27 September 2006 - 13:45
Two days ago, I was telling myself that I needed to speak in French more, thinking that it had been days since I had had a conversation in French. Then I realized that I had just spent about an hour talking to friends on the phone...in French...without realizing I was speaking French. I don't know when I stopped pre-composing conversations in my head beforehand, or when having long conversations in French stopped being really tiring, but I like these new developments. The downside, however, is that in the last week I have forgotten (to the point that I had to get a French/English dictionary to look them up) the English words for powerstrip, pavement, work estimate, water faucet, and cell phone reception.
I went to the market yesterday to buy fabric to have a shirt made for my grandma, and in the process of bargaining for the fabric I had selected, the woman selling the material told me "you are more African than Africans." What she meant by this was "wow, you sure are a penny-pinching punk," but I chose to take it as "wow, you sure are a good bargainer!" At the time, I was haggling with her over the price, trying to squeeze it down another 200 ougiyas. When she said that, I realized three things: 1) I was haggling over about 75 cents (which means I should just give in and let her have it), 2) I'm pretty good at bargaining with people now, and 3) I actually find bargaining fun now (as opposed to the total pain-in-the-butt that I used to consider it).
This morning, on my way to work, I greeted a taxi driver in French as I got in his car. He smugly responded by telling me that I should greet in Hassaniya because that is the national language. In Hassaniya, I reminded him that Arabic, not Hassaniya, is actually the national language, but greeted him in Hassaniya anyways. He agreed, then came back with a Pulaar greeting, just to see how much I knew. I responded in Pulaar, then gave him a greeting in Wolof. He continued the multi-lingual banter by responding in Wolof and coming back once more with a greeting in Soninke, which I expected, but forgot the response to. He laughed, thinking he had one-upped me, but then I remembered the correct response, and gave him one more greeting, this time in Bambara. The taxi driver didn't know what language I was speaking in, so I told him, and he said that Bambara didn't count because it was a Malian language, not Mauritanian. Then we got into a discussion of which languages were qualified as "Mauritanian languages," even though Arabic is the only official language of the country. Somehow, we finally decided that any languages that were spoken by a large group of people (more than 1000, we agreed) could be a "local language." So I taught him how to say hello in Spanish (there's a large group of Spanish fishermen in Nouadhibou), Chinese (many of whom own restaurants in Nouakchott or work on geological surveys in the country), and English (for all the Australians working on the oil rigs and American NGO workers). "OK," the driver said. "You win." As I got out of the car at the office, the driver said (in French), "I know one other word in English." Not knowing what to expect, I raised my eyebrows. "Bye-bye!" he said as he pulled away. Bye-bye, taxi man.
