Zimbabwe

Some basic words to start with in Shona. The very basic ones you should learn are like makadini. Makadini means like hello. So you can say hello to people in the street. You just say makadini and they'll reply Andirubo makadini and they'll ask you back and you can respond by saying andirubo. So that's a basic greeting. They have about a hundred different ways to say hello in their culture. So you'll have to learn a lot of them so that you can greet. You'll always start by greeting people. Some other ones are like, this is my favorite word. You say pakaipa and pakaipa means Things are bad. So if someone asks you they're like, how are you doing? And things are bad. You say pakaipa. Things are pakaipa and they're like, ah, no man, and then You'll just have fun with it. So there's two words to get you started.

So I learned mainly Shona, that's what I learned, but I learned a little bit of Ndebele too, just to get the clicks. They have some fun clicks in there. In Ndebele they have different different rhymes where they rhyme together all of the clicking languages. So one of the rhymes that's my favorite one to say is, you say, and so it's just fun, you get to use your tongue clicks and have a ball with that. It doesn't really mean anything, it means someone is kneeling down on the road catching an egg. They just kind of rhyme the words together to make it fun. Yeah, they have a bunch of different clicks. There's like the sound, which is like a cue, and then there's the, like you're galloping a horse. That's an X. And then the last one you'll see a lot is a C. You make it just at the back of your teeth there. But yeah, those are the fun clicks for you.

about Shona, the moment when you meet the old people. So, you meet them in the street, you show respect, like, oh, ma muka se? And then, like, oh, which means, how did you work? And then, you say, ma suena se? It's more like, how did you pass the day? So, it's kind of a little difficulties, like, it changes in English. It makes things, like, I don't know, you know, what I'm trying to say. And it's just amazing. You teach the gogos in Shona, they love it. Which means, how are you doing, gogo? And how are people there doing? Which is very fun. I don't know much about Shona, but I kind of like that part.