Green Words

Last month while we were with my parents in East Africa, we attended a small church in the village where they live. A handful of Christians met under a thatch shelter without walls next to a field of harvested stalks of maize. We sat on roughly hewn benches in the sultry heat, men on one side, women on the other. When it came time for guests to greet the group and introduce themselves, I stood up shyly and self-consciously dusted off the limited Swahili I only occasionally use these days. But in that moment of acute language stage-fright, something weird happened. Something about my surroundings unlocked a very rusty box in my mind that hadn’t been opened in a very long time. Whether it was the pattern of palm-tree shadows on sandy paths and the lingering scent of smoke from cooking fires or simply being with my parents again in a rural environment, something flipped a switch in my mind. When I opened my mouth the first few words to come creaking out were in Kigiriyama, a language of my childhood that I haven’t spoken and have hardly even heard in over fifteen years, (and which was of no practical value in that setting.) Even now I am amazed to think of the things buried in my own mind. Things that resonate somewhere deep inside of me when the strings of my senses are plucked.

A couple of days ago Bryan and I first dipped our toes into learning Rotana, the mother tongue of a people group of about 50,000. Their language has never been written down. They have no alphabet. No books. You can’t read a Rotana story anywhere in the world, though they have some good ones. Little kids can’t start learning to read Rotana in school before transitioning to Arabic or English because there are no primers. We are here to try and help those in this community who want to change that. It’s a long process. And for us, it starts with learning the language too.

So for about 45 minutes the other day, we sat with our friend Abdul and tried to learn something. We listened to the flavor of his words, sampling a few ourselves as we rolled sounds curiously around on our tongues. I was blown away by how different Rotana is than any other language I have ever studied. Word breaks elude me completely and vowels are swallowed up in the bristly hedges of their neighboring consonants. My lips and tongue and throat feel lethargic and out of shape as they try to transition out of Arabic and into something completely new. It’s too early for my mind to comprehend anything I am saying or hearing. For the time being meaning is modestly hidden behind the taste and smell and color of this new language. So even as I transcribe new words, ponder syllable structure and marvel over the advanced tongue root phenomenon that my grad school professors swore would only show up in a handful of languages any of us would ever work in (!), I am mostly just savoring this short-lived season of initial sensations.

Where Arabic tasted warm and grainy on my throat when I first started learning it, like fresh baked bread full of nuts and kernels, Rotana has a sour tang to it – more like the sorghum mush of the villages than the round loaves they sell in town. It is dry, but full of texture, like the baobab fruit that coats your tongue with soft white tanginess, while its oddly shaped seeds roll around in your mouth like marbles. Where Arabic had a Semitic gruffness to it sanded down with smooth rolling laterals, Rotana has a Nilotic nasal-ness that I feel hum pleasantly somewhere between my nose and the roof of my mouth. Arabic tasted golden-yellow to me. Rotana tastes green, like baby leaves.

I need to remember right now that for me, acute frustration is usually hot on the heels of initial elation as far as language is concerned. While trying to learn an unwritten language right now is an enticing mystery, when I can’t turn to a dictionary or grammar book for clues later on it may be maddening. While helping people craft an alphabet and choose a script to give shape to their beautiful language right now sounds like the opportunity of a lifetime, it won’t take long before that becomes the most intimidating thing I can imagine. (Ok, I’ll be honest, it already sort of is.) But when those days come, I hope and pray that the enthusiasm of the man leaning over my shoulder, craning his neck to catch a glimpse of my notebook and see what his language just might look like someday will be all the incentive I need to take a deep breath and just keep trying.

Until then, as one who still knows nothing, I am just enjoying the tastes and smells of this incredibly old new language.