Rwandan Ramblings

Monday, November 20, 2006


Kinyarwanda is weird.
A lot of the time it sounds like you’re rolling your tongue around your throat – fine if you are Rwandan – Not so good if people are already laughing at you purely for being female and wearing trousers. Add to that your newly contorted face as you screw up your mouth into all sorts of weird shapes to try and make the right ‘rgh’ sound. Try and say r and g at the same time. Hmmm, difficult eh? Just another letter in the Kinyarwanda alphabet...

Now replace all ki’s with the sound ‘ch’. Therefore the capital city Kigali becomes “chigali’.
L and R are the same letter. L and R can interchange and it makes no difference. I was reading the scores of the European football the other day and couldn’t understand how they’d let in some Brazilian team; Riverpoor into the competition. Yes, L and R may sound completely different to you and me, but then ‘ejo’ with raised eyebrows and accent on the first bit means ‘yesterday’. “Ejo’, lowered eyebrows and softer tone means tomorrow. V complicated and leads into all sorts of temporal difficulties. Instant respect gained though when you do manage to contort your face and scratch your vocal chords just so.

Plus it means that you can have a serious conversation about the relative merits of a certain Wayne Looney...

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home