And now… Radiance of Tomorrow by Ishmael Beah...
I picked this up the other day and read the first few pages. I can't wait to sink my teeth into this one. Here's what got me:
…The places I come from have such righ languages, such a variety of expression. In Sierra Leone we have about fifteen languages and three dialects. I grew up speaking about seven of them. My mother tongue, Mende, is very expressive, very figurative, and when I write, I always struggle to find the English equivalent of things that I really want to say in Mende. For example, in Mende, you wouldn't say "night came suddenly"; you would say "the sky rolled over and changed its sides." Even single words are this way -- the word for "ball" in Mende translates to a "nest of air" or a "vessel that carries air."
If I express such things in written English the language takes on a kind of new mode… When I started writing this novel, I wanted to introduce all these things to my work. They are part of what makes language come alive for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment