Book Introduction

Text by Günther Schlee

The Boran are a southern Oromo group, which occupies a senior position in Oromo traditional history. Their contact period with the Amhara was shorter than that of other Oromo groups and their dialect has incorporated fewer Amharic loanwords. It is a rela­tively “pure” form of Oromo.

Their richness in proverbs is enormous, even in comparison to other African peoples who have preserved orality in many spheres of life (the everyday sphere, the jural sphere, the passing on of history) and thus have good use for proverbs to sharpen their arguments, rend savour to their accounts and give everything they say the ring of acceptance by tradition and of legitimacy. When I asked Abdullahi Shongolo in 1984 to collect Boran pro­verbs which we would then analyse, illustrate and contextualize in a way which puts also those not fortunate enough to have Oromo as their mother tongue in a position to understand them and to enjoy their wit, we agreed on 1000 as a target for col­lection. He met this target in no time. Of these 1000 proverbs we here present a first bunch of 100 (not counting those pro­verbs which we quote only in the context of other proverbs wit­hout taking them through all steps of analysis separately)

With these relatively small numbers we are, of course, in no position to compete with the admirable collection of Fr. George Cotter which is based on 20 earlier collections and comprises not less than 4677 proverbs from different areas (Cotter 1990). We can only recommend that book (which came out too late for us to make use of it) to all those who feel they need a fuller sample. It is, however, not our intention to compete with Cotter and his illustrious contributors in terms of numbers. In fact, there is not much competition at all since the present work is of an entirely different kind.

Between the life world experience and its linguistic expression of a Cushitic people like the Boran Oromo on the one hand and the culture and languages of modern Europe (here represented by our brave use of English which is neither Abdullahi’ nor my mother tongue) on the other hand, there is such a wide gap that it cannot be bridged by a single translation. Cotter, too, is aware of this and therefore gives two translations for each pro­verb. The first is a rather literal translation, which imitates the Oromo original even in word order, so that the resulting English is somewhat ungrammatical and hard to understand. The second translation is immaculate English and immediately under­standable to any reader who has mastered English. It is freed from the culture specific imagery of the original and the lite­ral translation and generalized in its meaning so that it makes perfect sense also to somebody who has never spent a day among any Oromo.

In translation theory, the first kind of translation is called a source language oriented translation and the second kind is called a target language oriented translation. The gap between Oromo and English, however, is so wide, than even by two steps it cannot be bridged. If only one source language oriented and one target language oriented translation is given, it is not always clear which words and morphemes (the meaningful elements of which words are made up) of the original Oromo corresponds to which element of the first translation, nor is it necessarily clear how the entirely plausible, reasonable and grammatically smooth second translation, the one in “English English”, has been derived from the obscure wording and the strange imagery of the first, unless, of course, the reader knows Oromo and in that case he would not need any translation at all. In other words, more steps are needed, more space needs to be allocated to each single proverb, to explain fully what it means and to analyse it in a way that shows how it comes to mean what it means.

In the following presentation the various steps taken are:

            – The Oromo version of the proverb as transcribed from spoken Oromo,

– the morpheme by morpheme representation of the proverb, giving underlying forms (the grammatical ideas) where in spoken Oromo phonetic assimilations and simplifications haven taken place (e.g. at this level we write hin beek+u for ‘I do not know’, separating the verb stem beek from the ending u by the symbol for a morpheme boundary, +, and writing hin rather than him, although in spoken Oromo (him béeku) the n of the underly­ing hin is realized (takes the surface form) m because of the influence of the following b with which the béeku starts. /b/ is a labial sound, i.e. it is articulated by the lips, and under its influence the /n/ which is formed with the tongue at the teeth (a dental sound) moves with its place of articulation forward to the lips, too, and in the process becomes an /m/. We thus have

                        the surface form                      him béeku

                        the underlying form                hin beek+u

            – the morpheme-by-morpheme translation, which ascribes each morpheme a meaning or a grammatical function, which is des­cribed in English,

            – the translation in grammatically correct English which is sufficiently “target language oriented” (s. above) to ren­der whatever can be rendered of the original in an English translation which does not exceed the length of the origi­nal,

            – additional explanations entitled ‘meaning’, ‘use’, ‘cul­tural context’ or the like as the need arises, which elabo­rate on elements of the meaning of the original which have not come across in the translations, mostly because English words allude to a different cultural experience, a diffe­rent life world from the world to which Oromo words refer,

            – examples for the use of the proverb.

The last element of this enumeration occupies most of the space and causes most of the printing costs, but we do not regret that, because it is through their use that e learn most about proverbs or other forms of speech.

These examples for the use of a proverb take the shape of stories about legal cases which have been brought to the attention of elders who then deal with these cases and underline their positions by quoting the proverb in question. Some of these stories are criminal stories, others deal with ordinary everyday conflicts like the ones between husband and wife or between the generations. Most of them are fictional. Abdullahi Shongolo has invented them and then we have discussed them together, me sometimes questioning his reasoning and playing the advocate of the other side, until we both felt that the story made sense and fitted the proverb well. That these stories are fictional, however, does not mean that they are unrealistic. They describe events which Abdullahi Shongolo, who has grown up in the setting of these events, regards as the typical circumstances in which the respective proverbs are quo­ted, scenes from the life in and around Moyale, where he lives. Other stories are not invented, but real. In that case they would not be entitled ‘an illustration’ or ‘a story’, but ‘a case history from such-and-such a place, such-and-such a date’. In these cases, however, we have changed all names of persons so that we cannot inadvertedly harm anybody by misrepresentating what he or she said or did.

Because of these illustrations this book about proverbs has also become a book of stories. Linguists may use these texts to study syntax and textual grammar and other aspects of the language, which cannot be studied from short fragments of a language. Those interested in culture can learn a lot about Boran life and the attitudes of the Boran about life from them. As both authors are teachers (Shongolo at Butiye Primary School, Moyale, I at the Faculty of Sociology, University of Bielefeld, Germany), the third category of readers we have had in mind are pupils and students. Vernacular languages should find their place in school curricula, and Oromo is not just any vernacular. In Kenya, it may be a minority language; in Ethiopia it is not, and if we regard it on the continental scale we find that Oromo is one of the largest languages in Africa in terms of number of speakers.

A teacher’s guide for working with this volume can easily be developed. One can ask the students to write stories illustra­ting those proverbs which have been presented here without a story, one can encourage them to collect more proverbs, to dis­cuss them with their elders and to describe their use following the patterns laid down in this volume, and one can invite them to criticize our translations and to look for alternative trans­lations of Boran words and phrases to develop linguistic reaso­ning and philological scrutiny, etc. There are no limits. A gifted teacher will find ample material for classroom discus­sions in this volume.

Boran Proverbs in their Cultural Context by Abdullahi A. Shongolo (Author), Günther Schlee (Author).Paperback: 139 pages; Publisher: Rüdiger Köppe; 1st edition (2007)

Text provided to Ethiopia Observer by Abdullahi A.Shongolo

Main Image: At a village in Yabelo Woreda, Borana Zone, Oromia Region, Ethiopia. (6 March 2016) photo by AXBXCX

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