Today’s word is kidogo. Kidogo is a Swahili word that means “little”. RVA lingo incorporated a lot of Swahili, which is somewhat inevitable, seeing as we were quite literally surrounded by a Swahili speaking population. It doesn’t need much explanation or have a funny background, so here is an unrelated blog with the word kidogo thrown in for fun.
Last night I was determined to get enough sleep, so I somehow managed to make it to bed by 9:30. Today I am only kidogo tired. I’m not completely rested, but I am at least 50% better than yesterday. We’ll see how I do after lunch. I am terrible right after lunch. I start to nod off, then I look at my computer screen and see it is covered in e’s. So far no one has noticed me getting drowsy, or at least they have not mentioned it to me. It is kind of scary to think that I may have been caught snoozing. I hate being tired when I’m at work. What fills me with absolute frog-mouse terror is the idea of having a baby. I have no idea how I will survive when we have to wake up every 2 hours to feed a kidogo baby.
It will be interesting to see how we deal with children. You might think that since the woman has the necessary apparatus for baby feeding, I might be able to sleep the night away and let Jen deal with it by herself. However, I believe that I am the lighter sleeper. I’m not entirely sure how sound of a sleeper Jen is, so it’s possible she won’t even wake up in the middle of the night. I’ve heard of men who helped the baby to… “find its food” in the middle of the night, either to give their wives a chance to continue sleeping or possibly because they couldn’t manage to wake her up. We’ll have to see what we end up doing.
Whew… I made it though that without calling out any of those unmentionable womanly body parts by name. Good job Matt… You are now kidogo ready for… something that will probably happen which will require you to be at least partially ready when the time comes for you to do the thing that was aforementioned in this sentence structure, which is no longer the kidogo sentence I/you intended to write when we set out at the beginning of this paragraph, but at least I got to use my word twice in a single sentence.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
The shrub that will live in infamy
Today I will tell you about the sudden evolution of one of the words in our RVA dialect. The word is “conch”. What is a conch in normal English you may ask? A conch (pronounced “konk”) is “any of various large spiral-shelled marine gastropod mollusks”. You can see a picture of one to the top left. You may also be wondering how a word could evolve in a single event, since evolution takes millions of years. Well, let me tell you.
It was a warm and dry afternoon in my 9th grade English class on the momentous day in which the word conch took on a whole new meaning. We were taking turns reading “The Lord of the Flies” out loud this particular day. One of the guys was reading the part where Ralph and Piggy discover the conch shell on the beach. As he was reading he came to the word and knew instinctively that here was a word which he did not know how to pronounce correctly. He did what anyone may have done in his situation, he tried to say it phonetically… “konch”. His mistake was in his lack of confidence. Despite the vast vocabulary known to 9th graders, most of us had no better idea how to pronounce the word. His hesitant tone inspired our teacher to provide the correct pronunciation of the offending word. And thus his shrubbery was brought to the forefront of our awareness.
Something about the situation was absolutely hysterical. It was probably a combination of the funny sounding word, along with the sheepish way in which he tried so erroneously to say it. Our laughter served to cement the event in our memories. Word spread quickly and soon our entire class knew of the shrubbed conch. We very quickly began to use “konch” to describe other difficult words to say. For example: “dang, Belteshazzar is a konch word!”
In not much more time, konch came to mean difficult or hard. We also remembered the correct way to say the word, and so both pronunciations were used. In fact, they were both used so often that we soon forgot which was the correct way to say it.
And so you see, a simple shrub, combined with the right amount of laughter, and provided that the shrubbed word is sufficiently fun to say, could result in the creation of an entirely new word.
It was a warm and dry afternoon in my 9th grade English class on the momentous day in which the word conch took on a whole new meaning. We were taking turns reading “The Lord of the Flies” out loud this particular day. One of the guys was reading the part where Ralph and Piggy discover the conch shell on the beach. As he was reading he came to the word and knew instinctively that here was a word which he did not know how to pronounce correctly. He did what anyone may have done in his situation, he tried to say it phonetically… “konch”. His mistake was in his lack of confidence. Despite the vast vocabulary known to 9th graders, most of us had no better idea how to pronounce the word. His hesitant tone inspired our teacher to provide the correct pronunciation of the offending word. And thus his shrubbery was brought to the forefront of our awareness.
Something about the situation was absolutely hysterical. It was probably a combination of the funny sounding word, along with the sheepish way in which he tried so erroneously to say it. Our laughter served to cement the event in our memories. Word spread quickly and soon our entire class knew of the shrubbed conch. We very quickly began to use “konch” to describe other difficult words to say. For example: “dang, Belteshazzar is a konch word!”
In not much more time, konch came to mean difficult or hard. We also remembered the correct way to say the word, and so both pronunciations were used. In fact, they were both used so often that we soon forgot which was the correct way to say it.
And so you see, a simple shrub, combined with the right amount of laughter, and provided that the shrubbed word is sufficiently fun to say, could result in the creation of an entirely new word.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Please, please, no more! We will find you a shrubbery.
Due to popular demand, I will update my blog with a new post, Don’t let it go to your head Allison, but yes, you are popular (and a trifle demanding). Also, the picture of a turkey neck at the top of my page was making me a little nauseous. If you really didn’t get my turkey neck story, just ask my wife.
Since some of you (like Allison) really liked to hear about the made up language we had in boarding school, I figured that I would teach you all a new word. One of my favorites was the word “shrub”. In RVA (Rift Valley Academy) lingo, a shrub is a verbal blunder. I have no idea how this word originated, but I can make an educated guess. It is entirely likely that someone was attempting to say a real word, but accidentally said “shrub” instead. It may have gone something like this…
“So, I was giving my girlfriend a back shrub when all of a sudden…”
In our RVA culture, we did not let each other forget our mistakes, particularly if they were funny. It is also entirely possible that the word originated when someone was trying to tell a story while walking back to the dorms (a very dangerous combination, I’m sure you all know). While all of his concentration was on telling the story instead of walking, he may have tripped on a low lying shrubbery, thus interrupting his story and causing him to cry out “shrub!”
A good example of a real life shrubbing was when our class president was talking to us all one night. He was discussing plans for an upcoming goat roast when he mistakenly said “ghost roat”. Everyone laughed uproariously at this, of course. About 70% of the men in the room called out “shrub!” at this point, just in case he may have not noticed his verbal blunder. Up until graduation, and even after we would constantly remind him “…ghost roat, that was a great shrub man”.
A good shrub was very rarely forgotten, and as I may tell you next time, shrubbing could easily lead to the creation of a new word. Until next time, Cherry Mristmas, and may all your shrubings be gay.
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