Ranguage Chan be Rots of fun!

The small idiosyncrasies of language intrigue me. For example, in Kinyarwandan the letters ‘L’ and ‘R’ are often interchangeable. This means my name is exceptionally difficult for some people – Rola, Lola, Rora – not to mention being called Nora, Laurant and other weird variations.

It also makes for some minor, though amusing, misunderstandings when speaking with my Rwandese friends. For example:

Walking in the city centre with Pip and David
David to Pip - “Don’t walk on the glass!”
Looking around our feet I cannot see any glass. Then it occurs to me – we are walking on the grass J

Two weeks ago I did not go to church since it was pouring rain and I would have had to walk up the muddy hill to get to the bus. So Pip and I stayed home, listened to some Rob Bell sermons and had church in the living room. The next day I was talking with one of my friends, Enok.
He said to me “ So you and Pip played in your room on Sunday?” I looked at him in confusion.
- “Um, we did what?”
-“You played in your room.” Silence and a confused look. Finally understanding dawned.
-“Yes, we did. We prayed in our room.”

It is interesting to me though that although read can become lead and there are many other examples where the R and L are switched, Rwanda is never called Lwanda.
Another interesting language variation comes with the Ugandan accent. Many Rwandans found themselves on the Ugandan side of the border when the Europeans drew their arbitrary lines (this also happened with the Congo). So these Ugandan Rwandans speak Kinyarwandan but with a different accent. This is most obviously manifested in the pronunciation of the letter ‘K’ and the ‘CH’ sound. For some reason sometimes the ‘K’ is pronounced as a CH – Chigli instead of Kigali. Also the ‘CH’ is often pronounced as a K – KaCHyiru instead of Kacyiru (the area of town where WV head office is located). This is most amusing and confusing with Kitchen and Chicken. Kitchen (the place where you cook) is often pronounced as Chicken and Chicken (the bird you eat) is pronounced as Kitchen. This can cause a little bit of confusion when talking about what is for dinner