that there are few things cuter than a kid screwing up a basic sentence with atrocious grammar…

“Good morning Madam. How are you? I are fine. Thank you.”
-This used to be FAR more amusing than it is now, but I still get a kick out of the way kids say this greeting. They learn to greet adults this way in school, but a lot of them don’t understand what they’re saying at all so it basically comes out as one long run-on sentence that leaves no room for any sort of response from the person they’re greeting. It’s very difficult to get kids to understand the difference between verb and noun agreement, thus the “I ARE fine” portion of the greeting. Also, it doesn’t matter if it’s 7pm, the greeting will always be “good MORNING Madam.”

“CHINESE!”
-Kids often come to my house, greet me, and then yell this. It’s never preceded by anything but the aforementioned “Good morning Madam” greeting, and it is never followed by any other words. It is, however, ALWAYS accompanied by frantic jumping around and karate chopping. It isn’t related to anything that I’m doing or have done, because I’ve seen kids in other villages randomly yell it out too with the accompanying hand motions. I’m not positive about the origins of this behavior, but I’m pretty sure they are trying to act out scenes from Kung Fu movies, which are, believe it or not, VERY popular in the village. No, the villagers do not understand Chinese (nor can they read the occasional English subtitles). No matter. They LOVE Kung Fu. I’ve also heard stories of both male and female Asian volunteers (and sometimes just white people with dark hair) being called “Jackie Chan” by Ghanaians who didn’t know their actual names.

“Madam, I eat you.”
-A 5 year old kid said this to me the other day and I nearly spit out my rice. He was either asking to eat some of my food or pointing out the fact that I was eating. Either way, I think an error was made somewhere in his internal translation…

“Madam, your cat is be here here.”
-They always feel a need to point out when my kittens are roaming outside. Notice the emphasis on the “here here” to prove that my kitten is literally right next to the child who is speaking. In essence, they’re saying, “seriously, right now your cat is RIGHT NEXT TO ME.”

“ I am go to drink water,” “I am go to bread,” or “I am go to drawing.”
-Sadly, this grammatical error is not limited to children. If they’re about to leave the village to travel, an adult will often say, “I am go to ( insert their destination). I am come back tomorrow.”

“Sheet!”
- They say this word with a very strong accent, so it took me a while to figure out that every time a child misses a Frisbee catch or accidentally tears their coloring sheet, they are indeed uttering that 4-letter word that was not intended for children. They also occasionally say some other swear words that I won’t mention here, but I’m pretty sure they have no idea that what they’re saying is almost universally deemed “inappropriate language” for 7 year olds. They probably learned it from their parents. Incidentally, adult villagers who barely speak more than a few words of English usually know how to cuss in English, a practice that they may or may not have learned from the beloved music of Akon and Snoop Dogg.

“You have is done well.”
-A kid said this to me the other day after I spoke to him in Dagbani. “You have done well” is actually a common phrase here which is basically equivalent to telling someone “good job,” but this kid took it to a totally new level of poor grammar. I still gladly accepted the compliment though :)