Venturing Into The Deep End

The first three weeks of our language learning have been pretty basic, we have tried to collect a lot of raw data on things that we are pretty sure on. Basically, this means collecting words for concrete nouns. Just like a young toddler, we can walk around and point at stuff, say our best attempt at the word in Gmz and then get showered with praise about how smart we are. Well, no longer content wading up to our ankles in the baby pool of concrete nouns, week number four found us venturing into the deeper waters of verbs.

 

Starting off in the shallow end, we collected about 100 simple verbs, but it didn’t take long before we noticed our feet were no longer touching bottom.  So, with our linguistic water wings tight around our biceps and holding on tight to our inflatable Shamu, we headed out to sea!

 

The toughest part about learning a language from a native speaker is that the average person does not understand their own language. They speak correctly, but they don’t know why. For example, if I ask you “what is the difference between the ‘I ate’ and ‘I have eaten’?” Can you explain it to me in a clear way? Both forms refer to a past event, but they are not communicating the same thing. What’s the difference? (for those of you who will lie awake at night puzzled by this, I’ll give you the textbook answer. For the rest of you, skip to the next paragraph: “I ate” is the simple past tense which describes an event as a completed action simply occurring in the past, nothing more. “I have eaten” is the present perfect tense which describes a past event as a completed action but that has results or implications for the present. So, when you arrive at the 10^th graduation party of a given Saturday in June and the graduate’s mother escorts you to a nearly untouched table of refreshments, “I ate” simply says that you ate (but can probably fit a few more deviled eggs in somewhere), whereas “I have eaten” says not only did you eat but that you are still full (which is the polite way of saying that just looking at more food is making you queasy). Ps. If you don’t agree with this explanation of the difference between the simple past and present perfect tenses, then that proves another difficulty we run into – the fluidity of language. (Oh…and you’re wrong.))

 

So, yeah, it’s does not surprise us one bit that the Gmz people can’t answer all of our linguistic questions right off. That’s where the fun starts as we get to crack the code ourselves. This week, I made one small, yet significant discovery. I had each of my three language helpers tell me the same story (how to plant, harvest, cook and eat the Gmz vegetable called “una”). Then in comparing their stories, I noted that one guy used most of his verbs with a “di-“ prefix whereas another guy used the “du-“ prefix and the other a “da-“ prefix. And none of my guys could tell me the difference. “Why did he say it like this?” I’d ask and they’d respond, “Oh, yea, you can say it like that too,” or “Well, that’s just the way he talks.”  So, is it a dialect issue? I would think not on such a major and consistent difference. This puzzled me all week until Friday afternoon, as I was relistening to my recordings, my clue came on the verb “to plant.” The normal verb is “danch” but when Wohis taught me this verb for the first time, he added “oh, but ‘dinch’ means to be tied up” and he motioned like a guy being handcuffed. Ah, so here’s the “di-“ and the “da-“ prefixes on the same verb and a noted difference in meaning. I can see how the ideas of planting and being tied up are related ideas since both are “bound,” one by the soil and the other by ropes. So what is it about “he plants” and “he is tied up” that is different? Ah ha! It’s a matter of what linguists call “voice” which distinguishes the difference between active verbs and passive verbs. So, the “da-“ prefix is the active verb (danch – he plants or he ties up) and the “di-“ prefix is the same idea but passive (dinch – it is planted or he is tied up). I went back to my stories of the una and confirmed it. One guy focused on the person performing the actions, while the other focused on the plant itself. It’s the difference between “he planted the una seed and when it sprouted, he put a stake in the ground…” and “the una seed was planted and when it sprouted, it was staked…” Same story, correct yet different grammars to reflect different foci. It’s something to watch out for because many times using the wrong “voice” will communicate a very different meaning. If I try to say “I ate goat” but use the passive “di-“ prefix instead of the active “da-“ then I will be communicate “I was eaten (by) a goat.” Whoops.