The Fascinating World of Mooré, Moré, Mossi…That Language Spoken in Burkina Faso…

If you’ve been reading this blog for a long time, you’re probably not too surprised to learn that a new national holiday of a country that most people don’t know much about shows up about every week or so.

In the case of today, we go to West Africa, in particular to Burkina Faso, which is where a language I’m currently learning is primarily spoken—Mooré, Moré, Mossi…however you want to spell it.

While today (August 5^th) is the Burkinabe Independence Day (more on the word “Burkinabe” in a moment), something I’ve sadly noticed is that only developed countries seem to get Google Doodles for their national days (so Peru and Norway get them, but Vanuatu and Burkina Faso, not so much).

Another trend I need to speak to is the fact that only official colonial languages tend to be used in the interfaces of the Google Search Engine as it is localized in the developing world (Sierra Leone and the Seychelles Islands are noteworthy exceptions in Africa that I can think of), and sometimes the “actual” local languages are completely glossed over. It’s truly a shame because I think people need to realize the true extent of linguistic diversity in the developed world!

Burkina Faso is the only country name I can think of that actually uses two distinct languages in its name. “Burkina” in Mooré means “land of honest people” and Faso in Diouala (another language of the country) means “fatherland”. Further complicating matters is the fact that someone from Burkina Faso is “Burkinabe”, and the “–be” suffix comes from yet a third language of the region, Fulani.

But you’re probably wondering exactly why I chose this language and not many other languages besides, even when you just take Africa into consideration.

For one, my father really wanted to provide medical help in French-speaking areas of West Africa in the same way that he did in Sudan and in Sierra Leone. He actually even got tapes to learn French, and while my sister and I learned French at the time, he himself struggled.

As a result, I actually have three native languages (English, Ancient Hebrew and French) but I forgot French since then and had to re-learn it as an adult. I can read EXCELLENTLY, but I can’t really speak it consistently well (although sometimes I can speak it very well if I’m in a good mood or studied correctly that particular day).

I also saw pictures of Ouagadougou (yes, that is the name of the Burkinabe capital), and it looks like it was taken out of a style guide for a fantasy video game!

Have yourself a look:

What’s more, after my study of Salone Krio (Salone = Sierra Leone), I really wanted to see how many similarities there would be to another African Language. Yes, I could have chosen one closer to Salone, but I’ve had a fascination with Burkina Faso for a long time. Life is too short and too precious to not learn the languages you want. So if there’s any language you want to learn, no matter what it is, do something about it. Now. Even if you can’t focus all of your time on it, just learn a few words to sate your curiosity. Learn something about the culture of that language. You won’t regret it.

Since I was young I was (and continue to be) very heartbroken by the way that African cultures are underrepresented or, even worse, distorted and portrayed as uniform in many aspects of American popular culture. Perhaps this has to do with the Atlantic Slave Trade, which really encouraged a lot of the slaves to think that the cultures of their homelands was worthless and should be discarded in favor of whatever cultures or religious practices their owners had.

In an era of climate change and unfolding civil wars, the true aspects of this inequality are coming out to literally be deadly to entire ethnicities, peoples and countries.

We NEED more people who take languages from the developing world seriously. It will help these places heal. I remember hearing from my father’s friends who were priests about the many sides of life in Tanzania and the way that they enthusiastically injected entire dialogue snippets in Swahili in their narratives, complete with English translations afterwards. Truly magical.

Luckily, thanks to the Peace Corps and Live Lingua Project, both available online, you can learn many of these developing-world languages for FREE!

Anyhow, something about Burkina Faso.

I’ve been learning Mossi for about a month now and I’m nowhere near conversational and my vocabulary has significant gaps, even on a basic level. However, thanks to books I’ve been capable of finding idioms and other curiosities about the language that I really like and that I think should be shared:

 

1. To say Happy Birthday in Mossi, say “Ne y taabo”, which is a greeting that is used for all occasions that occur on a yearly basis. Use it for birthdays and to someone who just drank water at the conclusion of fasting during Ramadan.

To say “Happy New Year”, use this phrase: “Wend na kõ-d veere” (the first two e’s in the sentence should be nasalized but it won’t show up in my orthography). It roughly means “may God show us next year”.

The nasal o looks identical to the Estonian õ (a sound that is extremely difficult for foreigners to pronounce and not pronounced the way it is in Mossi), which did lead to confusion despite the fact that I’ve chosen to abandon Estonian for the time being in favor of languages that my heart yearns for.

 

2. For those unaware of what nasal vowels are, these are pronounced with your nose. The two European Languages that I associate most with nasal sounds are Portuguese and Polish, although even when Europe is taken by itself they aren’t the only ones that have them.

Mossi actually has nasal vowels for a, e, i, o and u! (Polish, by comparison, just has a nasal e and a nasal a). This meant that I needed to expand my repertoire of nasal vowels. But hey, at least they’re not click sounds, which would be an interesting thing to write about in any case. (Mossi doesn’t have these)

 

3. Perhaps due to influence from Islam, a lot of greetings and wishes involve an invocation of God:

 

 

And you answer any of the God-blessings with “Amina” (Amen in Hebrew is a cognate to this word from Arabic).

