Apr 11, 03:30 PM
No Milky
While still in Chicago, Mark and I took out a bunch of “Learn Swahili” books and tapes from the library. But we were also preparing to leave our jobs, planning the trip, and moving at the time, so the unfortunate fact is that we didn’t learn much.
In Tanzania, there’ve been a few interesting moments, because while both Tanzania and Kenya have English and Kiswahili as their official languages, Kenyans tend to speak English a lot better than their neighbors to the south. It hasn’t been a big problem, as we’ve usually found people whose English is better than our Swahili.
Since our own ignorance of the native language is so great, we’re in no position to criticise. But we would be remiss if we failed to note the interesting, and endearing, quirks in the ways that many Tanzanians speak English. Namely, they add a “y” sound to the ends of words that don’t have that sound. A tour guide near Lushoto told us that he’s a Muslim, but he doesn’t pray five times a day and doesn’t go “to mosque-y” One really nice guy from Mlalo said something like, “I have always lived in the mountains, butty, my besty friendy lives in Dar es Salaam.” A son named Edwin was called “Edweeny.”
This might have something to do with the way that Swahili is constructed, because there are several real Swahili words that look to be English words borrowed and modified with a y sound. The word “office,” for example, is in Swahili “ofisi.” The bill in a restaurant is a “bili;” fried potatoes are “chipsi.”
But the really funny thing is that Tanzanians using words that do in fact end in a y sound often leave that y sound off. Someone we met was going to Germany to study, for instance, and said “I’m going to German.” One guy, highly educated and speaking excellent English, consistently talked about issues in his “communit.” Our hostel in Dar is tonight offering “Spaghett” or “Linguin;” it actually says that on the sign.
Our personal favorite was when we were staying at a hostel in Lushoto, and our waiter, after telling us that several items were missing from the menu, explained that cream of mushroom soup was off because, as he said with a crooked smile, “No milky.”