Words Are Hard

I am currently in the process of reading a book entitled My Friend the Mercenary. Someone gave it to Fr. Garry and he read it on his recent trip to England. It is about the only journalist who was able to go into the midst of the rebel army during the Liberian civil war, and tells the story about the coup attempted to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea (this is a brutally honest book, I wouldn’t suggest it for all readers). But a good portion of it takes place in the exact area where I am staying now, so Father thought it would be an interesting and profitable read for me.

I’m only about a quarter of the way through (450 pages!), so I’ll hold my history lesson until I’m done. There is, however, a brief part that I wanted to share with you all now.

Bob and I have mentioned on occasion the difficulty in language that we have found. And in reading this book I came across a description of their speech that was enlightening for me, and I think might paint a better picture than I could:

His deep Liberian accent, the first I had ever heard, was immediately mesmerizing. It was a voice from another era, a way of speaking that had been brought to Liberia in the nineteenth century by freed slavery from the southern states of America. Endings of words, and other consonants, too, were dropped or swallowed in a unique Old American drawl: ‘now’ became nah, ‘it’ lost its ‘t’, which Joe pronounces ih; ‘th’ became a hard t or de – not unlike the accents of my Irish cousins.

The author even writes their conversations in the way that the people speak. Example: “Oh, yeah-o. I di’ mah trenin’ lon’ time ago. An’ nah, dese day’...I tink dis wi’ mak’ y’ bedder.” (Translation: “Oh, yeah-o. I did my training a long time ago. And now, these days…I think this will make you better.)

As for me, when I’m speaking one-on-one with someone then I’m usually fine, but when there’s a whole group talking and laughing together (like in the car…everyday), then I usually have no idea what’s going on. But I know that it works both ways, so I do my best to make myself heard clearly. And I pray to the Holy Spirit for the gift to interpret tongues…

-Dan
written 07/01/11