When a dictionary doesn't help - language across cultures

Living in a foreign country provides so many opportunities to look at language – specifically the language you take for granted as your own – in my case English – and look critically at how it is taken for granted as universally understood.

The truth is that language is more of a cultural and societal construct than we realize.

Last night I got a call from one of my Ghanaian colleagues:

Me: Hello?

GC: Hello

Me: Yes, hello?

GC: Good evening

Me: Good evening
(This exact banter comprises the beginning of every telephone conversation in Ghana – except if it’s morning, then there is the good morning greeting…_If you are very unlucky, the hello, hello, hello can go back and forth up to 10 times. I’m not kidding)

GC: Holli, please can you tell me, what is a jackass?

Me: (amused) What?! A jackass is like an idiot, why?

GC: OH! That is serious then! Well I was reading on the Internet that President Obama called Kanye West that word.

Me: Well it’s true. He is a jackass. But Obama did not say that officially! It was ‘off the record’

GC: Off the what?

Me: Nevermind. Is that all? Don’t you guys know the word jackass?

GC: No not at all. Is it anything like baloney?
(This refers to a conversation we had two years ago when George Bush visited Ghana and in his speech said that the rumors that the US wanted to build a military base in Ghana was ‘a bunch of baloney’. This was totally lost on most of Ghana…)

Me: (Laughing) No! Not like baloney…

GC: Also, what does he mean when he says ‘cut the President some slack’?

Me: Oh, well he just means to give him a break, not be so hard on him…

GC: Wow. Americans have some funny English!

Perhaps they do… It’s just that phrases we know seem so normal, so obvious…

When I hung up I decided to write a little list of phrases that are common in Ghana in English, that I found bizarre when I arrived:

1. 'We know ourselves' – meaning we know each other

2. 'We’ll advise ourselves' – meaning we’ll reconsider or think twice

3. 'That girl is tough' – meaning she is chubby or big

4. 'I’m getting bored' – meaning getting annoyed

5. 'Please, I’ll alight here' – used in a vehicle, meaning I’ll get off/out here

6. 'I’m going to buy provisions' – nice fancy old colonial word for groceries

7. 'Bend right or pass right or curve right or branch right' - when giving directions it means simply to go right

8. 'I had a blast last night' - refers to a tire blow-out on a car, NOT a fun time!

9. 'He is a 'blow-man' - this refers to a fighter - used alot when identifying characters in action movies

10. 'What's for chop? What did you chop?' - referring to food - what's for supper, what did you eat?

Can anyone else give me some examples of how English is a whole different thing, depending on the where and when??

Pablo Neruda is the world's best poet

I just have to share the amazing vibrancy of my favourite poet. He's a Chilean called Pablo Neruda. I discovered his poems in my first year of university and fell in love with the way he uses words. The only problem is that he writes in Spanish and then his words are translated with much artistic license by English writers. Some are much better than others. I actually have one of his poetry books where they list the original Spanish poem beside the translation and despite not knowing Spanish fluently, you can just tell the English version does not do justice to the expression.
Despite that, I would love to share his work in my small way as it makes me happy!

He has written hundreds of odes to everything from old socks to a tomato. This one is my favourite. (I've included two separate translations - which one do you think is better?)



Ode to a Lemon by Pablo Neruda

Out of lemon flowers
loosed
on the moonlight, love's
lashed and insatiable
essences,
sodden with fragrance,
the lemon tree's yellow
emerges,
the lemons
move down
from the tree's planetarium

Delicate merchandise!
the harbors are big with it-
bazaars
for the light and the
barbarous gold.
We open
the halves
of a miracle,
and a clotting of acids
brims
into the starry
divisions:
creation's
original juices,
irreducible, changeless,
alive:
so the freshness lives on
in a lemon,
in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,
the proportions, arcane and acerb.

Cutting the lemon
the knife
leaves a little cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye
that open acidulous glass
to the light; topazes
riding the droplets,
altars,
aromatic facades.
So, while the hand
holds the cut of the lemon,
half a world
on a trencher,
the gold of the universe
wells
to your touch:
a cup yellow
with miracles,
a breast and a nipple
perfuming the earth;
a flashing made fruitage,
the diminutive fire of a planet.



Ode to the Lemon

From blossoms
released
by the moonlight,
from an
aroma of exasperated
love,
steeped in fragrance,
yellowness
drifted from the lemon tree,
and from its planetarium
lemons descended to the earth.

Tender yield!
The coasts,
the markets glowed
with light, with
unrefined gold;
we opened
two halves
of a miracle,
congealed acid
trickled
from the hemispheres
of a star,
the most intense liqueur
of nature,
unique, vivid,
concentrated,
born of the cool, fresh
lemon,
of its fragrant house,
its acid, secret symmetry.

Knives
sliced a small
cathedral
in the lemon,
the concealed apse, opened,
revealed acid stained glass,
drops
oozed topaz,
altars,
cool architecture.

So, when you hold
the hemisphere
of a cut lemon
above your plate,
you spill
a universe of gold,
a
yellow goblet
of miracles,
a fragrant nipple
of the earth's breast,
a ray of light that was made fruit,
the minute fire of a planet.

-- Pablo Neruda.