Linguistic epiphany

(This may be interesting only to those of you who enjoy analysing
sounds and the difference between them, and why we say what we
say. But I thought it was fun.) :-)

It's been nearly two years, but I've finally figured out the
major difference between a Cameroon English accent and an
American English accent. Sure, people here pronounce their r's
differently, and their vowels are purer. But I think the major
reason that the two dialects have trouble understanding each
other is actually related to rhythm.

In American English (and most natively-spoken English, I think),
the stressed syllables are placed approximately evenly. This
means that some of our syllables (think "and the" or "of the")
are reduced to the minimum sound possible, and also means that we
ventilate our speech with brief pauses. This causes the
"lilting" feel of English.

Many other languages, instead of spacing their stressed syllables
evenly, space all syllables evenly. To Americans, this tends to
sound very rapid (think what a stream of Spanish sounds like to a
non-Spanish-speaker), and also occasionally gives the impression
of staccato regularity.

Cameroon English, borrowing its pronunciation from African
languages, uses the second system and not the first. Every
syllable receives its proper modicum of time. (For example: in
Cameroon English, "evening" has three syllables, all of the same
length.) When Cameroonians hear normal American English spoken,
they actually call it "rapping" because it sounds to them like
we're just rushing through our words without saying them
properly. Meanwhile, American ears that aren't used to Cameroon
English find the unexpected stress on (formerly!) unstressed
syllables distracting, and have their own difficulty in
understanding.

I may not be bilingual yet, but I think I'm at least becoming
bidialectal. :-)

Superwoman isn't here

After dinner, here at our missionary homeschool conference, the
ladies (read: 'the moms' and Sharon) have a tradition of walking
around the compound together.

It is there, more than any other time, that you may learn the
reality of what it is like to be a woman on the missionfield-- if
you keep your ears open. House help and homeschooling.
Isolation and transition. Making Cameroonian friends and craving
ice cream. Illness and sending high schoolers to boarding
school. Language learning and being the "white man" (yes, women
are "white men" too). Fielding pleas for money and finding time
to exercise without an audience. Exhaustion and home assignment.

These are the women I want to be like. Scarred and hurting,
laughing and compassionate, strong and independent, frustrated
and wondering if they are really making a difference. And
willing to risk it anyway.

Awake yet?

Yesterday was Crazy Hair Day. (This is the sort of thing that
missionaries and their kids do when they get together in large
groups. All the silliness that isn't allowed you, when you are a
stranger in a strange land, comes out when you are among people
of your own culture again.)

I'm not always good at this sort of thing. But when my alarm
went off at 6:30am, jolting me unpleasantly out of dreamland, I
had an absolutely brilliant idea.

My mother always told me I had enough hair for three people. Now
I think I've proven it.

I always wondered what good a four-minute snooze button did.

And the preschoolers simply loved banging on my hair to make it
stop beeping.

Hearing normality

You know that you're beginning to grasp the edges of useful
language skills when you realise that the people around you are
saying, well, normal things.

To be sure, somewhere in my head I've always known that language
is used to communicate about normal, daily life. But when you
hear a fluent volley of sounds you don't understand, it feels
exotic, mysterious, strange. Surely there must be some great
secret contained in that flow of eloquent nonsense.

And then, one day, it occurs to you. They're saying really
normal stuff.

"It might rain-- you should take in the laundry."

"Oh, yes, I forgot to tell you something."

"Is Rachel finished with school yet?"

"If you eat any more of that, it will come out your ears."

In the beginning...

Genesis 1 is one of the most amazing pieces of literature I've
ever read. It's aesthetically lovely, delicately and perfectly
balanced. The prose is full of poetic language and structured
repetition. It's rich with both symbolic and numeric
significance. It stands up to rigid academic analysis.

And it appeals to preschoolers. With its simple elegance, its
repeated phrases, and its pairs of opposites, light, dark, high,
low, wet, dry... it quickly lodges in their impressionable little
memories.

Fitting indeed that there be something of this magnitude to draw
all eyes to the beginning of the Great Story...

Cor nostrum inquietum est

...donec requiescat in te.

I found myself singing a Russian song today. I still know all
the words, even after nearly nine years. I don't know what all
of them mean, but I know I was singing about the New Jerusalem.

It struck me as ironic. Here I am, trying and trying to get the
Oroko youth to sing songs they understand. Why is this Russian
song, of which I only understand bits and pieces, so precious to
me?

Somehow, though, it seems strangely appropriate. The melody is
filled with a wordless longing, a plaintive homesickness.
"Ierusalim... Ierusalim..." The song in my head and on my lips,
for which I know only a faint meaning, matches the yearning in my
heart for a place of which I have only the faintest knowledge.
The yearning itself is my best knowledge of it.

And thus it is that I sing in a foreign tongue of the land where
every nation and tribe and people and tongue will praise the Lamb
together. For there we shall finally understand the song that we
sing.

