A combination of illness and family life and death stuff conspired to keep me away. I actually posted yesterday, but for some reason (I know the reason...) the post isn't here. I will have to resurrect it another day.
So Malgachisation is the word of the day. No, I hadn't heard of it either, but there you go. The word means the moving from French to Malagasy as the commonly used language. Strangly enough, this word only really applies to Madagascar where Malagasy goes from being spoken to not being spoken and then to spoken again.
Why do I know this, why would I care? Well, as part of my philosophy of getting to know every language in the world, this week I am looking at Malagasy. I ordered a book over the internet and after about three weeks it has finally arrived.
What got my interest in the first place was that I heard it was related to Pacific languages. Madagascar is pretty far from the Pacific so I wanted to know how many similarites there were. Grammar-wise it seems similar, but vocab-wise it is quite different. I suppose you get that with 20 000 years. Madagascar is a place I would love to go as I am fascinated with lemurs. You have to admit they are pretty cute!
You can adopt one of these guys for a mere $1000 a year. Look at www.lemurreserve.org if you are interested
Here are some Malagasy phrases for you,
Manahoana - Hello or How are you?
Misaotra - Thank you
Miala tsiny aho - Sorry
Gidro - Lemur
Famantaranandro - Watch
Misy zavatra tokony hotandremanay manokana ve? - Is there anything I need to pay special attention to?
Wow, that's a mouthful!
Veloma!
San Nakji for President!
2 comments:
I like languages too, but I have never been able to learn them well. I do know some sign language, and I can sing many songs in foreign languages. Yet, I can't speak any of them, (except English) fluently.
As long as you have English, you should be ok! Sign language is something I would love to learn... Thanks for the post ;)
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