"Window shopping"

'Window shopping' takes on a whole new meaning in Kampala. You don't have to go to shops to pick up emergency (and not so emergency) items. You don't even have to go to shops to peruse items for sale. You can just drive to wherever you need to go (to work, home from work, or wherever you go on a regular basis) and stop - or even just slow down - near a major intersection, or take a bus from the taxi park, and you can buy almost anything you could wish to take with you.

Vendors at an intersection

Here is the list I've compiled so far of items I've seen available for purchase through car windows at traffic lights or intersections, and through taxi-bus windows in the taxi park in town:

• Food & Drinks
• • Fruit (passionfruit, lemons, limes, bananas)
  • Packet of biscuits
  • Water
  • Soda
  • Crisps
  • Fried Grasshoppers
  • Vegetables (shelled green peas, carrots)
  • Chewing gum
  • Cough lozenges
  • Small assorted fruit plate
  • Cakes
  • Dried corn
• Nuts
• Icecream
• Personal Accessories
• • Handkerchief
  • Belt
  • Jewellery
  • Hair accessories
  • Makeup
  • Sunglasses
  • Socks
  • Necktie
  • Nail clippers
  • Pain balm
• House & Garden
• • Mosquito zapper
  • Mosquito net
  • Table mat
  • Passport holder
  • Toilet paper (10 roll pack)
  • Digital timer
  • Loofah body scrubber
  • Padlock
  • Spanner
  • Screwdriver
  • Multi-grips
  • Flags of various nations
  • Educational wall chart
  • Set of coat hangers
  • Coat rack for wall
  • Mirror
  • TV remote control
  • Plastic storage containers
  • Cloths
  • Fish in a jar aquarium
  • Hedge trimmers
  • Water flask
  • Box of tissues
• Entertainment & Communications
• • Books
  • Newspapers
  • Toy twirling drum
  • Rubber ball
  • Airtime (i.e. mobile phone credit)
  • Inflatable toy penguin
  • Inflatable toy aeroplane
  • Toy instruments
  • Bouncy ball with flashing lights inside
  • Dart board and darts
  • Skipping rope
• Car Accessories
• • Steering wheel cover
  • Mobile phone charger
  • Mobile phone cradle
  • Jumper cables
  • Car floor mats

Vendors at the taxi park selling snacks through taxi-bus windows

Is there such thing as Ugandan English? #3: Semantics

Over the last two weeks I've been blogging some observations about the English spoken in Uganda, organised according to linguistic strata: first phonology, then lexicogrammar. This week I'm up to semantics - the systems of meaning that operate for speakers of a given language.

The main semantic difference I've noticed is really quite closely linked with wording and grammar (lexicogrammar), as it's to do with the way Ugandans perform the speech function of 'command'. For the non-linguists, I first need to briefly explain some things about this concept of 'speech functions' and how they are expressed in wording and grammar. There are basically four speech functions: statement (giving information), question (demanding information), offer (giving goods & services), and command (demanding goods & services). These are meanings which are expressed grammatically in particular ways. The prototypical matches are as follows:

• statement is typically expressed through declarative mood (Subject comes before Finite verb), e.g. The waitress brought some water for washing hands.
• question is typically expressed through interrogative mood (inversion of Subject and Finite verb), e.g. Did the waitress bring some water for washing hands?
• [offer does not have a particular match from among the three mood types]
• command is typically expressed through imperative mood (imperative form of verb, typically with no Subject or Finite), e.g. 'Bring some water for washing hands!'

But these prototypical match-ups do not always have to be used, and a different mood type can be chosen to express a speech function depending on the politeness required or other contextual factors. In Australian English, for example, it's very common to use declarative or interrogative mood to express a command, e.g. 'I need some water to wash my hands' or 'Could you please bring some water for washing hands?'. If you went into a restaurant in Sydney and said 'Bring me a menu!' (because you probably wouldn't ask for water to wash your hands), the staff member would probably take you for a very rude person and not treat you very well.

In Australian English imperative mood tends to be used to express commands in relationships of legitimate authority (e.g. owners to pets, parents to children, teacher to student, government official to citizen especially in written communication) or intimacy (family member or close friend). In the Australian context, the service relationship between a restaurant patron and a staff member is not one of 'legitimate authority'. In another context the restaurant patron might find him/herself serving the restaurant staff member.

