By Philip Briggs
Edition 31: Summer 2005
George Bernard Shaw’s famous quip about countries divided by a common language could apply to plenty of Anglophone nations ‐ not least the 20 African territories where English is an official language. In The Gambia, good English is a sign of a good education, and traders are very proud of their patter.
The Gambian kiosk owner looked at me blankly. “Marlboro,” I repeated for the third time, “you know, cigarettes, Marlboro?” The kiosk owner reached back to the near end of the cigarette shelf, and handed me a packet bearing another brand name. “No, not this one,” I gesticulated hopefully, “Marlboro, up there!” I was handed the next brand in line. I shook my head and repeated my plea, and so we continued until we reached the end of the shelf. “Yes, this is the one!” I exclaimed in relief, only to be greeted with the sort of well-why-didn’t-you-bloody-say-so-then expression I more normally associate with my lame attempts to speak French and the slow, mildly contemptuous intonation “It is called Mar-el-BAW-Raw”.
Before continuing further, I will confess that I’m blessed with the English gift for languages ‐ that is to say: no gift at all. True, as a result of my apartheid-era South African schooling, I can follow and just about speak Afrikaans, a claim that now ‐ thanks to my Flemish wife ‐ extends more tenuously to Dutch itself. What’s more, I can inquire where a bus is headed in Amharic, point out the presence of many lions in Swahili, express gratitude in Portuguese, and deny that I am American or German in French. But, embarrassingly, there is no language other than my mother tongue in which I am able to hold a fluent conversation.
This bias admitted, it strikes me that the most important linguistic skill that can be acquired by any visitor to Anglophone Africa is to tailor their English to local usage. African English ‐ like its American or Jamaican counterpart ‐ is a distinct dialect, one whose unique rhythms, pronunciation and idiomatic quality is long overdue recognition. And making a conscious effort to come to grips with it is certainly a far more realistic and useful short-term goal (not to say more a portable skill) than acquiring a few stilted phrases in one of many dozens of local languages.
In Africa, as elsewhere, people tend to transpose aspects of their mother tongue to a second language. In Bantu-speaking areas ‐ pretty much everywhere south of the equator ‐ English words are often spoken with a Bantu inflection, the stress placed on the second-last syllable. And most Africans pronounce English vowels as they would in their own language, so that ‘sin’ might sound like ‘seen’.
African words very seldom contain compound consonants or end with a consonant, which means that locals often ignore soft consonant sounds such as the ‘r’ in important (eem-POT-ant), or insert an arbitrary vowel between running consonants (pen-pal becomes pen-EE-pal), or append a vowel to the end of a word, shifting the stress to what would ordinarily be the last syllable (pen-ee-PAL-ee).
Another quirk in many parts of Africa is that ‘l’ and ‘r’ are used interchangeably (which can cause some confusion when your safari guide points out a lilac-breasted roller). So to a lesser extent are ‘b’ and ‘v’ (Virunga vs Birunga) and ‘ch’ and ‘k’ (the Rwandan capital, spelt Kigali, is often pronounced “Chigari”).
If somebody doesn’t understand the phrasing you use, try rewording it ‐ don’t just repeat it more loudly. Avoid slang or jargon ‐ few African villagers will be familiar with terms such as ‘pear-shaped’ or ‘user-friendly’ ‐ or appending buzzwords such as ‘mate’ to every sentence.
Tailoring one’s English to local usage might feel patronising to some readers. Certainly, you should gauge any given situation ‐ it would be as inappropriate to address a university lecturer in broken English as it would be to babble away to an illiterate nomad without making any allowances. To put things in perspective,
all sorts of linguistic adjustments might be required were an Australian to travel in the American south, or a Geordie to my hometown of Johannesburg!
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