Speaking in Sesotho

The native language of Basotho (people of Lesotho) is Sesotho. As part of our training process, we live with host families who mainly speak Sesotho and we have language and culture classes for a couple hours almost every day. Sometimes when I’m talking to people in my village or in the camptowns, I still have no idea what they are talking about, but then I realize that I’ve been here for less than 2 months.

There are some major differences between English and Sesotho. Sesotho is a tonal language so even when it is spelled the same phonetically in English, it sounds differently in Sesotho and can mean something totally different. The word for teach is “ruta”, but mispronounced can mean “pee/piss”, so I have to be careful every time I tell people that I will be teaching math. Another part of Sesotho is the clicks. Yes, that sounds cool in the US, but it is more of a source of embarrassment when I have to say a word with one.

As part of our language, we also learn about cultural differences. One of the first things that we learned was that all Basotho greet each other in our villages. It’s actually one of my favorite cultural differences. Whenever you pass another person you say hello with their title- women, men, girls, boys, and little children all have a different title. I’ve heard embarrassing stories of volunteers who have mistaken a girl for a boy and vice versa, but luckily that has not happened to me. It’s also normal to ask “how are you?“ and talk for a little bit. That has helped me learn Sesotho a lot.

Yesterday, we learned some bad words in Sesotho. Our language teachers warned us that there may be a taxi driver in the camptowns who can be rude or bad students who may want to play jokes on us and use those words. I guess that happens everywhere.

A plant I found in my village.

A really neat cactus/flower