One such missionary was a Scotsman named Robert Moffat. In 1821, at the age of 25, Moffat set up a mission among the Tswana-speaking people of southern Africa. To learn their unwritten language, he mixed with the people, at times journeying into the interior to live among them. “The people were kind,” he later wrote, “and my blundering in the language gave rise to many bursts of laughter. Never, in one instance, would an individual correct a word or sentence, till he or she had mimicked the original so effectually, as to give great merriment to others.”4
A Book for All People. 1997. p. 11
4. Missionary Labours and Scenes in Southern Africa, by Robert Moffat, 1842, pp. 458-9.
A Book for All People. 1997. p. 31
Missionary Labours and Scenes in Southern Africa 1843 edition