By and by we wanted a table brought to us, and selecting a word at random from our list of five words, each one of which we supposed meant table, we said: “Benga bokali” = fetch the table. The boys looked at us with considerable astonishment, and, noticing their embarrassment, we checked the list of words and found that one lad had thought we wanted the word for tapping, so he told us dodela = to tap; another understood we were seeking the word for the material of which the table was made, and he gave us etanda = plank; another had an idea that we required the word for hardness, that which caused the noise as we tapped with our finger, and he told us bokali, and that is what we had told them to bring: benga bokali = fetch the hardness, a feat they could not possibly accomplish; another thought we wished for a name for that which covered the table, and his contribution was elamba = cloth; and the last lad, not being able, perhaps, to think of anything else, gave us the word meza = table—the very word we were seeking. We had to scratch out the first four words, leave the word meza, and pass on, having learned a good lesson on the evil results of jumping too quickly to conclusions. If the reader knows no German, and should ever happen to be in the company of some five or six Germans who do not understand a single word of English, let him ask: “What is this?” in indifferent German, and write down their several answers.
In learning and reducing to writing an unwritten language there are always several elements that increase and complicate the difficulties. There is what is in your own mind as the object for which you are seeking a word, and there is what the native thinks is the object for which you are wanting the word, which two things may be very different; again, when you are searching for a word to embody an abstract quality there is, on the one hand, the meaning you attach to the words you use as illustrative of the idea for which you want the word; and there is, on the other hand, the meaning which your native lad attaches to the words you employ, and the two sets of meanings may widely vary. You may unknowingly employ a wrong phrase in your description of the quality you are wanting a word to express, and your teacher is either puzzled or thrown entirely off the scent, and the result leads to a disastrous mistake and, unless corrected later, to a false, misleading translation. Suppose you want a word for healthiness; you say that a man walks well every day, paddles for long distances without fatigue, eats his food heartily, has no pains in his body, and never needs to go to a medicine-man. “What do you call that?” Your helper will consider for a moment, and then reply: “Abe na bonganga.”
By and by you go over the description with another person, and he says of such a man: “Abe na nkonjo.” A few days later, in order to check the former teachers, you try another young man, and he tells you: “Abe na nkasu.”
In due time, however, you discover that abe na bonganga means: he has a powerful charm; that abe na nkonjo = he has good luck; and abe na nkasu = he is very strong; and that nkuli is the proper word for healthiness.
Your helpers have not purposely led you astray, for they have simply stated from their point of view how they would regard such a fortunate man who can walk, paddle, eat well, has no pains in his body, and never needs medicine—he must possess a powerful charm, or have wonderful luck, or be exceedingly strong. When you know the natives better you find they rarely talk about their health, hence abe na nkuli = he has healthiness, would not come readily to their minds.
The difference between our point of view and that of our teachers accounts for many of the difficulties we experience in learning a native language; and I am afraid that a real appreciation of those difficulties has rendered me somewhat suspicious of those travellers who, after a very short acquaintance with the native language, translate glibly their interviews with the people. Just recently I have been reading a book on the Congo in which the following occurs: “Bikei yonsono, malami be na Mputu. Sola è koye.” This the author, who frequently takes credit to himself for his knowledge of the native language, translates as follows: “All I say is true, you say I lie. It is finished. I have seen those things; you have not.” Whereas it should be: All things are very good in Mputu (white man’s country). Truly friend! And the sentence in Bangala should have been written: Bike binso bilamu be na Mputu. Solo koye! No Congo native would have been guilty of the grammatical blunders perpetrated in the sentence as written by the author. I have frequently noticed that the less a person knows about a native language the more fluently and beautifully he will translate it, as he is bound only by the limitations of his own imagination.
When we had been living at Monsembe a few months we were much vexed and disgusted to find that the people had been deceiving us considerably over their language. One day, while working with the men, I heard a native workman shout out a request to another native labourer. From the nature of the work being done I could easily guess what the phrase really meant; but the wording of the sentence was entirely different from that which they had given us to express the same idea. Going into the house, I brought out my notebook and said: “Just now you called out so and so,” repeating the short sentence that was still fresh in my memory. “How is it we have another set of words in our book?”
A broad smile gradually spread over the native’s face as he replied: “White man, when you came first to live amongst us we could not understand the purpose of your coming. We brought you rubber and ivory; but you said, ‘We do not trade in such things.’ We then brought you male and female slaves, and asked you to buy them, and you replied, ‘We do not trade in slaves.’ We then brought you a large jar of sugar-cane wine, but you said that you did not drink wine, and we answered that we would drink it for you, and even then you would not buy it. After that we came to the conclusion that there was some wicked reason for your presence in our town, some bad purpose we could not understand, and we therefore arranged among ourselves not to teach you our language, but to tell you as many words and phrases as we could belonging to other languages.”
We found they had kept their agreement far too well, and as a result we discovered that a large percentage of the words that we counted as good coin of the realm were nothing but base metal, and had to be thrown out of our notebook as utterly useless. Undoubtedly our presence was a great mystery to the natives. They could easily understand the reasons why traders and State officers were living in the country; but why men who neither traded nor governed should live in their midst was a problem discussed repeatedly around their evening fires. They had asked us more than once: “Were you bad men in your country that you had to leave it to come and live here in this land?” Or: “Is there no food in your country that you come here and buy only fowls and vegetables of us?” Fowls were plentiful and very cheap, costing us often less than twopence each, and as it was the only fresh meat we could procure regularly, scarcely a day passed without our having a fowl for dinner, hence the point and purpose of their question. These inquiries we answered as fully as we could; but, notwithstanding our replies, we remained a puzzle to our neighbours and the subjects of many a long and heated talk.
One day some of the head-men came to us, and after solemnly taking their seats on the stools their wives had brought for the purpose, they said: “White men, we have come to talk a palaver with you.”