When you are learning a new language or even operating in a language that you have been studying for months or years you often end up saying things you didn't really intend to say. I don't know how many times I have ended up saying something I had no intention of saying. Some times it is as simple as mixing up one word and quickly realizing you have made a mistake and correcting yourself. Sometimes you can spend months saying one thing when you are thinking you are saying another. Though I now have a pretty decent grasp on the Malagasy language I am still constantly making mistakes and saying things that make people chuckle. Maybe it is a turn of phrase that makes perfect sense in English but is perfectly hilarious in Malagasy. Maybe it is simply wrong. But what ever you are saying it is almost always very amusing.

It's Broken.

My friends recently hatched four ducklings, I was there when they hatched and took a particular interest in their first month or so of life. I helped take care of them, filling buckets of water for them to play in and constantly over feeding them. (My friends found it pretty funny that I was so intrigued by ducklings, to people who spend their entire lives raising animals it is probably pretty goofy to see this 24 year old city girl playing with the ducks. Children here don't even play with ducklings. But this is a tangent) One day when I am putting the ducklings in their bucket of water for their afternoon swim I notice that one of them is having a bit if a difficult time keeping up with his fellows. I think his leg his broken and I want to tell Nenee this so I say "Nenee, raika ny gana gana kely lasa marary, simba ny tongtra" translation: Nenee, one of the ducklings is sick, it's leg is broken. She turns to me and says, "oh Amie, the way you say things is so funny, you always make me laugh." Running through the sentence in my brain I can't find anything particularly out of place until she informs me that you can't have a broken leg. At first I am a bit confused about this as I KNOW you can have a broken leg. But after a little bit of mind twisting I discover it is a subtle difference in the language. In Malagasy syntect you simply can't "break" a leg it can only be "sick". I must make a million mistakes like this everyday.

Bring your crying clothes One of my favorite stories about language problems comes from Margot who at the time of this story was just getting ready to leave country. Here replacement, Daline, was coming to visit and would be attending the Regional Volunteer Advisory Committee meeting, which was being held in Foulpoint where there is a fantastic beach. Margot had called a member of the Peace Corps staff and was talking to them about Daline's visit talking about the agenda and what Daline should bring at one point in the conversation she advised the staff member: " Daline should bring her crying clothes because we are going to the VAC meeting in Foulpoint and all the other volunteers will be crying so I think Daline will want to cry too, and she really needs to bring her crying clothes, it will be a lot of fun to cry." What she had really wanted to say was that Daline should bring her swimming clothes but in Malagasy to swim "milomano" and to cry "mitomano" are extremely similar, and even the most seasoned of us make mistakes. That staff person probably thought Margot was loosing it a bit at the end.

I looked in her underpants

One of my other favorite stories comes not from a person trying to learn Malagasy but from a friend of mine who is trying to learn English. Mbola and I have been working on his English for quite a few months now and he is improving rapidly. Though he now speaks with a lot of my little oddities and turns of phrase which can be very amusing coming out of a Malagasy persons mouth but the things I enjoy the most about his English is when he'll come up with a phrase that makes sense but just isn't quite right. Mbola recently came into possession of a tiny mouse lemur and named it Emma. We were talking about where he had gotten it and why he had named it Emma, he had bought it from a friend for about $2 and he had named it Emma after my little sister because he knows how much I miss her. I wanted to know how he knew it was a girl and while I figured he had just looked I asked anyways. I said "How do you know it is a girl? Maybe it is a boy and you should have named it Joe." And he says " I know it is a girl because I looked in her underpants"