“Have you checked the oil in the car?” my father used to say to me, his version of “Hello, hope you are well.” Sometimes our phone calls would begin with an inquiry(询问) about the oil and end with an inquiry about the oil, with not a lot in between.

Fathers have a lot of love to give, but it’s often supplied through the medium of practical advice. In my experience: It’s mostly about your motor vehicle.

“How’s the car running?”

“Did you get it serviced?”

“How did you get that scrape on the side?”

Why can’t we fathers just say “I love you” or “It’s great to see you”?

The point is: That’s exactly what we are saying. You just have to translate from the language that is Fatherlish.

Listen closely enough and the phrase “I love you” can be heard in the slightly longer “I could come around Saturday and replace the silicon seal around the base of your toilet because I think that thing is getting really smelly.”

The statement “You made my life better from the moment you were born” may be rarely heard, but the idea is there in the more common “I’ll hold the ladder while you get the leaves out of the gutter.”

When I was 17, I went on my first road trip-- a friend and I in my battered car. My father stood on the corner in the predawn of a cold morning to say goodbye.

“Highways are dangerous,” he said, “so don’t try overtaking(超过) anything faster than a horse and buggy. And take a break every two hours. And every time you stop for gas, you really should check the oil.”

At the time we thought his speech was pretty funny and would sing “horse-and-buggy, horse-and-buggy” every time I floored the accelerator to overtake some other speeding vehicle.

Dad’s long gone now. But after all these years, I realize that had I owned a copy of the Fatherlish-to-English dictionary, I’d have understood that the speech my friend and I so casually mocked was simply Dad’s attempt at love.

Architect Diébédo Francis Kéré of Burkina Faso won the Pritzker Prize, the world’s highest recognition in building design.

Kéré is a citizen of both Burkina Faso and Germany and lives in Berlin. He said he was the “happiest man on this planet” to become the 51st recipient of the famous yearly prize. Kéré is famed for building schools, health centers, housing and other public spaces across Africa. His buildings can be found in his homeland, as well as in Benin, Mali, Kenya, Mozambique, Togo and Sudan. When he was twenty in 1985, Kéré earned a vocational scholarship to study carpentry in Berlin. But while absorbed in the practicality of roofing and furniture making, he also attended night school and was admitted to Technische Universität Berlin, from which he graduated in 2004 with an advanced degree in architecture. He was still a student when he designed and built the innovative Gando Primary School.

Unlike traditional school buildings, which use concrete, Kéré’s inventive design combined local clay and cement to form bricks. The material helps keep the building cool in a hot environment. A wide, raised metal roof protects the building from rain and helps air flow. Kéré involved the local community throughout the design and building of the school. The number of students at the school increased from 120 to 700.

Kéré is the first African to be honored with the Pritzker. In his native Burkina Faso, citizens celebrated the win. Nebila Aristide Bazie, head of the Burkina Faso architects’ council, said the award “highlights the African architect and the people of Burkina Faso.”

“He knows, from within, that architecture is not about the object but the objective; not the product, but the process,” says the 2022 Jury Citation (评审辞), in part. “Francis Kéré’s entire body of work shows us the power of materiality rooted in place. His buildings, for and with communities, are directly of those communities-in their making, their materials, their programs and their unique characters.”