But in writing, the Luo word ich might strike a German simply as “I” whenever the German is visiting Nyanza, the land of Kenya’s Dholuo speakers. I say “quip” because, although the Luo infinitive verb mako ich translates into English as “to become pregnant”, the literal English translation of mako ich is “to catch a belly”. Referring to a woman, then, mako ich is to begin to show a belly which swells more and more each day that the sun rises above the horizon. Yet such a sameness in languages that exist as far apart from one another as Dholuo from German is one of the proofs that the two linguistic systems belong to the same species, namely, human beings. Indeed, that is the reason that, in principle, every human language can be translated quite closely into every other human language.

Source: Daily Nation June 21, 2019 21:10 UTC