• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Trisha Cornelius

Figuring it out as I go

  • Mental Health
  • Motherhood
  • Development
  • Design
    • Design Portfolio
  • Miscellany
  • Reading
    • Biography
  • About Me
    • Bucket List
    • About Me – old
      • Newer old about me :)
    • Privacy policy

learning to speak another language

Say Ah

One of the thing that living in Costa Rica cured me of is being afraid of getting laughed at if I mis-pronounce a non-English word. As I mentioned in a previous post, South Africa, has eleven official languages. I haven’t checked the census figures yet, but I’m pretty sure more than that are commonly spoken.

I only speak two of the eleven fluently: English and Afrikaans. While I took Zulu in university, it focused more on the academic portions, and my Zulu is not much stronger than the other nine languages. Thankfully, every trip to the super market presents another opportunity to either learn or practice some new vocabulary. At a mi:nimum I would like to be able to say

  • hello
  • how are you
  • fine thanks
  • please
  • thank you
  • goodbye

in all eleven of our languages. At the moment, I have about four of the words across six of the languages (including English and Afrikaans).

Today when I was paying for my groceries the cashier’s home language was Venda, and so I learnt how to say “hello” in Venda. It’s aa, but pronounced more like ah! Which is great fun and I don’t think I will easily forget.

Love and learning,
Trisha

 

1 Nov 2012 by Trisha Cornelius

Filed Under: Miscellany Tagged With: daily life, learning to speak another language, South Africa, Venda

Primary Sidebar

A cartoon twitter bird with a cup of coffee

Tweets by trishawebs

And nothing but the truth

Hi,

I’m Trisha. This is my personal blog and all opinions are my own. I don’t set out to offend people about trivial things, but if you disagree with basic universal human rights we are probably going to butt heads.
If you follow a link to a site that sells you something, there is a good chance that it is an affiliate link which means that I might get a small amount from the sale. (It won’t change the price you pay).

  · Copyright © 2022 · Patricia Cornelius ·

  · Built on the Genesis Framework for WordPress lovingly customized by Trisha Cornelius ·

Copyright © 2022 · Trisha Cornelius on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in