Dictionaricide

The process of writing a dictionary has disabused me of any
notion about dictionaries being authoritative. Language is too
living, too mobile, too flexible, for any single portrait of it
to be accurate. If you attempt to pin it to little white cards
and label it like so many specimens, it will slip out from under
your fingers and hover just out of reach, laughing at you.

I had to laugh heartily, then, when I found this exceedingly
dictionary-ish word in our English dictionary:

verbicide, n. Deliberate distortion of the sense of a word (as
in punning).

The only problem is, that's not killing words. It's only killing
dictionary definitions. Verbicide is what makes words live.

Just ask Shakespeare.

Cockroach-1, Sharon-0

When it comes to cockroaches, I really am just an out-and-out
coward. Just a few days ago, I thought to myself, "I'm glad a
cockroach has never shown up either in my hair, or in my bed. I
think I can almost handle them elsewhere. But that would
be entirely too much."

Late last night, I found a cockroach clinging to the INSIDE of my
mosquito net, precariously dangling above my sheets.

Despite the fact that I was several hundred times larger than
this insect, and that he had no pincer, stinger, poison, or any
weapon except ugliness, magnified by size-- I was petrified.

My first line of defence is always the flyswatter. When handled
correctly, this lethal weapon dispenses instantaneous death,
provides the preferred distance from me, and even functions as a
bier for the departed. In this case, however, the flyswatter
appeared singularly ineffective. Mosquito nets are hardly a
stable surface for the execution of cockroaches.

I thought quickly. Bleach ought to kill just about anything. I
filled the bottom of a cup with the bleach I had just used to
wash dishes (and a small amount of water in case I spilled it on
myself) and proceeded to hunt my quarry.

I found, however, that I was utterly incapable of the simple
action of knocking the cockroach off the mosquito net into the
cup. The image of him falling on my hand and crawling up me was
too powerful.

I sighed. Maybe if I soaked cotton balls in bleach and then
trapped the cockroach between the cup, the mosquito net, and the
wall...

Sadly, this too failed. Maybe I was too hesitant and let the
cockroach get away. Maybe he finally wised up and smelled the
poisonous fumes intended for his destruction. At any rate, he
scuttered down the mosquito net and behind the bedframe next to
my pillow. Two bleach-soaked white blobs landed, sans cockroach,
on my sheet.

After a perfect frenzy of shaking the mosquito net, rummaging
behind the bed with the flyswatter, wiping bleach off my bed, and
tucking the edges of the net under the mattress, I finally turned
off my light and admitted my cowardice. And my failure. And my
reluctance to go to sleep in that bed.

I really, REALLY hope one doesn't show up in my hair next week.

For all you poor shivering people at home

You know it's hot when...

-The cats sprawl across the cement floor instead of curling up on
a cushion.

-A large fan suddenly seems like the most necessary household
appliance ever invented.

-Cooking dinner or washing dishes means feeling like Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego.

-You consider drinking a beverage you've never really liked,
simply because it has been in the fridge.

-There is more solar-heated water for showers than there has been
all year.

-You take cold showers anyway.

We do have plenty of solar power due to the intense sunlight,
however, and as a bonus, now the clothes take only one day to dry
on the line. As they say, it's an ill wind that blows no good.

...I just wish the wind would blow at all.

Use what you have

We found a six-legged spider last night. Splayed out against our
white stucco wall, he made it quite easy for us to count. Four
legs on one side-- two legs on the other.

Lisa brought a shoe. "Let's put him out of his misery."

I continued to contemplate the incomplete arachnid. "He probably
can't move very fast anyway."

"Are you saying I should have pity on him?" She paused, the shoe
raised. The spider took the opportunity to use his remaining six
legs to good purpose.

On second thought... maybe he isn't miserable after all.

And maybe he's still behind that picture frame today.

Plethora

In the last week and a half, we have feasted on:

fresh bananas
fresh papaya
banana bread
papaya bread
banana and papaya slushy
banana and cocoa and peanut butter slushy
banana and papaya pudding pie
papaya crisp
banana and papaya yogurt
banana milk
banana and papaya popsicles

The one that got away

Have you ever had that jumpy "I missed the cockroach and knocked
him off the wall and now I don't know where he is" feeling?

Addendum

I might add that suddenly, the parable of the ten virgins and
their lamps and their oil makes much more sense. If we'd been
burning kerosene this past weekend, we'd have run out long before
the bridegroom and his family arrived (in the sole taxi willing
to venture on the muddy "bush roads" after a rain)...

This should relieve some stress.

After attending an Oroko traditional wedding this weekend, I have
great ideas for wedding planning. Forget the six months of
hectic organisational details. Here's what we could do.

First, we would invite all of our family and friends-- and expect
a goodly amount of people from Fowler, particularly those who
live on our street, to show up without a formal invitation.
After all, when there's free food...

Then we would wait for all the important people to arrive. Some
of them might be delayed by rain and muddy roads. Maybe even Jim
and his family. After all, you know those roads from Thousand
Oaks to Fowler... they need to get a road crew out to grade them
again after rainy season. --No matter. The guests will all wait
around for six hours, right? No problem.

