Setswana language mistakes - for a good laugh

I realized that I haven't written any of my (many) language mistakes while attempting to speak the Bantu based language of Setswana (pronounced Se"ch"wana in my neck of the woods). There are some classic mistakes that have given myself (and native speakers) many hearty laughs. I thought I'd share a few.

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Today I was walking home from school with a group of grade 3 learners and I wanted to get them to sing for me to help pass the time. I went to ask if they wanted to sing in Setswana but I couldn't quite remember the word for 'sing.' So I thought and then it came to me, OPIWA!! So I said, "O a kopa OPIWA ka wa me?" And they looked at each other and slowly looked at me and said "Eh, eh mma." (No ma'am). In Setswana I said, "Why? You don't like to sing?" "No, we don't." "Really? What if we all sing together?" "No, mma, we don't want to sing." I gave up, really confused for you can't get this culture to stop singing most days.

Later on this afternoon I was talking to one of the old ladies (mma magolo = old auntie) that frequents my host mom's house. She was groaning and moaning and without really thinking I asked her if she was in pain "O nna le opiwa?" Then it hit me...OPIWA.

Opiwa does NOT mean to sing...it means PAIN! So, I was asking the little learners earlier today if they wanted to be in pain! "What if we were all in pain together?" No wonder they said no so vehemently! I'm quite embarrassed by that!

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A few months ago I was talking to an educator and I went to open a bag of chips I'd brought for my lunch. I opened them and explained, "Ohhhh! Ke moroto se robegile!" I was trying to say: My chips are broken!! But... Setswana has a very annoying thing called noun classes (I won't get into the explanation) that, depending on what you're talking about and the tense you are using, make you change the first two letters of the noun to a corresponding set of letters that makes the word magically make sense to the ears of a native Setswana speaker. Well, in this case I had added the WRONG two letters to the front of the word for "chips" which in the singular is baroto (also the word for bread...and many other edible delights).

Thus by adding the mo in place of the ba I put the word in the wrong noun class and created an entirely different meaning. I had actually exclaimed "OH! My URINE is broken!" Yikes!

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I was joking around with some people and trying to explain what rapping was like to me. I wanted to say "It's like a dance with your mouth." The word for mouth is MOLOMO, not to be confused for the word medicine which is MOLEMO. Yeah, so I said "Bina ka molemo" to the group and that got them going. "Rapping is like dancing with your medicine?"

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In my language exam at the end of training I made a fantastic mistake. See the exam is a recorded conversation between you and a native language speaker who is trained to ask you progressively more difficult questions in the target language in a conversation format. You also do some roll playing, which is another story.

Anyway, she was asking me about my new host mom (this was right after site visit). "What does she do?" I told her "She is a principal!" The language tester got a confused look on her face "Segoko?" She repeated the word I used for principal to me. "Aye, segoko," I said. She then began to ask if my host mom also had eight legs and a tiny body...it was then that I realized instead of saying my host mom was a principal I had said she was a spider!!! Segoko=spider. Sekgoko = principal.

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And, just for fun I would like to introduce you to three completely different words in Setswana:

koko,
koko, and
koko.

No it's not the same word three times. It's three different words all determined by the way you form the "o" with your mouth! Yep! Koko can mean chicken, I am entering, or the special fried delicacy also known as chicken's feet. Yum.

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I hope you enjoyed those. I'm sure there will be many more to come!