Learning Small Small

This is a geek post. If you don't want to read some pretty nerdy content (seriously, verb conjugation figures fairly prominently in this), then instead you can go to www.google.com, type the word 'fart,' and click the search button. You can come back here when you're done.

I'll give you a minute to make up your mind.

Now, for those of you still here, I'd like to begin today with a brief discussion of the Romans (hey, you were warned). So, the Romans didn't write spaces between words. This is, of course, because the Romans were stupid. I mean really, other than rule of law, and the aqueducts...

That last part was a Monty Python reference. Are you sure you're in the right group?

Anyway, I was sitting under a tree today reading Tristram Shandy and a man approached me. He leaned down to me and said:

'Agbeleklem'

I flashed him my signature look (confused, apologetic stare), and he pointed at my book. 'Gbele.' he said. Then he pointed at his eyes. 'Klem.' Then he walked away.

And I sat there for a minute, sort of puzzled, and then somewhere in my brain two neurons gave each other a little fist bump and I went 'Ohhhhhhhhhh!'

'Agbeleklem' is 'A gbele klem' and that means that suddenly, after three weeks here, *all of the phrases I've learned are made of words.* I spent the next half hour rifling through my notebooks for Ewe phrases and rewriting them with spaces. 'Come back soon' isn't 'Nagbokaba;' it's 'Na gbo kaba,' with 'gbo' meaning 'return' as in 'Magbo,' which is actually 'Ma gbo,' 'I'm back.'

THIS IS AMAZING!

'See you tomorrow' isn't 'Etcho miadogu,' it's 'Etso mia dogo,' 'Tomorrow we meet.' Because 'dogo' is meet. And 'mia' is we!

Ma gbo, I'm back, a gbo, you're back, e gbo, he/she is back, mia gbo, we're back!

'Mie gbo,' Dickson corrects me.

Wait, what?

'Well, we came back together. Mia is for things that we each did individually, mie is for things we did as a group. So if we leave together from somewhere, it's "Mie dzo," but if we leave and go our separate ways, it's "Mia dzo."

'OH YEAH dzo like how goodbye is "Ma dzo!" so that means "I'm leaving!"' I say, crossing out 'Majoo' in my notes. Wait. I have it written down that 'dzo' means 'to fly.' I have this written down because earlier I was asking about the high school motto, 'Dzo lali,' which means 'Fly now' (as in 'or never').

'No, "fly" is "dzo." This is "dzo."' He repeats the two words for me so I can hear the difference, but all I can think is that he sounds sort of unsure about the second one but really definitive about the first one.

And then I realize that Ewe has tones.

(Shit.)

And that's bad enough, but then he starts explaining how the together/individually distinction somehow also applies to the first person *singular* pronoun, and he tries to clarify this with some example about eating an orange, but I am really not having an easy time seeing which of my actions are things I am doing *with* myself and which are things I am doing as an individual. If that is even the distinction, which it probably isn't.

My hosts see me struggling and comfort me. 'You will learn small small before you go,' they say. 'Congratulations! You are trying!' It's totally sincere and not at all condescending, which I think you have to be Ghanaian to pull off.

So, in the end, I had about an hour of feeling like I suddenly was really getting the hang of this Ewe stuff, followed by a heartbreaking realization that languages are hard, and that in all likelihood, every time I've left a room for the past three weeks, I've been telling people that I'm flying.

On the upside, I now know that if you mispronounce the high school motto, it means 'LEAVE RIGHT NOW.' I've got to remember to ask someone whether that's as hilarious to a native speaker as it is to me.

Delightful.