This Thing
Sometimes Ghanaians can't think of the disting that they're trying to say. English is at best a second disting for them, so it's understandable when they occasionally forget a word.
But at times it gets out of disting. The student I live with is a repeat disting. When he's talking in English, it often seems that he can't think of every other word in a disting. He often speaks with a bit of disting, so you can tell he's trying to think of the right word but just can't. Other people use it seamlessly without any disting, as if nothing is wrong.
Recently in a class of first-year students, I had the class change the disting in a Microsoft Word document. Only one student was able to do it, so I asked him to stand up and explain what he did to the rest of the disting. He said, and I quote, "I clicked on the disting." I asked him how he could just "disting" the most important word in the sentence, especially when it was not obvious to the rest of the class what he was talking about! Such is disting.
Teachers at my disting have similar problems. Some of them speak fluently, but there are a few whose disting is so broken that I wonder if they're having a positive influence on the students. Some of them also talk Pidgin disting, which I find difficult to understand. But I think they only use it when they talk among themselves, so it's not too disting.
This linguistic disting is consistent across large parts of the country. I've heard disting used in multiple regions of Ghana, and I wonder if it has spread to other countries. Maybe it's a West Africa disting.
I've started to occasionally use disting as well. For example, I wrote this in my computer lab and then saved it to my disting. Then I took it to the Internet café and I'm now posting it on my disting. It's a catchy word, and it applies to so many distings…
Addendum #1: Ghana struck oil! A few days ago the government announced that a delicious oil reserve was discovered off the coast. They have not officially announced how big it is, but I've heard numbers ranging from 300 to 600 million barrels. Ghana now becomes part of an exclusive African club that includes Nigeria, Angola, Libya, Guinea, and Sudan, although I think Ghana has less oil than any of those countries (certainly far less than nearby Nigeria which produces 2.5 million barrels a day). In theory, oil could be a real boon to the economy and do a lot to alleviate poverty….in theory.
Addendum #2: I posted a few new pictures. Why not look at them?
Addendum #3: I don't have any big plans for my 6-week break because I'm planning on taking the LSATs in September, so I want to study for that. There is a park in the north of the country that has elephants, hippos, baboons, and other animals, but apparently it's best to go in the dry season, which is what you might call the "winter." I also hope to see the Sahara at some point in the next year.
: June 22, 2007 7:42 PM