Communications Breakdown

Saturday July 5

I started studying french before I came to Africa. Or, more accurately, I started studying French so that I could come to Africa. Back in January, I started listening to the 90-lesson Pimsleur French CD's and I finished the series the day I left DC. I'd also bought 1000 preprinted vocab flash cards and a "vocabulary builder" comic book. The comic book is intended to help teach "real" French to disaffected teens who are presumably taking high school French classes. So you follow the main character--a 15-year old girl--around her daily life. I learned such useful phrases as "but, everyone else is doing it!" and "no, Mom, he's not my boyfriend." From a vocabulary perspective, French is a great language to learn as an anglophone. By some estimates, 50% of the words are direct cognates with English and I went from not knowing french to reading easy passages fairly quickly. Unfortunately, spoken French is a completely different story. And spoken French in Africa where the dialect is different and the accent is strong is even more difficult still. For the first few days no one understood me, or vice-versa. Fortunately, I slowly learned some tricks with the local dialect that helped me out. For example, the soft "ooh" as in deux becomes "ay" in Senegalese French. So you count, "unh, day, twa, kat, sank, sase" instead of "unh, deux, twa, kat, sank, sees."

I also found out that many cab drivers don't speak [much] French. This was a shocker as French seems to be a pre-requisite for anyone in the tourist or transportation industries. However, the caliber of a Senegalese's French is usually correlated with his or her education level. More educated = more french. Cab drivers aren't awarded a license based on education level, but on their ability to pay baksheesh to the commissioner or their personal connections.

Estimates vary, but I would guess that relatively few Senegalese speak fluent French, maybe 20%. Approximately 80% of Senegalese speak Wolof as their native language and the balance is filled out with such sonorous sounding languages as Diola, Mandinka, Soninke, and Fula. The language hodgepodge is relatively unimportant in Senegal which relies mainly on Wolof as the basis for daily business. Unlike other African countries, Senegal has relatively few native languages, so French is less important as the de facto language of commerce. Togo, for example, is smaller than Senegal with respect to both land area and population and yet Togolese speak more than 30 local languages. French becomes more important as a common language.

All of this is a roundabout way of saying that communication is difficult in Senegal. Add in complex cultural mores and American dollars and you can fry your interpersonal circuits at a moment's notice. Luckily, I met someone who [briefly] took my communication problems off the table.