The word for NO in Kinyarwanda can be very frustrating. You will be sitting there thinking the person you were talking with just doubted what you said and requires convincing, only to see him/her do the complete opposite of what you thought he or she just doubted you about. For the word, always pronounced in a rather laid-back and completely un-antagonistic tone to rhyme with “oh yeah?” in spoken English, is Oyaaa.
Oyaa also happens to be the response you get from most Rwandans when you propose an idea they find radically different from what they are used to. Trouble is they never tell it to you in the face. They will repeatedly tell you “Give me a call and we’ll sit down and discuss the matter” then promptly prove to be too busy to find time to “sit down” every time you call. And if you persistently fail to get a clue and doggedly continue calling, they find various reasons not to pick your call.
Not that Rwandans are much different from much of the human race in this aspect; just that they have perfected it into an art form.
In fact linguistically alone, there are many ways in which Rwandans are similar to other Bantus in the region, who will, after a while, discover Kinyaru words/ phrases that are not only phonetically but also syntactically similar to their own.
Never mind that your first encounter with Kinyarwanda will always sound like an interminable series of incomprehensible “ch” sounds followed by a few syllables and further “ch” sounds. After a while, start to recognise certain words/phrases from back home: For me, these included garura, meaning turn around, or change; Turi kumwe, meaning we are together/ we are one/ we understand one another; magana atanu for five hundred; neza for nice/good and mirongo ine, mirongo itanu, for forty and fifty respectively. Kinyarwanda’s meza however does not mean table as it does in Swahili, but is, like neza, a derivative good/nice/ sawa.
Having gone that far, the myamahanga (person from outside) may, or may not realise the significance of the aforementioned CH sounds and how many more words the Kinyarwanda speaker alienates by simply interchanging the CH sound for the K sound. So Kenya becomes Chenya, Kiswahili – Chiswahili, Kigali
In fact one soon realises that most Kinyarwanda words that mean the same as other Bantu words, even when spelt the same, are pronounced differently: igana for a hundred becomes ijana. Murugi, a girl’s name (yes, they have that too) becomes Muruji, and names of places like Gisenyi and Gikondo, are pronounced as Jisenyi and Jikondo respectively. As you scratch your head wondering why Magana does not become majana, a sympathetic Mnyarwanda may cut a long story short by patiently explaining that being Francophone, they have a different set of sounds from other Bantus.
Ahem.
The intrepid mnyamahanga very quickly realises that the only way to really know the language of the hills is to learn every word by ear, which could take for ever and/or total assimilation; and that the safest response to the suggestion “You must know Chinyarwanda by now” is, most advisedly, “Oh yeah?”
531 words
© Lloyd Igane 2010 kreative@earthling.net
Great pointers
ReplyDelete