"Santi": My Wife’s Favorite Hausa Word

 By Farooq A. Kperogi My wife is an imperfect example of what late American conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh once satirically call...

 By Farooq A. Kperogi

My wife is an imperfect example of what late American conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh once satirically called a “Halfrican American” in reference to the duality of President Barack Obama’s identity. 

“Halfrican American” is at once a phonic play on “African American” (the term by which Americans of African ancestry have been called since at least the 1970s) and a reference to the fact of being an American by birth from one parent (in my wife’s case, it’s from her mother—just like Obama) and being half African from another parent. 

However, although she doesn’t speak Hausa, except for the expression “na shiga uku! (the Hausa idiom for saying “I’m in trouble!” which she picked up from a story I once told her about my days in Kano), there’s no one on earth I know who loves the Hausa word “santi” more than she does. I’ll come back to this shortly.

I wrote about “santi” in my June 10, 2018, “Politics of Grammar” column titled, “Nigerian Words and Expressions that are Untranslatable into English.”

I pointed out that “santi” deceptively looks like the lexical equivalent of the English “satiation” or, more specifically, what one might call gastronomic satiation, that is, the joy and gratification that one derives from food.

I contended that “santi” means way more than satiety from food. It also encapsulates a whole gamut of attitudes that gastronomic satiation stimulates. For instance, if, as a consequence of the satiation you derive from eating good food, you wax lyrical or become uncharacteristically talkative, you are said to be trapped by or in santi.

The closest similitude to “santi” that I have found in American English is the expression “sugar high,” which is said when children become uncontrollably hyperactive as a result of excessive consumption of sugary things. 

There is no scientific basis for the notion that children become inexorably restless when they eat sweets, but the expression exists to describe that condition. Note, though, that santi isn’t delimited by age nor is hyperactivity its only marker.

I think “Dutch courage,” the English idiom that captures the exhibition of unaccustomed bravery or boldness from otherwise timid people after consuming large quantities of alcoholic drinks, is also a close semantic relative to the Hausa santi.

But there is no exact lexical or idiomatic equivalent to santi in English. In fact, I know of no Nigerian language that has one word to describe food-induced loquacity.

 I first encountered santi in the early 1990s from my cousins in Kano, who were born and raised there and are native Hausa speakers.

 I told my wife the story of how, one day, my cousins laughed at my garrulity (call it epicurean garrulity, if you like) after a particularly sumptuous meal. They giggled and kept uttering “santi!” I was embarrassed after I found out what it meant.

My wife found the story hilarious and the word extremely useful. She has now effortlessly incorporated santi into her lexical repertoire and never misses an opportunity to use it. 

Of course, because she’s a great cook, her food has trapped me into fits of santi multiple times. As I said, she never wastes even a millisecond to let me know I am the victim of santi when I devolve into meal-activated chattiness. 

But she took it to another level a few days ago, which inspired this article. We filed our annual taxes a few days ago and got a bigger tax refund than we had ever gotten, all thanks to her financial wizardry. 

Naturally, I was overjoyed and paid tributes to her meticulousness and attention to detail that got us the refund. 

Instead of acknowledging my well-intentioned praises, she accused me of “financial santi”! I don suffer o! I wish I didn't tell her about santi.