Every profession has its own jargon and every region its own language or dialect. What happens when you have a room full of nutritionists for whom English (and a quirky descendant of colonial British English at that) is a second language editing a technical document drafted by an American who trained as an engineer, not a nutritionist? Well, all things considered, remarkably little confusion. There may be the occasional question of uptake vs. intake (no, we’re not talking about eating) but on the whole there is a remarkable degree of cohesion. In other words, we’re together.
I may still have only rudimentary Chichewa, but one thing is for certain: listening to myself Tuesday morning as I facilitated discussion of the Strategy for the Prevention and Control of Miconutrient Deficiencies (formerly known by the far less sexy title of “Micronutrient Strategy”) I realized I speak pretty darn good Malawian meetingese. How can I tell? Let’s just say I picked (i.e., grasped) it from that one (the meeting). It would be presumptuous of me to simply declare that as truth, but that’s what I can say. Are we together?
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