Awkward Silence
Awkward silences…………let’s just say I am the king of them. My first few weeks with my family was spent either sitting in silence or frantically flipping through my Tetun to English dictionary as I try and interpret what my family just said. Half the time I couldn’t find the word in my dictionary so we would just sit there looking confused at each other. When I could find the Tetun word, I found that I needed to know the context to get the correct definition (Tetun is a highly contextual language whereas English is not). After having my family repeat the phrase, I was often able to understand the meaning and respond about 30 minutes later. Thankfully as my language has progressed, I have had fewer and fewer awkward silences and have had to use my dictionary less. Don’t get me wrong though I still have plenty of them!
Funny story of the week will require you to know some Tetun words and a little bit of knowledge about Timor-Leste.
Bibi = goat
Malae = foreigner
Mutin = white
Oan = child
Husi = from
Goza = Tease
In Timor-Leste there is a breed of goat that is called bibi malae because it was imported from another country. Side note foreigner doesn’t have the negative connotation in Timorese culture that it does in American culture.
So on to the funny story. I was having dinner with my family and we were talking about how being called a malae has a negative connotation in American culture but not in Timorese culture. As we were finishing the family goat decided to start making a lot of noise behind our house which reminded me about the goat breed ‘bibi malae’. This led me to make the joke that I was my family’s ‘bibi malae mutin oan husi Alaska’ (which translates to ‘foreign white goat child from Alaska’). At this point in time my family burst out laughing. Now whenever we have a relative or neighbor over my mother introduces me as her ‘bibi malae mutin oan husi Alaska’. Needless to say my family and I constantly goza (tease) each other and are always laughing. I am so glad that my family and I have the same sense of humor!
As a way for me to practice my Tetun I would like to know what questions you have about Timor. You can email questions to newsletter@polarlimits.com. I will select a few questions each week to ask my host family and will try to answer them in my next newsletter.
Sincerely,
Noah Tsigonis
