Fringlasy

In the beginning I used French to learn Malagasy. And being that I didn't learn my dialect during training French was especially an important tool. The opposite is true now, since my Malagasy has surpassed my French. The first year of my service was focused on learning the local language. I was actually quite disinterested in studying French for the longest time based on the elitism associated with anything French here and plus it is not necessary for my work. French is also not a language that is widely used among the majority of the population. In fact, there are those from the upper crust of Malagasy society who wish to educate their children solely in French. I was surprise to learn that I spoke more Malagasy than some of these people. But because I am already one year in my service and feel comfortable with how far I can get with Malagasy I've decided to find a French tutor.

Malagasy is fun! I adore my dialect Tsimihety, which ironically enough sounds harsh and at the same time musical. Sass is required when speaking this dialect (think of an intonation used by Italians and apply it to Malagasy). Many words in Malagasy are repetitive with a large series of vowels such as mihinina (to eat), mangidihidy (to be itchy), misangasangana (to walk). I love how they roll their r's especially when they wish to emphasize their point. I've even picked up the way Malagasy pronounce r when they are speaking French such as secretaire pronounced secretara by Malagasy.

I've actually developed a bit of a pidgin language when conversing with my French instructor mixing in bits of Malagasy and French to get all of my ideas across. And when I fail to explain certain concepts in French such as China's one-child-policy Malagasy is the way to go.

But learning Malagasy requires that I use a completely different part of my tete. I put French in the same category that I do English. So when it's difficult to find the appropriate vocabulary in French I just add an accent and a lot of times I'm able to produce French. There isn't this luxury in Malagasy. The language is Indo-Malay stemming from a language brought over by an earlier Indonesian group. The normal sentence pattern is also remarkable different from any romance language since its regular sentence pattern is verb + object + subject. So basically there is a lot of memorization involved, therefore I can't cheat if I don't know how to say something.