It seems that in Ugandan English, imperative mood is used much more widely for expressing commands, without necessarily carrying the implication that the speaker is either in legitimate authority over, or in an intimate relationship with, the addressee. So you could say 'Bring a menu' or 'Bring some water for washing hands' or 'Pack these leftovers for me' or 'Bring the bill' in a restaurant and it would not be considered out of place.

On a lighter semantic note, I've enjoyed the fact that, in linguistics classes I've been to here, mangoes figure very prominently in examples constructed to illustrate a point, e.g. 'The boy bought a mango'. The mango is culturally much more salient here than in Australia - and cheaper too!

Is there such thing as Ugandan English? #2: Lexicogrammar

Last week I wrote about some of the phonological features of Ugandan English as I have observed it over the past 6 weeks or so. This week I've put together some of the lexicogrammatical features that differ from other varieties of English (particularly Australian English, of which I'm a native speaker).

What appears to be a different meaning of the expression 'relieve yourself'...

Lexicogrammatical features include words, morphemes (parts of words that have meaning of their own), and grammar. Most of what I have picked up on are either words that are used in a different sense from their use in Australian English or expressions that are not generally used in Australian English (e.g. 'we pray from such and such a church'). Some of these could probably be dealt with at the level of semantics but I thought it would be more straightforward to treat them as lexical (word) differences.

• 'airtime' - phone credit, which you can buy in various denominations from numerous small stands around the streets, or from machines in supermarkets, or even from people wandering around selling it through taxi-bus windows in the taxi park!
• 'balance' - meaning 'change', e.g. when buying something at a restaurant or market stall and you don't have the exact money, the staff member will say something like 'I'll get you balance'.
• 'benching' [see earlier post]
• 'bouncing' - opposite of 'benching', in which you go to visit someone and they are not home so you have to leave immediately.
• 'born-agains' [see earlier post]
• 'bury' - to attend the funeral of someone, e.g. 'I'm going back to the village to bury my father'. It doesn't mean they will literally carry out the burial, but will attend the burial/funeral ceremony.
• 'by the way' - doesn't seem to be used in the same way as in AusE, but possibly closer to 'in fact' or 'actually'. I don't have a clear example I can remember, but something like the following. Person A: I learnt yesterday that in Luganda you say 'osiibyo tyeno nyabo/sebo' to mean 'hello'. Person B: By the way, we say 'osiibyo tyeno nyabo/sebo' but if it's in the morning, like before 12 noon, you say 'wasuzo tyeno nyabo/sebo' and then after noon you can say 'osiibyo tyeno nyabo/sebo'. In AusE you usually use 'by the way' to talk about something not related to what was previously said.
• 'dear' [see earlier post]
• 'done' [see earlier post]
• 'eh' - high-pitched vocal noise expressing surprise or indignance, especially when recounting some situation that brought this response about. It can also be used with a lower pitch as a checking move when explaining something to someone, e.g. when applying for a bank account, 'You fill in this one, eh?, and then he fills in, eh?' (a bit like some uses of 'ok', 'right', 'yeah' in Australian English)
• etc [see earlier post]
• 'for me' - common at the beginning of an utterance in which someone will either express their opinion or share something about what they have done or decided
• 'ka' is a diminutive prefix in Luganda (& other Bantu lx?) and has been imported into Ugandan English with the same function, e.g. ka-bag (small bag), ka-man (small/insignificant man). Instance in conversation: (a local commenting on a picture of a kangaroo and the fact that it has a pouch) 'Isn't God wonderful, how he made the kangaroo with small legs at the top and bigger legs at the bottom and a little ka-bag here for the baby'. I recently heard it in very high frequency when we went out for a walk and dinner with some friends. For example, our friend was on the phone giving directions to another friend for how to find us: 'We're in the ka-place as you come in the drive way, near the Checkers Supermarket'.
• 'pick' [see earlier post]
• 'picking up' is used, but seems to be only used to mean 'increasing' e.g. 'community radio is picking up in East Africa'
• 'pray from…' [see earlier post]. One local I spoke to about this suggested that it's because in the local languages they don't have an equivalent for 'we go to [such and such a place habitually]'
• rolex - cooked egg rolled up in a chapati (also an item and name that originated at Makerere, apparently)
• 'sorry' [see earlier post] - also has different intonation from Australian English - a long fall from high tone, a bit like when someone says 'sorry' and they don't want to say it but they know they have to (reluctant apology).
• 'thank you too' [see earlier post]. Lately I have realised that it probably comes as a translation of the Luganda 'kale' which is used in response to the word for thank you, 'webalenyo', as well as many other greetings and fixed expressions, and seems to mean something like 'you too' or 'likewise'.
• 'what' [see earlier post]. I have also noticed it more recently in everyday conversation; it's very pervasive, and seems to be used also to mean 'whatever', 'blah blah blah', 'this and that', and 'and so on'. For example, you might hear something like this: "I had to go to the market and then the pharmacy and what and what'.
• 'where do you stay/sleep?' [see earlier post]
• 'You are welcome' [see earlier post]
• 'you people' meaning 'you plural', e.g. when arranging to open a bank account, the bank staff member said something like 'you people wanted to be able to convert into US dollars…'. And when some kids were trying to sell us stuff when we were in a parked car waiting for our friend to come and drive, she came back and said 'do you people want to buy something?' Definitely more acceptable than the hotly contested 'youse' in some varieties of Australian English!

