Languagle #56: Tswana
O se tshege yo o weleng
"Don't laugh at the one who has fallen."
What it means
Do not laugh at someone who has fallen, because it could be you next. A saying about not taking pleasure in other people's misfortune.
How to say it
o seh TSHEH-kheh yo o WEH-leng
Tswana g is a throaty sound, like the ch in Scottish loch, and tsh is ts with a puff of air. Stress the second-to-last syllable.
Word by word
- O se o seh: don't (o, you; se, not)
- tshege TSHEH-kheh: laugh at
- yo yo: the one who
- o weleng o WEH-leng: has fallen
Where it was written down
A traditional proverb, in Tswana a seane, passed down by word of mouth.
Similar sayings
- Danish: At falde er ingen skam, men at blive liggende er. Falling is no disgrace. Staying down is. (Languagle #21)
How to recognise Tswana
Tswana is a Bantu language written in the plain Latin alphabet, with letter groups like kg, tlh and tsh. Small words like go (to), le, ka, ya and ba are everywhere. Sesotho, a close relative, writes ho where Tswana writes go, and uses kg and tlh much less often.
About the Tswana language
Tswana, or Setswana, is a Bantu language spoken by around 8 million people in Botswana, where it is the national language and gives the country its name, and in South Africa, where most of its speakers live. It is closely related to Southern Sotho and Northern Sotho. It is written in the Latin alphabet. Robert Moffat's Setswana Bible, completed in 1857, was one of the first complete Bible translations into an African language.
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