Night Birds and Stones

Words can be funny at times. Why do we call a sandwich a sandwich and why is an elephant’s nose called the same name as the back compartment of a car? On two occasions, unexpected vocabulary usages gave us all a good laugh.

The first took place in our classroom as we were learning the names of some new animals. Now you have to understand that when we (especially I, Travis) learn a language, we prefer to be involved in the process. I don’t want to just sit back and have things taught to me like in a standard American classroom. I don’t want to have to raise my hand in order to speak (my apologies to all you teachers out there!). So there are times when we are learning something new that my mouth will just spit out a wild (and usually humorous) guess. Most of the time, my guesses cause the teacher to shake his head and laugh, still I try. This particular day, the opposite happened. When learning animals, we came to a picture of a “bat” and my brain cued my mouth to spit out what I immediately thought was a terrible guess ‘ye lilit wof,’ which literally means ‘the night bird.’ Looking up at my teacher’s face, I expected to get the usual head shaking and snicker at my feeble attempt. Instead, he looked at me with a totally blank face and repeated ‘ye lilit wof.’ He then put the picture to the side and picked up the next. “Wait, wait, you don’t mean to tell me that I was actually right? I was joking.” “Yes,” he replied, still totally serious in expression, “that is the real name of this animal – ye lilit wof.” We laughed at my joke which obviously fell flat and eventually moved on, missing a perfect opportunity to teach our teacher the English proverb “sometimes, even a blind squirrel finds a nut.”

The other situation occurred out in a remote town in the middle of our trip up north. This village was not used to seeing foreigners and so we attracted a massive crowd whenever we walked in the streets. Not wanting to waste the language learning opportunity, we tried doing a little bit of talking (which only gathered an even bigger audience). I saw one young man holding an old radio so I asked what now seems like a dumb question “radio ale?” (Eng: radio it is?). He responded “ou, gen aiseram” (Eng: yes, but it does not work”). I followed up with another profound question which showed off my not-so incredible range of Amharic grammar, “le min?” (Eng: why?). “Dingai yelenyim” (I have no batteries). Seizing an opportunity to become the town comedian, I bent down, picked up a stone and offered it to this man “addis dingai tefelegaleh?” (Eng: a new rock do you want?). The whole crowd of spectators burst into laughter repeating my words to each other for those who had not heard. No doubt, my joke would have made headlines had this small town ran its own newspaper. You see, the word for battery (dingai) is the same as the word for stone. He said he didn’t have a “dingai” so I offered him one. Why are batteries and stones called by the same name? I have no idea. Maybe it’s because the word “battery” is already taken to refer to a flashlight. So, if you go to a store and want to buy a flashlight, you have to ask for a “battery,” but it won’t do you any good unless you get some “stones” to put inside!