Fa Waka: Words as Common Coin

(1) [VERB/ADJECTIVE + weh]VERB/ ADJECTIVE
derivative meaning base meaning of base
a. giwèh ‘give away’ gi (V) ‘give’
gowèh ‘go away’ go (V) ‘go’
hitiwèh ‘throw away’ hiti (V) ‘throw’
b. langaweh ‘far/far away’ langa (A) ‘long (spat. & temp.)’
c. grandeweh ‘long ago’ grande (A) ‘big, great’

I often think if I could go back and do another life, I would be a linguist. I am fascinated by words and gestures. I have enough French blood that I would find it difficult to speak without the use of my hands. I wonder why we gesture so much when we talk; is it a holdover from the days when we only used our hands to communicate?

I took French in high school but never became anywhere close to fluent. I might be able to if I lived in France for a year or two. But I did have the experience of learning a little Sranan Tongo when I lived in Suriname a few years ago. We lived in the capital, Paramaribo, when we were in the Peace Corps, and we luckily were given language training in Sranan Tongo rather than the official language, Dutch. So we said Fa Waka for hello rather than something that sounded like "Who Hot Het." There were some Dutch sounds that we couldn't make without gagging.

According to Wikipedia, the Sranan Tongo words for 'to know' and 'small children' are sabi and pikin which is due to the Portuguese having been the first explorers of the West African coast, where they developed a pidgin language from which a few words became common coin in interactions with Africans by explorers who came afterward, including the English. However, research has established that Sranan is fundamentally an English-based language, with an overlay of words from Dutch, due to the Dutch takeover of Surinam in 1667.

Sranan Tongo's lexicon is thus a fusion of English, Dutch, Portuguese and Central and West African languages. It began as a pidgin spoken primarily by African slaves in Suriname who often did not have a common African language. Sranan also became the language of communication between the slaves and the slave-owners, as the slaves were prohibited to speak Dutch. As other ethnic groups were brought to Suriname as contract workers, Sranan became a lingua franca.

Some of the simpler words we learned were 'gwe,' which when shouted at one of the mangy dogs following us as we walked home would send them running. Go away!! I developed an aggressive side that surprised me but I wasn't sure my rabies shots would protect me if I got bitten. Another favorite word was 'kaba' which meant Done! Over. We used to practice in the morning, using only Sranan for an hour. We even tried playing Scrabble, one of our favorite pastimes, with Sranan words, but we didn't get very far. The irony was that Dutch was considered the language of educated people so our attempts at speaking our language wasn't met with great enthusiasm. Our counterpart George, the person we worked with, always wanted us to speak Dutch. Easy for him to say!

As luck or synchronicity would have it, we recently met a friend at our church in Auburn who lived in French Guyana on the border of Suriname. When she heard we had lived in South America, she came up and greeted us: Fa Waka! Now we have decided we will all study the language and keep our brains fit. Besides, the creole language has such a beautiful way of expressing things. 'Ati' is the word for heart and 'ati sidon' means to be satisfied or at ease. Literally 'heart sit down.' Broko ati is broken heart. If you have heard that learning a language is good for your brain, consider learning Sranan. And then you might plan a trip to Suriname to try it out. Waka bun. (Walk good.)