This side or that side?

"So do you like this side or that side better?" A recent comment made by a Fijian (indo) that has left me speechless. 

As a speechie I, can, at times be very sensitive to peoples use of language. Sure many people speak using appalling grammar, sentence structure, vocabulary etc. etc. (most notably myself) But more often than not these utterances are functionally sound. They make sense. They are a sign of individuality, changing times, personal expression, background etc. And in my professional training/ opinion they are 100% acceptable as long as the meaning is clear - after all we use language as a means of communicating meaning.

But up until 5 months ago nothing has baffled/ infuriated me so much as the Fijian's complete aversion to using prepositions, and more generally, specific language in any form.

As a speechie at home I would teach the use of prepositions on a weekly basis. A common component of language therapy for clients with specific language difficulties or littlies who are struggling to develop language/ speech. They are one of the early language concepts learned by children, and are great fun to teach.

On arrival at BA Special School I contemplated teaching my students, in whom I noticed a general poor level of language development (including a lack of specific language, poor utterance length, sentence complexity and vocabulary) basic concepts (prepositions, adjectives etc). However i very quickly realised my would be folly.  A quick glance at Fijian society revealed these words do not exist in this country.

The most common example I can give you is "this side" and "that side". If you ever dare to ask a Fijian where something is (be it a shop, a school, their village, a knife, a person) you will more than likely be told that it is either "this side", or, "that side".  Predictably these two phrases never mean the same thing twice. So you are likely to remain as baffled as you started out, if not more so.

For example:

J- "where is your village?"
F- "that side"
J-" Namasau?" (other side of the river - usually a safe bet)
F- "no, you know Savusavu? that side." (so somewhere on the 2nd largest island in Fiji, few hundred ks away over vast stretches of beautiful, reef filled tropical seas)

J- where did you buy your earrings Mrs Sami?
S - "just this side"
J - "where bouts?"
S- "you know Chands?"
J- "no."
S- "Chungs?"
J- "no."
S- "Mennoos?"
J- "kinda."
S- "New Word?"
J- "which one?" (a supermarket chain of which there are at least 3 in Ba)
S- "Jacks?"
J- "yes!"
S- "well you go to Jacks, and its that side"
J- sigh.

 So back to the original example "which side do you like better, this side or that side?" Amy and I were asked this by a lovely elderly Indo-fijian lady. The sister in law to one of our teachers, and our current tailor (we sacked the previous tailors after one too many botched jobs). Sitting in her living room after completing our measurements, sipping on warm "juice" (cola), which we declined but were presented with anyhoo, chatting about enormous extended families, marriages, Fiji, the ususal. This horridly familiar, yet slightly original question was posed.  For a second we sat there baffled before Amy spoke up and declared we love living in Varadoli (our suburb, on this side of the river) because its close to town, school etc. etc. Valid answer as we are regularly asked this question. However I was sitting there thinking well were were just discussing living in Fiji. Does she acutally mean Western Division vs Central Division, OR wait a sec i think she means Australia vs Fiji! And in our debrief discussion we concluded that this may indeed have been the intended question. However until Fijian's learn to ask questions properly, we are not going to give them the answers that they are after. On a positive note, the confusion this question/answer created left a lull in conversation after which we were able to make our escape back to our teacher colleague's house next door where our delightfully delicious dinner was being prepared (dhal in the roti before cooking.... ingenious!).

For interests sake a few other examples of terrific non specific Fijian language include:

"call those two and I'll drop you people" Our head teacher asking her daughter to call over her sons so she could drive them into town.

"where did you people go this weekend?" we get asked this every Monday.

J- "who donated all the palau?"
T - "those people, from that side" - double whammy

The use of "pick" instead of "pick up". e.g. "12 children were picked (up by the bus today)", "these people can pick rubbish this side" (the smaller children can pick up rubbish within the school ground whilst the older children collect rubbish from along the road side)

"drop" instead of "drop off" - same deal as above

So using my fabulous intuition and common sense, I have decided no to teach the students prepositions, siting culturally inappropriateness.


Unfortunately Fijians have the opposite problem when it comes to giving times to meet. They tend to be rather specific with their times, however a specific time is more of a very rough, general, not so accurate guide. I feel more times than not it is just made up on the spot as they would prefer to give an answer rather than appear not to know the answer (or admit there actually isnt a set time).

but that is another issue for another blog...

See you all that side sometime!