Setswana 101

You don't really expect to learn vocabulary for your 'unmentionables' on the first day of a language class. Yet, there I was, diligently writing down the day's lesson on body parts, when the instructor launched into an explanation of the way in which Setswana is a "conservative" language, a language in which you don't just go around talking about your penis or your vagina to anyone (at this point I wondered if I was supposed to tell her that we don't exactly toss those words around in our classrooms either, except maybe in sex ed), and that instead in Setswana one refers to one's "front" as mapele, and one's behind (literally one's bum) as marago. This is much more polite, she says, than saying penis or anus. I nodded my head and debated whether she was about the make the body part diagram on the board anatomically correct. which she didn't.

So that was my first Setswana lesson; tomorrow is on transport. Hopefully then I will better equipped to figure out how to take the combis (ie minibuses) around town! It's just me in the class, and the instructor is very friendly and very animated, and has decided that because I'm going to be doing research in rural villages most likely, she is going to take me on a "cultural lesson" once a week to nearby villages, to practice conversing there. And apparently my Setswana audio tapes were not half bad because I actually know more than I thought I did, which is nice. Although still not enough to have any clue what people are saying on the telephone, on the radio or at normal conversational speed--I'm lucky to catch one word every few sentences!