We’ve been working hard on building a solid foundation of vocabulary in Mampruli. As we’ve been going through people, animals, food, colors, and household objects we’ve run across some words with interesting literal meanings or origins.
When talking about colors:
- GREEN translates to “bean leaf water” because they smash a certain bean leaf to put in soup and it creates a green liquid
- YELLOW is the same word as “dawadawa flour”, a yellowish powder made from ground locust bean tree seeds
- BROWN is the same word as “dust”
- BLUE has no Mampruli word so they just say our English as “bulu”
(this one surprised me – if “brown” is “dust” why wasn’t the word for “sky” used for “blue”?)
And then there’s the topic of food:
- CABBAGE translates to “Frog Tobacco” (our favorite quirky word so far!)
- EGG YOLK to “the egg’s red”
- BAMBARA BEANS are “round peanuts”
- OVEN is “bread cooker”
- JUICE is literally “Sweet Water”
- ORANGE (the fruit) is a “citrus” and LEMON & LIMES translate as “sour citrus”
- ORANGE JUICE is therefore “Sweet Citrus Water” and LEMONADE is “Sour Sweet Citrus Water”
- PINEAPPLES are not native to the north so they are referred to by their Twi name (a southern people group)
- CARROT has no Mampruli word and is just “carrot” (in a Ghanaian English accent)