At about eleven o'clock (that's pm), we would finally be able to
start the ceremony. My dad would make an announcement that all
these strangers are here in his house, but he doesn't know why
they've come, and wishes they would tell him after he's given
them something to eat.

So a hearty meal, which would have been prepared by me and all my
female relatives that day, would be served to our two families
and my parents' high school classmates (the closest equivalent to
an Oroko 'age group'!). Then, when they had eaten well, someone
from Jim's family would make an elaborate speech about how they
heard that it's a good idea to marry women from Fowler. Then Jim
would say that he had seen "a small fowl" in my father's house
that he thought he liked. (No intentional pun there between the
name of our town and the 'small fowl.' However, knowing my
family, SOMEONE would make it into a quite intentional pun.)

My parents would bring out my unmarried sisters, one at a time,
veiled. "This one? Is this the fowl you saw?"

Upon receiving the negative, they would finally bring me out with
the same veil. As soon as Jim's family had officially confirmed
that yes, this was the correct fowl, the families would need to
go someplace private to negotiate the brideprice, or better
named, marriage gift. (Sorry, Jim. No dowry. How many goats do
you have? Maybe my dad will accept a '67 Chevy instead.)
Someone from the family then would inevitably quote the proverb
that
"the marriage gift never ends."

When the family members filed back in, they would announce that
an agreement had been reached that was satisfactory to everyone.
Then the speeches, advice-giving, and
sitting-and-waiting-for-something-to-happen could begin.

After three hours (did you think you were going to get to sleep
tonight? This is a wedding!!) everyone would get to start
dancing. Guests would be free to come and go, but none of the
bride and groom's family would get much sleep.

The next morning, rather late (weddings last only one day? what
culture are you from?) Jim and I and a few people would go to the
courthouse for our civil wedding. Upon our return, the party
would continue. I and all of my female relatives would prepare
another, even bigger, meal, and everyone would eat their fill.
More speeches, more dancing, and lots of gift giving. Around
five o'clock, people would start to filter away, and then
everyone would realise that the Africa Cup was in progress and
they were about to miss a football match... and the wedding would
be over. The chairs would stick around for at least a week,
though.

So, what do you think, Jim? :-)

Passing it on

The Time Bomb is now in Rachel's hands.

Why would I give a dangerous object to a curious, uninhibited,
and adventurous eight-year-old child, you ask?

Ah! But then you don't know about the Time Bomb. A dangerous
object, yes. But perhaps for reasons you haven't considered.

This conversation, between two parties of the first and second
part forever to remain nameless, took place on an unspecified day
at some time after eleven hours post meridian.

"You know how they used to take hot-water bottles to warm the
foot of their beds in the old days? Maybe we should do that--
with ice."

"That might work in Fresno. Here... the mattress would get
moldy. 'Achoo! Achoo! I've got these terrible allergies and I
can't figure out what's causing them!!!' "

*laughter*

"Patch the Pirate has this song about someone not cleaning his
room... 'the garbage putrefied, my guinea pig died, a creepy,
slimy fungus took up residence among us... so now I clean my
bedroom every day.' ... and somewhere in there the ants carry
things off, too. --But things like that seem to happen in this
room even though we DO clean it."

"Well, at least the ants haven't carried off the alarm clock
yet."

"They wouldn't WANT it!!! --It would drive all of them away from
the ant hill forever."

"A bomb... maybe they'd want it for a bomb. 'Look, let's lob it
over here into this other ant hill!' "

"A time bomb! It would be a time bomb!!"

Postmodern lexicography

We use single letters to designate the different dialects in the
Oroko dictionary. Mbonge is "m." Batanga is "t." Balue is "l."
Bakundu is "u."

Occasionally in the process of dictionary entry (sometimes more
like 'often'), we have to tag a word because we aren't sure if
it's valid in a certain dialect or not.

Therefore, there are several words in our dictionary tagged,
"valid for u?"

Excitement

I've never seen anything spontaneously combust before.
Especially not a whole box of damp matches.

Woo hoo!

Jargonisation

A harangue that could only happen in a household of linguists.

"The teacher's desk is beginning to look like the student's."

"It's assimilation!"

"Are you calling me a nasal?"

VeggieTales again

So it occurred to me last night that "Khalil" sounds awfully
Hebrew. I'm sure that's intentional... but wouldn't it be a
great joke if it actually meant "worm"?

According to my trusty Langenscheidt Hebrew-English pocket
dictionary, there are three possible meanings for "Khalil"
(depending on which sound in the back of your throat you choose
"kh" to represent). One is "whole, complete, perfect." Another
is "something hollowed out; a flute." The third is "profane."

Poor Khalil.

So I kept looking. If the folks at Big Idea had wanted to use
the Hebrew word for "worm," what would Khalil's name have been?

Turns out he would have been Tole'ah.

But I'm sure he's o. k. with that now.