Excuse me, I speak Ger-nglish!
Back when I was a little girl, in Bulawayo, my sister and I would frequent the Indian grocery store down our road to buy ourselves the cheap fruity sweets that cost only a cent each.
“Warrr you want?” would ask the old Indian storekeeper’s wife, purring away in her broken English. At her question, we would let out a few unrepressed giggles, and then point to the clear jar on the counter, filled with the bright-coloured balls of sweets.
Meanwhile the storekeeper would be carrying on the most laughter-inducing conversations with one or other of his Zimbabwean employees. “You!” he would shout, “Hamba thatha sinkwa, faka lapha.”
In translation, this is an instruction, given in IsiNdebele, for the employee to go to the delivery van parked outside and bring in the loaves of bread ordered for the shop for that day.
But though understandable, the instructions would be given in what is often called ‘chilapalapa’ – language that is neither syntactically correct, nor complete, but which is coherent enough to be understood.
Because we were so young and laughed ruthlessly at the couple’s language gaffes, my sister and I were not the shop owners’ favourite customers at all.
In fact, the storekeeper’s wife eventually took to hiding that jar of one-cent sweets each time she saw us passing outside the shop window, just so we wouldn’t come in.
I often cringe when I think about how rude we were.
But as life would have it, today I find myself in the very same situation. Little children, probably the same age as I was, laugh at me now, each time I try to string together a sentence in German. Suddenly, I am the foreigner whose thoughts are unintelligible!
What goes around, indeed, comes around!
Having been in Germany for three weeks now, and having taken a short German lesson course during that time, I feel it only right that I should try to blend in with the crowd with a few sentences in the local language.
But alas, my tongue almost always fails me when it comes to all those guttural sounds that one must produce when speaking German.
And this is why the little boys and girls tug at their mothers’ coats and laugh as I try to order a meal or find out how much something costs. Perhaps it’s better that I can’t understand what they will be saying to their mothers as they point at me, giggle then whisper in German!
How degrading it feels when the shoe is on the other foot!
But kids will be kids.
The grown-ups are always quite patient, though, and often willing to try their own shaky English when we can’t seem to click in German. And what ends up ensuing is an informative conversation in pure pidgin. “Where is die … err… die zug, please,” I might say, asking for directions to the train station. ( I always seem to get lost when I meander about on my own!) “Dast ist over ze,” the person might respond, pointing in the direction of the train station. “Ah, dankeschon,” I will respond, giving my thanks in unadulterated German, before scampering off to the station to bother yet another stranger with more of my Ger-nglish!