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Bargaining as a language skill
Visitors from fixed-price economies tend to treat haggling as either an unpleasant necessity or a game they are bad at. It is neither: it is a conversational genre with a script, and learning the script makes it fast, friendly and much less expensive. **The shape.** The trader names a high first price, partly to establish room and partly to find out what sort of buyer you are. You do not accept it and you do not counter immediately with a number — you ask about the thing, you show mild interest, you ask the price of something else. Your counter, when it comes, is well below what you intend to pay. The two numbers converge in a few exchanges, usually with walking away somewhere in the middle, and the final figure is somewhere between. None of this is dishonest; both sides know the structure. **What a foreigner gets wrong.** Naming a price first, which Ousmane forbids in line 1, because it tells the trader your range. Showing obvious enthusiasm, which removes your ability to walk. Accepting the second price out of politeness, which is read as not knowing how to do this rather than as generosity. And becoming irritated — the one move that actually costs you, because a cheerful exchange is itself part of what you are buying, and a trader will go further for somebody enjoying themselves. **The phrases, which are worth memorising as blocks.** 'C'est combien ?' to open. 'C'est trop cher pour moi.' 'Tu peux faire un effort ?' — can you do better. 'C'est ton dernier prix ?' 'Je vais réfléchir' as you move away, which is the polite walk. 'Si tu fais huit mille, je prends deux.' And 'on dit huit mille et c'est bon ?' to close. In Senegal, greeting first matters more than in most places: 'bonjour, ça va ? la famille va bien ?' before any mention of price is not a formality but the thing that makes the rest a conversation between people. **Where not to do it.** Supermarkets, pharmacies, restaurants with menus, transport with posted fares. Haggling where prices are fixed is the mirror error and marks you just as clearly. In a market, with crafts, cloth, fruit or a taxi without a meter, it is expected; in a shop with a till, it is not. One last thing, about proportion. The gap you are arguing over is often small in your currency and not small in the trader's. Bargaining properly is a courtesy — refusing to engage reads as disdain — but grinding somebody down over an amount you would not notice is not a victory. Ousmane's method gets a fair price; it is not designed to extract the last franc, and that distinction is worth keeping.