Words

T drinking 'wah' at Horizon House's Big Kids Guest House

I kept saying that I needed to write down all Teshale's Sidamic words before he stopped using them and I forgot them. I might be past that point. He rarely speaks anything but English now, and I don't know that I can possibly remember all the words he used to use, and that we learned to understand. He doesn't even remember some of his first language words now.

At any rate, this is as good a place as any to document his first language. It's a bit tricky, because his first language was Sidamic, but when he was moved to Horizon House, he had to learn Amharic, and in some cases we don't know whether his words were Sidamic or Amharic.

Selam: Hello. Amharic is one of the Semitic languages, which includes Hebrew and Arabic, among others, hence their 'hello' is similar to 'Shalom' in Hebrew. People were kind when we said 'hello' in English, but their faces lit up if we greeted them with 'Selam.' Just a tiny bit of effort made such a difference.

Dabo: Bread. We were in the grocery store about two months after he came home. He was longingly gazing at and pining for the cookies. I said, "Yes, those are cookies, but we're not here for cookies. We're here for dabo." He looked at me like I had two heads, then laughed at me and said, "Dabo, nooo. Bread!" A lady walking by us chuckled. I was sad. That was the first time he verbalized a rejection of one of his first words -- the start of losing his first language. He used to eat so much bread that I called him 'dabo-head.' Now I call him 'waffle-head.'

Shuma: Potty. He still uses this word. We all do actually. We love being able to say, "I have to shuma!" in public and have no one around us know what we're talking about. He's morphed 'shuma' from meaning any type of needing to us the potty to just 'pee.' He loves getting up in the morning and having a "big, big, BIG shuma!"

Machina: Car. He mispronounces it as mach-A-na (it should be MACH-ee-na). It comes from Italian. Ethiopia is the only African country that was never colonized, which is a great source of pride for Ethiopians, and the reason for the country's high standing among other African nations. However, Ethiopia was occupied by Italy during World War II, and there are reminders of this history in some of their language and also their food. Most large restaurants offer various types of pasta. I particularly enjoyed the pasta primavera that included cabbage as one of the vegetables. But I digress. Machina originally represented and vehicle with wheels that drove across land, whether it was a motorcycle, car, train, bicycle, bus, or truck. He initially resisted differentiating, but eventually accepted, and now embraces the differences. We still use machina. My mother tells me, "Use English!" but I don't see the rush to drop this word. Then again, I was raised in a German family where we said, "Gesundheit" when someone sneezed, and that doesn't seem to have harmed my mastery (such as it is) of the English language. Mostly he says 'car' when he is talking about a car, but it's still 'machina' if he's referring to Mommy's car or Daddy's car.

Ciao: Good-bye. Another remnant of the Italian occupation. When I found out my child was from Sidama, I thought that it would be a waste of time to bother to learn Amharic, the language of the government and schooling, since he'd be speaking Sidamic. Then I got to Ethiopia and realized I didn't know how to say good-bye or thank you. I tried to learn thank-you, but it's really long and difficult to remember. I have it written down phonetically as 'amasekenardo.' I don't know how close that is. But everyone knew 'ciao', so I used that as my default for good-bye. Actually, I heard many Ethiopians saying "ciao" to other Ethiopians, including to Teshale, and he said it back to them, so I don't feel too terribly derelict for not knowing the Amharic word for good-bye. Not being able to remember 'amasekanardo' does bother me though. I feel ungracious for not being able to say thank you in the language of the people whose country I was visiting. 'Grazia' worked fairly well, but I would have preferred to have been able to say it in Amharic.

Mangia: Eat. Again, Italian. I think they learned this once they got to Horizon House in Addis Ababa. Only one nanny there spoke Sidamic, yet nearly all the children were from Sidama. So they learned the gesture of eating and the word mangia and put it together. Plus it didn't really take much to get them to eat -- they all arrive desperately in need of food. Teshale ate everything in sight at first, except Taco Bell, and then slowly learned to be picky. Now he requests waffles at every meal.

Wah: Water. They tried to teach us 'wahoo' or something along that line at Horizon House, but I learned later that 'wahoo' is Amharic and just plain 'wah' is Sidamic. Interesting that it's the first syllable in our word for water.

Mantenini: I never did figure out what this meant. He was saying it one day while drinking tea at Horizon House. I repeated it and he smiled and nodded vigorously. I asked the housekeeper what it meant and she said she had no idea. We decided it must be Sidamic, but for what, we don't know. I've since asked him and he has no clue what I'm saying to him. I'll always be curious.

Shai: Tea. The children at Horizon House were full of energy despite a very nutritionally poor diet. We think one of the reasons was the black tea they were served twice day, piping hot and loaded (loaded!) with sugar, served with sweet bread for dipping in it. Shai was one of the first vestiges of his Ethiopian culture that he shed. Perhaps he'd gotten really tired of it. Tea and bread for a meal twice a day. I can understand that waffles have a much greater appeal.


This concludes part I of "Words." In the interest of getting a post actually posted, I'm going to end here and pick up again with Part II when I can.