Interestingly enough, Amina is also a female name. Which means that she must go through life with a significant amount of confusion. Or not.

 

4. The money system is based on the 5-franc note, and so 15 francs would actually be expressed as “3 wakirs” In other words, in the oral language you somewhat have to clash with whatever numbers you actually see on your bills or coins.

Wikipedia tells me that Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, the Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo all use the West African Franc. I’m curious if they also use the same system as well…

 

5. And probably the coolest expression I’ve come across in Mossi, is a congratulations or a good luck: Wend na maan zũ-noogo, which means “May God give you a capacity to survive near-death experiences against all favorable odds”. One who has a near-death experience and has survived (August 2005 in Glacier National Park comes to my mind immediately) has acquired “zũ-noogo”

I can’t wait to grapple with this fascinating language in more depth! At the present moment it doesn’t seem likely that I’ll be visiting Africa (although there was that one time I encountered a Burkinabe bar tender in Manhattan who was conversational in ten langauges!), but who knows what sort of opportunities for personal and professional development lie ahead?

Because if there’s one thing my journey has taught me, it is that doing the stranger thing always gets you noticed and respected more. And I’m going to continue to do that for as long as I can.

Ne y taabo!

Gulf Arabic and Thai Airport Mission Results: Minor Successes, Not Optimal, but Important Things to Reflect on

Here I am in the United States, more tired than I have ever been in my entire life. Nearly two weeks of absence from my blog, and I have finally returned.

The last I wrote on this blog, I committed to learning a tiny bit of Gulf Arabic, a tiny bit of Thai, as well as Burmese to a Tourist Level.

Gulf Arabic for my Dubai stopovers? Well…I did prepare a significant amount of very essential vocabulary (and yes, the Middle East phrasebook arrived on time!), but, as it turns out, given how (1) I wasn’t buying anything in any of the shops and (2) expatriates outnumber local significantly in the United Arab Emirates (this was even MORE pronounounced in the Airport, where it often felt significantly more Southern Asian at times…I should also note that I heard Hebrew spoken at the airport!)

When I tried to engage security personnel in Arabic, they virtually ignored me. But maybe I’m missing on something. I’ve heard that in Jordan (for which I failed to prepare Arabic on account of my school schedule), even a few words may get you the response “You speak Arabic better than I do!” from a local (I think it was the Rough Guide to Jordan that said this…)

Anyhow, it seems that I’ll pivot from Gulf Arabic to the Iraqi variety (but it’s not going to be my main focus). Why? I told someone at a language exchange that I would like to learn Iraqi Arabic out of curiosity, and because I studied Ancient History (among other things) in college, and I got told (on multiple occasions). “WHY? ISIS practically destroyed everything there…” (Keep in mind that I have no intention to travel to the country at this point at all, although interacting with Iraqis everywhere else would be a fantastic endeavor!)

So, did I fail? This was a surprise mission after all, but I managed to learn quite a lot under the circumstances, and I think I would be able to hold my own in an emergency situation.

Also the first time I’ve spent Ramadan (for any amount of time) in a Muslim Country. Would have never predicted that I would have arrived at 3 AM in an airport. Wowie.

Now, as for Thai…

Yeah, WAAAY too tired to have prepared it properly on the plane. And I decided to go with an app that I wasnt used to (the Japan-based LingoCards) rather than using the sturdy Mango Languages (which I think is fantastic for “activating” a basic language, actually).

That said, I was capable of using “Hello” and “Thank You”, as well as “Where is…?” The phrasebook helped.

Lesson Learned: If you expect yourself to be tired in a given situation, prepare yourself. I remember that I used to be a fire dancer and fire stuntsman in college (True story!) One thing I was told…that when you are ACTUALLY dancing with fire, expect it to go more quickly. Same here. Expecially if you haven’t had experience with a language, expect to be slower and a lot less quick-witted when using the language with other people in comparison to your exercises by yourself. This is doubly true if travel is weighing you down.

Bangkok’s Legendary Airport + Self-Proclaimed Legendary Hyperpolyglot

Now, ordinarily, I would write something about how I managed with Burmese during the two-week-plus trip, but that’s worthy of a post in its own.

The bad: I got answered in English more often there than any other place (with the exception of the Netherlands), and this is despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that few Burmese are fluent in English.

The good: managed myself using Burmese in almost every single situation (with the exception of the hotel, which is an anomaly for multiple reasons I’ll discuss in another post). I can plainly say that I have mastered basic Burmese although I am not fluent.

And, of course, next week will feature posts on Danish (in honor of the…closest thing they have to a national day) and Swedish (in honor of the Day of the Swedish Flag). Neither of them will follow the patterns I’ve laid out for the previous National Day posts.

And I should probably get some rest.