I’ve been here for a few weeks and I start grasping certain things about the language spoken by the locals. The first thing is the name: “Humala”, which defines the language and those who speak it. The litteral translation would be “those who speak from within this circle” which I found a bit confusing at the beginning, probably because during my studies I always read definitions such as “the forest dwellers” or “the people from the shore” or “sun descendants”, etc. The notion of “those who speak from within this circle” seemed to refer to anyone who could use a particular set of words in a strict geographical proximity. I tried to convey this idea to Menare, my informant, and he told me that the idea was quite accurate (he also mentioned that at the time he was born his name meant something like “the endless journey”). Menare explained that if I was able to speak their language I would automatically become a Humala, as long as I stayed here. As an example he mentioned a cousin who went away for more than two years. By the time the cousin came back he had to go through a process of social re-adaptation as he wasn’t considered a Humala any more. I asked around to verify this information an apparently that’s the way it works: you’re a Humala as long as you stay in the village and speak the language, but as soon as you leave, you become a foreigner. There’s a feature of the language which might help understand this cultural trait (although I don’t know if one explains the other or vice versa): words don’t necessarily carry the same meaning from one day to the other.
It took me a while -and lots of misunderstandings- to realise this. In my first week here I learned how to say “Could you please tell me on which side of the river I am now?”, to which people answered using their index fingers to point horizontally in the direction of the river while verbally giving me other references. In one particular occasion one villager and his kid (whose name was Patom or “morning sage”) took me to the river and in a very didactic way pointed at things, slowly pronouncing their names. He unmistakably pointed at the river and said “inuma”. Two weeks after, other villagers would frown upon me and answer the same question pointing their index fingers upwards, and their references where mostly about the sky. After a few other conversations I realised that people were using “inuma” to refer to the clouds. At first I thought my assumptions about the use of “inuma” were wrong. Then, one day I bumped into Patom and he offered to become my guide for the rest of the afternoon. We ran different errands together and I kept asking him questions and taking notes. As we approached the river I asked him to point to “inuma”. He looked at the cloudless sky and made a negative gesture. I then decided to imitate his father’s voice and manners and pointed to the river. Patom started laughing but quickly understood what I was trying to do and, in the same didactic manner as his father, he tried to explain that “inuma” did mean “river” at one point, but now it meant “cloud”. He must have noticed my perplexity and tried to explain something about the central place gatherings.
He was referring to a particular gathering that takes place every other week. In those gatherings some of the eldest Humalas recite a series of words in front of a group of ten to twenty teenagers. One senior Humala loudly says words, looking at the other senior Humalas, changing their intonation as a cue for the next senior to continue. One could guess the final sentence for it’s the only one that is spoken at the same time by all the present senior Humalas. Then the funniest and most important part of the gathering takes place: the young Humalas pick one word and repeat it, while the senior ones answer with more words over and over until they get interrupted by the young ones who pick up a new word. At the beginning I mistook this practice as a kind of local literature club where older guys will display their stories and allow a debate with the youngest about the quality of their work. It’s actually something more complex and crucial: those gatherings redefine the meaning of words and they are closer to a parliamentary debate than to literature criticism.
I asked Menare about the gatherings and the way words meant different things at different moments. I wanted to know whether they kept a record of changes in meanings or not. He told me that it wasn’t necessary to keep track of changes as words would only be picked from a restricted pool of meanings and most times those changes were cyclical.
Polysemy is found in most languages that I studied, but I’ve never heard of languages with ever changing words. It’s difficult to imagine how a society can avoid chaos in such a linguistical environment. However, Humalas seem to be a quite happy and peaceful crowd. And chatty. It didn’t matter my total lack of command of their language: as long as I could mumble a couple of humala words from time to time, they would talk to me like if I was one of theirs. My biggest struggle was to keep up with changes in meaning, so I took to attend all the central place gatherings. I was lucky enough to be invited to join a couple of them (on the teenagers side) and at one point I was even offered the chance to learn one of their most sacred treasures: a poem made of the word “hemana” used twenty three times with a different meaning and which only makes sense to those who can remember the different meanings that word had through time. Here’s an approximate translation:
There is a side of the valley where the orange of the flowers melt with the light of the sunset. On that side of the valley, Hemana smelt a kiss so light that its scent could float for hundred years before becoming drops of heaven.
Urge For Lust Azar poético
I was inspired by the Lion Eating Poet in the Stone Den, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den