The Kunama is a minority ethnic-group living in the western part of Eritrea.This page exposes the unjust and discriminatory activities of the Eritrean government. It also participates in the political dialogues in Eritrea.

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NHNAN ILAMANAN

 

THE PHRASE: „NHNAN ILAMANAN“ TRANSLATED INTO THE KUNAMA LANGUAGE.

1 - It is a linguistic reality that, any word, phrase or sentence, uttered in a particular language, carries its full semantic weight, primarily for the native speaker of that language.

If that same word, phrase or sentences is translated into another language, it could send, if not a partly altered, at least somehow distorted or even a totally different message.

Based on this fact, we shall try to translate, analyse and decipher the above phrase in Tigrigna language which, roughly translated into English means: “WE and OUR AIM”.

Leaving aside the unnecessary efforts and attempts to speculate and retrace who had first produced and used that phrase and in what context, let us, first of all, make it clear that, we do not claim either to be able to fathom out its deep semantics or its genuine value as an aim, but to point out only the misunderstandings it may create when it is translated into the Kunama language.

Our analysis and comments on the various implications the meaning of such phrase may have for the Kunama people, will be, therefore, strictly based on the comparison with the syntax of the Kunama language.

We shall also be pointing out how far, seen from our Kunama perspective, the aims of this phrase are to be and could be detected in the practical applications of the means used and the ways followed to reaching and achieving those aims.

Unlike the Tigrigna, the Kunama is one of those Nilo-Saharan languages known to and defined by many linguists as a language in which, “ the pronominal system has dual as well as singular / plural exclusive / inclusive distinctions, but no grammatical gender “ (1).

According to this particular grammatical feature, with the first plural personal pronoun “WE”, as well as with the prefixes replacing and indicating the personal pronouns in the conjugation of a verb, the Kunama language either includes or excludes the listener.

The first plural personal pronoun (‘ame = we), excludes the listener, the accentuation being the deciding grammatical and semantic factor as it may mean either, “we two”, exclusive “you” or “we many”, exclusive “you”, the listener.

In order to include also “you”, the listener, the speaker of the Kunama language has to adopt the pronoun, “ ‘ki:me = we” (you and I) or “ ‘kime = we” (inclusive you).

Translating therefore, the Tigrigna first plural personal pronoun (nhna = we), the Kunama might understand to be either Included or excluded by the speaker, the Tigrigna accentuation and the semantics being identical.

This is precisely where the syntax, the phonetics and the semantics of both language may come into conflict and consequently misunderstand each other.

The logical question for a Kunama therefore, is: “am I included or excluded in the Tigrigna first plural personal pronoun “nhna = we”?

Am I included in or excluded from the slogan: “nhnan ilamanan”?

Abandoning, for the time being, this rather complicated area of analysis and comparison of the two languages, let us just consider, always from the Kunama standpoint, only the superficial but, perhaps the genuine meaning of the Tigrigna word “nhna = we” in connection with the other word “ilamanan = our aim / goal”.

If a Kunama person proposes him or herself to achieving an aim, he or she would dedicate all his or her efforts to pursuing and reaching that goal.

A repetitive use of the same methods or means would indicate how constant that person’s endeavours are for achieving that particular aim or materialising that particular dream.

If the Kunama reverses the process and interprets the whole meaning of the Tigrigna phrase

(1). Lionel M. Bender: “Language of the World / Materials 59-60 pp. i map. Southern Illinois University.

nhnan ilamanan” (we and our aim), whether uttered officially by the present government or by any member of the Eritrean Tigrian, the Kunama would surely understand to be totally excluded by that ethnic group and from the aims put forth by that secluded social class setting. The counter-argument in fact is that, if the Kunama people too were included in that “ilamana” (our aim),

2 - Why would they today fell abandoned and alienated by the present Eritrean government?

-Why should there be so much conflict between the Eri-Tigrians and the Kunama people in the Kunama land?

-Why should be and is the Kunama territory being forcefully occupied by the Eritren Tigrians?

-Why should the Kunama ancestral land be put on sale, bought and administered diametrically opposed to the Kunama traditional ways of distributing and administering their land?

-Why should the names of their villages, towns and localities be completely altered and given the Tigringa names thus suppressing also the meanings attached to those names?

-Why should the Kunama people be forcefully removed from their ancestral land and made exiles in their own homeland?

-Why should the Kunama people be truck-loaded, like market-bound-animals, and transported to the far away, desert and arid regions of Sahel and the Afari land?

-Why uproot the Kunama from their natural habitat and resettle them in places like Hagaz, Glas, Sawa Military Training Center, and other similar distant localities where they are faced with problems they had never known?

-Why the indiscriminate and continuous detentions, imprisonment, executions or disappearances of Kunama leading personalities as well as of the ordinary peaceful and innocent villagers?

-Why should the Kunama people be forced, for the very first time in their entire history, to flee their mother-land en-masse and search for refuge in the neighbouring countries like Ethiopia, The Sudan and the overseas?

That controversial slogan, “NHNAN and ILAMANAN”, from the very first day of its utterance has been carrying and sending us a clear message that the Kunama people have been excluded from any social, political and human involvement in today’s Eritrea led by a regime which keeps convincing us more and more that it works for and protects only their interests of its Tigrigna ethnic group in general and of its closest party-members in particular.

For the Kunama people, the question is: “nhna = we = Eritrean Tigrians”;

“ilamana = our aim = the interest of our Tigrian ethnic group / party-members”.

The Kunama people have, ever since, got the message that, the present “Tigrigna-dominated” as well as the “Tigrigna –culture-oriented” government has an aim, not only to ostracise the Kunama society but to annihilate that ethnic group thus materialising the long-dreamt of aim of appropriating their land and passing it on to the future Tigrian generation.

One cannot otherwise explain and understand the cruelty with which the PFDJ government is today subjecting the Kunama people to and the intensity and the speed with which it is carrying out its resettlement program of the Tigrians in the Kunama land.

The excuse of “planning to develop the Kunama territory agriculturally”, as it is often given by the regime as the main reason, is not at all sustainable because, sacrificing people for economic reasons is just an inadmissible and immoral overturning of the fundamental values of human beings. It is in fact, a criminal principle to equate economics with human-beings for, this denies their very rights to life.

For us Kunama, it is crystal clear that, the statement, the slogan and the principle of: “nhnan ilamanan”, has therefore, much deeper cultural connotations than simply implying the syntactic, phonetic and semantic differences between the Kunama and the Tigrigna languages.

The recurring attempts, by the present Eritrean government, to disrupt the Kunama society can only be seen, interpret and understood in the light of such slogan.

Only in the light of such slogan, could we Kunama, interpret and understand the true meaning of the principle of “TERRENO DEMANIALE”, promulgated and practised by the first invaders of our land, the Italians, and inherited and translated into the “STATE LAND”, by the present PFDJ government and its blind followers and supporters.

The RKPA, January 2001

 

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