Is there such thing as Ugandan English?

Recently I spoke to a postgrad student here who is interested in the question of whether the English spoken in Uganda should be called 'Ugandan English' or not. Is it a dialect of English? My observation so far, after 6 weeks in Kampala, is that the English spoken here has some systematic differences from other Englishes at pretty much every linguistic level - phonology, wording and grammar, and semantics. So I'd say it's a specific dialect (although I'd be interested to see how it differs from the English spoken in neighbouring Kenya and Tanzania). I have been posting some of my observations of local expressions over the past few weeks (here and here) and thought I'd start to organise them a bit more. I'll start with phonology this time (using as much common-sense language as possible, and no phonetic symbols, for the benefit of non-linguists reading this).

Vowels: The phonological (sound) systems of the Bantu languages spoken in Uganda have only 5 vowels, and a couple of diphthongs, which means that the 20+ vowels in English are usually reduced to these five when speaking English. Vowels such as the 'a' in 'hat' and the 'ur' in 'hurt' do not occur in Luganda (for example) and so they are both approximated to the vowel 'a' as in 'hut'. So the words 'hat', 'hut', 'hurt' and 'heart' all sound much the same (as 'hut'), although sometimes there is a longer vowel in 'heart' and 'hurt' than 'hat' and 'hut'. Likewise the vowels in 'sin' and 'seen' are pronounced the same, as in 'sin'. Also, the 'schwa' vowel that is used in unstressed syllables in English (like the 'a' in 'again' or the 'e' in 'written') is not used, so all vowels are given their full value (again as 'egen', written as 'writ-ehn'). This also affects the rhythm of speech, as there are not as many unstressed syllables.

Consonants: I have only noticed a couple of things so far. One is the 'k' sound, when in combination with 'i' or 'y' sounds, is pronounced as 'ch', e.g. 'particular' is often pronounced as 'particular' (rather than 'partikyular'). I think this is because in some of the local languages, e.g. Luganda and Runyakitara, 'k' is always pronounced 'ch' before 'i' or 'y'. The name 'Runyakitara', for example, is pronounced 'Runyachitara'. It seems that not all varieties of the languages do this, as I've also heard 'Runyakitara'. Another is the sounds 'l' and 'r'. I haven't quite worked out the status of these sounds in the local languages, but I think it's a bit like in Japanese, where the two sounds are not recognised as different sounds but the same 'sound unit' (phoneme) that is pronounced a bit differently depending on the other sounds around it. As with many other world languages, Luganda and other Bantu languages do not have the 'th' sounds as in English 'thin' and 'this', so I think they are usually replaced with 's' for the sound in 'thin' and 'd' for the sound in 'this'.

