The Linguistic Innovation Emerging From Rohingya Refugees

Here’s a riddle for you puzzle lovers: decipher the meaning of “feet-stick.”

No, it’s not a tool for pulling off shoes, or a bizarre weapon targeting the toes. It’s the English translation of the Rohingya neologism fit-haim, where fit itself comes from the English “feet.” A foot is of course a common measurement of height, so a stick for measuring feet would be better known to English speakers as a ruler.

Fit-haim is just one of the elegant coinages displaying the resilience and cultural crossover of Rohingya refugees and aid workers in Bangladesh. The majority-Muslim ethnic group has been displaced multiple times from Myanmar, most recently in 2017–18. This followed horrific violence (and possibly genocide), in what UNICEF calls “one of the worst humanitarian crises of our time.”

The refugee camps in Bangladesh are home to Rohingya forced to flee in different decades, from different regions, and speaking different dialects. These Rohingya-speaking residents might use Burmese-language websites; borrow words from Arabic, Farsi, or Urdu; visit local doctors speaking Bangla; and interact with aid workers who speak Chittagonian, Turkish, English, and other European languages.

The Bangladeshi language Chittagonian has been especially important to the humanitarian response, because Rohingya and Chittagonian are mutually intelligible. And they’ve started to influence each other. “There can be a blurring of the languages, especially among the interpreters,” even if the interpreters don’t realize it, says A K Rahim, a sociolinguist for the nonprofit Translators without Borders.

Take that scourge of highly concentrated emergency settlements: diarrhea. According to Rahim, there are multiple ways to refer to this in the camps. The older Chittagonian term fatla faikana (“watery stool”) is rarely used. The Rohingya gaa-lamani (“body falling apart”) is a bit more common, though it’s mainly used by women and elderly people. This vivid term expresses the sensation of diarrhea: “it feels like their body is being pulled apart, due to the lack of electrolytes, due to the lack of energy.” Yet more recently arrived Chittagonian interpreters weren’t familiar with this word, which had health impacts for the population they were meant to be supporting. In any case, both of these older terms are increasingly being replaced by the English word “diarrhea”, though pronounced in a more Rohingya way (“dye-riya”).

These changes are fascinating to Rahim, who was previously a VICE translator of South Asian languages. It may not be a typical career move to go from a youth-focused media conglomerate to a humanitarian NGO, but the new posting has allowed Rahim to draw on his background in both sociolinguistics and anthropology.

This background is useful in documenting the cultural and linguistic exchange taking place in Cox’s Bazar, the world’s biggest site of refugee settlements, and the other areas where Rohingya have found temporary homes. “In a way it adds to the richness of the language, but in another way it confuses people, especially interpreters if they have to work in multiple camps,” says Rahim of the constellation of languages. Different camps might call the same product by different names, depending on whether the aid workers are Turkish or English speakers.

There are also different words depending on the sensitivity or taboo around certain items. Birth control usually comes in red packets in the camps usually, and many women refer to it euphemistically as laal fata (“red leaves”). Injectable contraception derives from the brand name Depo-Provera, which has become difu in the camps. “Condoms are often called fodhona, meaning “balloon”,” Rahim explains.

The women in the camps also tend to use the Arabic-derived euphemism ghusl (“showering, cleansing”) to refer to menstruation. Some male interpreters didn’t know what they were talking about – showing the importance of gender sensitivity in humanitarian communications. As well, more and more residents are using the English word “sex” to avoid the complex political and cultural sensitivities around Arabic- and Farsi-derived words for sexual intercourse, which are bound up in notions of permissible and unacceptable activity.

The politicized nature of language in the Bangladeshi refugee camps is further complicated by the Bangladeshi government’s opposition to the Rohingya refugees learning the local language, out of anxiety over their integration into the local population. In the poor parts of Bangladesh where the camps have been established, the presence of the humanitarian community is driving up prices for locals – a common problem of refugee response. And Rahim argues of Bangladesh, “Its whole national identity is based on language actually. They revere the language, they put it on a really sacred pedestal. So who they allow to speak Bangla is kind of showing who they allow to be Bengali.” Rohingya children have resorted to learning Bangla in secret.

Unsurprisingly, then, as with English, there’s no single institution that standardizes words in Rohingya. Translators without Borders has been trying to collect and record a uniform set of words, as the words are actually used. “We ourselves don’t sit at a desk and dictate that this is the standard word,” Rahim emphasizes. “All these terms are descriptive, meaning they’re coming from the community, rather than prescriptive where we dictate. We try to steer away from that as much as possible.” The next step would be to see what impact these language information tools have for the humanitarian community and refugees.

The temporary spaces home to Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh show the messy, complex, and fascinating ways that language can respond to both trauma and rebuilding. One final example coined by recently arrived Rohingya is nasoni fike, referring to hand-operated tube-wells being installed in the camps. Nasoni means “dancing” while fike means “pipe.” The new term, “dancing pipe,” captures the image of people, often children, appearing to dance as they generate water.