Mende Language Post #1

Post by Lara

August 25^th, 2012

By special request, here’s a post on the Mende language, at least what we know of it so far.  We started learning Mende about 4 weeks ago, and we’re much slower on the uptake than we were with Krio (for obvious reasons—Krio takes much of its structure and vocabulary from English, after all). 

First, a cautionary tale: during our visit to our village before Mende class started, my supervisor took us on a walk around town, and we got stopped by an older woman who started speaking to Kevin in Mende. Unsure of what she was saying, Kevin took a stab at it and responded with “Kaye Ngewo ma” at which point my supervisor started laughing heartily. He asked us if we knew what the woman had said and when we said no, he told us that she had walked up to Kevin and said “I’m going to steal this man away from his wife,” to which my husband had responded “Thanks be to God”.    We like to tell this story as a shining example of why learning local languages is important—you may just find yourself betrothed to a 70-year-old Mende woman if you’re not careful!

Since our 10 weeks of training happened in Mende land, we got a head start at learning our local language (there are 5 local languages that our group of 44 was divided into, so not everyone was lucky enough to get to practice throughout training).  The first lesson for anyone learning Mende is to get through the 4-line basic greeting. You pick up on it pretty quickly, because inevitably anyone over the age of 60 in our neighborhood insisted that we greet them in Mende as we were walking down the road. The conversation goes as follows (We didn’t know the English translation until we started Mende class, by the way):

“Bi wua?”                            [“Are you up?”]

“Bi sie.”                               [“Thank you.”]

“Gahun yena?”                 [“How is your body?”]

“Kaye Ngewo ma”           [“Thanks be to God”]

This little exchange is usually followed by either “What is your name?”  or “How did you sleep?”[response: “Kaye Ngewo ma”/”Thanks be to God”]. With knowledge of those 6 lines, you generally can get by in a Mende speaking area for quite some time, provided you walk fast.  The other fun thing about those first 4 lines is that Mende speakers tend to use them as a litmus test to see if you really know Mende…which is to say that often when you’ve completed the greeting, they give an approving nod and walk away satisfied.  At least that was the case at our training site, a bigger city where Mende is one of several languages spoken, and Krio tops the list.  In our village, we tend to need a little more knowledge than the basics, but we’re slowly eking out new phrases and adding them to our lexicon. I will surely be posting more updates on Mende in the future, so anyone who comes to visit us will be more than prepared to dive right into Mende land!

My friend Safiatu, who insists on speaking in Mende when I come to buy beans from her