Intonation: I'm no expert on intonation so it's hard to describe the difference, but I know it's different!

Rhythm: As mentioned above, because the 'schwa' vowel is not used, the rhythm of English spoken here is a bit different. It's not quite the even syllabic rhythm of French (as heard in this cute video), but it's also not quite the 'dum-di-dum' rhythm of British, American (as heard in this amusing video), or Australian (etc) English.

Postcard from Kampala: Observations on public Christianity

We have now been in Kampala for six Sundays and have been struck by the numbers attending the churches we have visited here. Apparently most churches, at least in the city, are very large - a congregation of as few as 100 in one sitting would be very rare. Hundreds, if not thousands, attending in the one day is quite a normal scenario. As a result, many churches run multiple services back-to-back throughout the day and sometimes also on Saturday night. We experienced for the first time the need to arrive early enough to a Sunday service to get a seat inside, and queuing up outside while the previous service finished! This creates a bit of a 'revolving door' feel - once the service is over, you need to leave as soon as possible so the next lot of people can come in - so it's quite difficult to get opportunities to meet and talk to people before or after the service. The after-church morning tea or supper we are used to in Sydney would be logistically and financially impossible with the numbers here! One church we have been to here might have 20,000 people attending over once weekend (Saturday night and 5 Sunday services)! As with large churches we know of in Sydney, these churches operate on a 'cell-based' structure, where people meet in smaller groups during the week, and this is how you get to know people and become part of a family of fellowship.

The atmosphere here is very different from that of Australia, where Christianity has been marginalised from the public sphere over the last few decades, especially in academia. In contrast, I have heard of lecturers here praying aloud at the beginning and end of each lecture to commit the time to God and ask for his help with the teaching and learning of the content. If I did anything like that in Australia I would likely be thrown out of the university! Here, you hardly have to convince anyone that there is a God - this is a widely acknowledged fact of life, from the city to the smallest village. The difference is in which God, god/s or spirit/s people worship.

Uganda is statistically 84% Christian, about half of which is Protestant and half Catholic. I gather that this total includes a degree of 'nominalism' (as it does in Australia) and also a degree of mixing Christianity with traditional tribal religions and ancestor worship. But, whether sincere or not, the language of faith is everywhere: from the taxi-buses that hurtle around the city with slogans such as 'God's Blessing' or 'Jesus Saves' emblazoned across the windscreen, to the Bible verses on the majority of greeting cards that you find for sale, to the way many people greet each other saying 'Praise the Lord' or 'God bless you'.

Interestingly, although only a small percentage are Muslim, some Muslim festivals are marked as public holidays (such as Idd, which was celebrated last Friday) - apparently this is a legacy of the dictatorship of Idi Amin (in office 1971-1979), who was of the Muslim faith. The majority who are not Muslim are not averse to the extra public holiday, though! It caused me to reflect on what might happen if, as the Muslim population of Australia increases, a suggestion were put forward to make some Muslim festivals public holidays. I imagine there would be considerable resistance.

Postcard from Uganda: More local expressions

Since my last 'postcard' about language, I have begun to learn some words in Luganda and learnt some more local English expressions.

