Connecting the Dots across the Indian Ocean
From Hindi to Kiswahili
The world is even smaller than we know. Follow the words…
I’ve always loved languages (which does not correlate to being good at languages!). I love the subtle process of discovery. Words are like breadcrumbs, hinting at a culture and a history that help you better understand the people within it.
For example, when I first moved to India, I learned that, in Hindi, the word for “yesterday” is also the word for “tomorrow”: कल (“kal”). Even better, the word for “the day before yesterday” is also the word for “the day after tomorrow”: परसों (“parson” with nasal “o” ;). This simple phrasing, used countless times a day, speaks to something deeper — the cyclical view of life and reincarnation in Hindu faith.*
I have 2 handicaps. First, I love languages but speak none to any degree of fluency — besides English on a good day :). I’ve bopped around to too many countries and generally blame America’s pathetic language education (or maybe its America’s hubris that everyone should just understand us?). Second, I’m cursed with a partner who is a linguistic ninja! Kevin speaks too many languages with what I would call “fluency.” He is a sponge for accents and phrases. He sometimes reads Russian books for fun. It’s quite charming when traveling to Cuba in the early days of your romance and he’s befriending the local tobacco farmers in Spanish. But, it’s quite annoying when he’s running laps around you in Kiswahili** within days of your arrival!
But, I will persevere!!
Surprisingly, Hindi may be my strongest foreign language (though it’s very rusty now…I blame the German husband). Living in India for 4 years and some dedication made it fun to learn. Now, as a new Nairobi resident, I’m doing my best to get some Kiswahili education.
So, you can imagine my surprise when I cracked open my Kiswahili text book to some mundane grammatical explanation of noun tenses (uh oh, this is going to be hard!) and saw the work for book: “kitabu.” I chuckled because “kitab” (किताब) is book in Hindi. Then the work for pen: “kalamu.” In Hindi: kalam (कलम). What’s going on here??
And there was more to come… I started to learn about money and how to ask for a price. In Kiswahili, it’s “pesa.” In Hindi: paise (पैसे). And the number 100,000 is “laki” in Kiswahili; in Hindi, laakh (लाख).
Kiswahili is a Bantu language with heavy Arabic influence. I can’t find any reliable source on the whole world wide web to explain the similarities with Hindi. My best hypotheses: First, Arabic influenced both Hindi and Kiswahili, so they share some common roots. That explains “book” and “pen.” But, I’ve found too many words that are shared with Hindi and Kiswahili, but not Arabic. Second, Indian traders have been coming to East Africa by sea for centuries. And the British brought in 100,000s of Indians as indentured laborers during colonial days (a pretty ugly history), and these Indians settled for generations (they now totaling 3 million in Eastern Africa today). Clearly, Hindi (or Gujurati, since many of the ethnic Indians here come from one region in India) words have woven themselves into the fabric of Kiswahili.
Languages are living, breathing creatures. If we listen well, we hear a people’s history. And, perhaps, their future.
*Total non-sequitur on fun language discoveries: the word for computer in Mandarin is 电脑, which means “electric brain.”
** a.k.a. Swahili
