new meaning...new words

Ethiopian’s do seem to have created their own special variety of English. Understandable really due to the general lack of exposure to the language in Ethiopia and also the way that English really is a daft language with silly rules that contradict each other. Some of the special differences come in their pronunciation of words, other times they make up words completely or they use an existing word but attach at totally different meaning to it! For example people always want to know if you have tried the local pancake thing called Ingera. When you say yes they then want to find out if you think it is ‘sour’. The only problem is that they pronounce it  ‘sore’ as in ‘pour, rather than ‘sour’ as in ‘hour’. When Maggie tried to correct the head of the English Faculty on this pronunciation he replied , ‘well, that might be how ‘you’ pronounce it!’...implying that she had it wrong! In Ethiopia it is most definitely pronounced ‘sore’ and in class if you try a more ‘western’ pronunciation you’ll certainly be corrected too.

As funny as mispronunciations are, my favourites are when they make up new words or new meanings to words. On occasion I’ve been quite a long way through a conversation before I realise we’ve both attached different meanings to the words. For example the other day we were brainstorming the qualities of a good teacher. Someone suggested ‘confidentiality’. Half the class were with me and were explaining this point by saying we shouldn’t talk about students behind their back. The other half looked blank. Then later someone suggested that teachers should be ‘confident and assertive’ in the classroom. The teacher who originally suggested ‘confidentiality’ was a bit put out as we had already covered that point! Ahhh... then i realised ...for him confidentiality meant ‘to be confident’. You can totally understand the confusion! Another example I came across recently was someone using the term ’availing’ to mean ‘to make available'.

The only trouble is it is not just Ethiopians getting their English words muddled up... after a while it is catching and I often find myself using words totally inappropriately! However...I don’t think anything tops my friend Joanne’s blunder the other night. Up until recently she was working in the Ministry of Education playing a major role in the Ethiopian ‘English Language Improvement Programme’ so if anyone’s English should be tip top it should be hers! We were talking about some change or other and she asked whether the original thing had ‘evolutionized’ into something else. It took a visiting Dutch friend to point out that the word she was looking for was ‘evolved’!