• "sorry" - used in the same way as Australian English (to apologise for something you've done), but also to express sympathy for something that clearly has nothing to do with you. For example, I was telling a Ugandan friend that we had discovered a decomposing rat in our apartment, and she said "Oh, sorry!". I have heard it many times since in similar kinds of situations - e.g. when telling someone I'd had food poisoning or had hurt myself getting into a bus. It sounds strange to my ears because in Australian English, in those kinds of situations people are more likely to say something like "Oh no, you poor thing!" or "Oh, that's terrible!" or "How awful!" You may hear "I'm sorry to hear that" in AE, but it's more likely to come in response to more serious bad news such as a death or chronic illness or relationship breakdown or loss of a job.
• "we pray from…" - instead of saying 'we go to such-and-such church', most of the people I've met say 'we pray from such-and-such church'. So now instead of asking "which church do you go to?" I try to remember to ask "where do you pray from?". I'm intrigued as to how this phrase came about, though, as Christians know we can pray anywhere and God will hear us. Maybe I'll find out one of these days.
• "benching" - this is a genuinely Kampalan term, and in fact it originated at Makerere University where we are living and working! Apparently it stems back to the days when there were just two residential halls, one for women and one for men. The one for women, Mary Stewart Hall, had some benches placed around the foyer and the young men used to go and sit there on the benches waiting for the object of their desire to come walking through so they could talk to them or take them out. They could sit there for hours, and so the expression 'He's benching' came about to describe this activity. Now the meaning of the term has apparently broadened. One meaning is when someone you know comes to your place and hangs around and it's hard to get rid of them - "they're benching". Another meaning is when someone is trying to get to know someone of the opposite sex and tries to spend as much time around them as possible - "he/she's benching". Apparently there are other Makerere terms that have become widely used, but I have yet to find out what they are.
• "where do you stay/sleep?" - if someone wants to find out where you live, they ask "where do you stay?" or "where do you sleep?". I've even had someone asking me "are you sleeping around?", which means "are you staying somewhere around here?", not the meaning Australian (and probably American and British) English speakers would understand from it! However, if someone says "he/she's sleeping around", it means they are away for a few days, e.g. out of town on business or visiting a friend or relative in another place. A Ugandan friend told us that this expression had caused a lot of concern to her British-English-speaking friend who was looking for her in Kampala and was told "oh, she's sleeping around" because she was out of town!
• what not to ask: as in many places, it's very rude to ask a woman's age. For men, the question of age is nowhere near as rude as asking how many cows he has (which would be like asking someone how much he earns or how much he has in assets).

Of thunderstorms and instantiation

The wet season has arrived in Kampala, and we can expect to have a thunderstorm at least once during most days. The other morning there was an almighty one that woke us up around 6.30am and, as you do when half asleep, we started talking about meteorology and climatic expectations in the different places where we have lived.

Image from typicalugandan.tumblr.com

When thunderstorms happen daily and the rain lasts maybe half an hour and then the weather is clear again for most of the day, thunderstorms are not very newsworthy. You hardly hear anyone talking about 'the thunderstorm early this morning' because that's no different from the day before when there was one in the afternoon, and the day before that, and the day before that... When they occur only every so often, as in Sydney, it's much more noteworthy and may even make the news, and much of the conversation of casual encounters refers to the event - 'did you hear the thunderstorm this morning?', 'well, the rain was so heavy at our place that our guttering was overflowing!', etc.

It reminded me of Halliday's illustration of the difference between a language system and an instance (the 'cline of instantiation'), using the analogy of climate and weather (Halliday 1992: see also Halliday & Matthiessen 2004:26-27). Describing language from an instance perspective is like describing the day's weather: well, it was clear in the morning, then it clouded over and there was a thunderstorm and it rained for about half an hour, and then it cleared up again. This would be a fair description of the weather in Kampala on most of the days this past week. It's a specific description of a particular instance that you experience.

Describing language from a system perspective, on the other hand, is like describing the climate of a geographical area: it's a view of what the tendencies are over a much longer period, when you take each instance into account. For Kampala, there is not a great deal of difference in practice between what you experience on a given day, and what the probabilities are across a given year. The average maximum throughout the year is between 24 and 27 degrees C, with reasonably high humidity, and high annual rainfall (mainly concentrated in March, April and May, and then October and November). This climatic 'system' can also be described even more generally as a 'tropical wet and dry climate'.
The relationship between the instance and the system gives an instance its 'value' for those observing it. Hence, the 'value' of a storm in Kampala is different from the value of a storm in Sydney, and therefore the 'newsworthiness' of a thunderstorm is different for people in each place.

It's not as if thunderstorms here have no impact on everyday life, though. The main 'life impact' is that rain causes even greater havoc on the roads, worsens potholes, and makes it very unadvisable to try walking along any roads or going by boda-boda. So class might be cancelled if the teacher can't get to uni, all because of a systemically predictable thunderstorm!

Halliday, M. A. K. (1992). The notion of context in language education. In Le, T. & McCausland, M. (eds), Interaction and development: Proceedings of the international conference, Vietnam, 30 March - 1 April 1992. University of Tasmania: Language Education.
Halliday, M. A. K. & Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. (2004). An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Arnold.