El rendimiento académico en el Perú

The same strategy that is applied to monosyllabic roots, also applies to other words, which, if inverted, are still too transparent and easily understood. These, often, disyllabic roots, need to be ‘obscured’ too. Sami and Stommy comment (utterances in Kindoubil are typed in

SMALL CAPITALS, their translation in Lingala by Sami is in italics.):251

Eza pe na biloko mosusu totia yango na kati. Neti olingi kolobela mutu “tala,” biso sikoyo tolobaka “RÉ.” C’est que “RÉ” wana nde elobi “tala.” Soki azongelaka mutu ayoka, po bayebi. Totia pe bamots mosusu oyo mpenza mutu acomprendre té. Okoki kolobela mutu “RÉ NONA,” eza kaka bamots moko ekokota na kati: “RÉ NONA” “tala nano.”

-- o --

There are also things we put inside. Like if you want to say to someone “tala” (look), well we will say “RÉ” (look). That “RÉ” means “tala.” Because if you invert it they will understand it, because they know. We add other words, those that others won’t understand at all. You can say to someone “RÉ NONA” (look now), those are just words that will become part of it, “RÉ NONA,” [in stead of] “tala nano” (look now).

Re nona! means ‘look here!’ or ‘look now!’ and replaces the too-straightforward inversion of the Lingala imperative tala! (look!) which would come down to *lata! Instead, the form re is used, of which I could not trace its etymology, presumably a truncation of the French verb

regardez (look!). Another example is: 252

Lingala Ndenge nini?

Inverted Kindoubil Ngen-de ni-ka?

inverted nde-nge ni-ni + ka

Ngende nika?, Kindoubil for Ndenge nini?, literally ‘which way’ and is used to ask ‘how are you?’ Once again the main manipulation is metathesis. The metathesis respects the Bantu syllable structure, the nasal precedes the consonant, instead of following the vowel. Nde-nge

is transformed into nge-nde. The inversion of ni-ni results in ni-ni. In order to obscure it, it is first truncated, ni-, and then attached to an empty suffixation –ka, the result is ni-ka. Yet another example resulting from far reaching linguistic manipulation is: 253

Lingala Ozosala nini?

Inverted Kindoubil O-ref-eki nini?

2SG-root inverted faire-PAST1

Orefiki nini is translated as ‘What are you doing?’ Instead of the more straightforward

Olasaka nini?, where -sala is inverted to give -lasa, Kindoubil speakers recur to the inverted from of the French verb faire, i.e. ref-. Once again, the underlying form here is not the

252 _{Interview held on 18.01.2010 in Lingala with Sami and Notebook (126) on 03.02.2010 Kindoubil vocabulary} by Cele Kaniki.

present continuous *ozofaire nor the habitualis osalaka, but something between the present perfect and the simple past tense.254 _{Once again, the underlying thinking procedure seems to}

take place in the present perfect form (as in ondivaka), resulting -eki instead of -aka. The translation, though, corresponds to the present continuous tense. The tenses in Inverted Kindoubil seem to overlap more often than their Lingala counterparts. Not only verbal forms, but also substantives are obscured, if too transparent:255

Lingala Nazali malade na ndako

Inverted Kindoubil na-liza-ki delema na lepa

1SG-inverted root to be-PAST1inverted malade inverted palais Nalizaki delema na lepa means ‘I was sick at home’. Nalizaki is, again, an inverted verbal form based on the underlying anterior 1 form nazali –hence the li.256 _{In agreement with the}

suffix–aki, the totality is translated by the simple past tense. Delema is a polysyllabic word and will be discussed further on. Lepa is the inverted form of the French palais (palace) and is used to replace ndako (house), or in its inverted form *konda. Lepa is not only the result of metathesis, but is also a hyperbole, another manipulation that is frequently found in UYLs (Kiessling & Mous 2004: 325-326).

The disyllabic root of the verb ‘to be’, ko-zala, is made unintelligible by truncation too.

Ezali (there is)inverted gives eliza, which truncated amounts to eli. In its negative form, the result of ezali té (there is not) is the garbled eligwé. Take, for instance, the following

example: 257

Lingala Masta, moyen ya kokende kuna eza té, nalembí. Inverted Kindoubil Stama, yemwa ya kozega naku eligwé, nambilé.

The translation of this sentence reads as follows: ‘My friend, there is no way I’ll go there, I’m tired’ or ‘My friend, I cannot go there, I’m tired’ Masta, derived from the English Master, in the meaning of friend, is inverted following the Bantu syllable logic to give Stama. Yemwa

is the inverted moyen, and follows here not only the Lingala syllable structure, but also the Lingala phonology. Ko-zega is a synonym of ko-jebu or to go (kokende in Lingala). It is the inverted form of ko-gazé, which belongs to the vocabulary of the other Kindoubil. The syllables of kuna are swopped to give naku. Eligwé is the unrecognisable form of ezali té, ‘there is not’. And nambilé is the inverted form of the dysillabic nalembí. Note how, in the case of nambilé-nalembí, even if the syllables are inverted, the tonality, at the suprasegmental level, seems to remain unchanged.

256 _{The anterior 1 form of static verbs, such as ‘to be’ is translated by the simple present tense.} 257 _{Notebook (109) on 22.01.2010 – informant Gaston}