When “please” doesn’t mean “please”

Coming to a foreign country, I’ve tried very hard to not be a typical American. As soon as I learned “Please” and “Thank You” I started using them. Today, I learned the most disturbing thing in Swahili class: the word I have been using to say please, “Tafadhali” does not mean something polite alone. It makes whatever I said previously sound like a command. My heart sank. I have been trying so hard to be kind and respectful and all along I’ve been insulting people. No one mentioned anything about it until today. The proper way to say please is “Tafadhali naomba...” So yes, I’ve been offending people for weeks. My first thought was “Why didn’t someone say something about this?” Instead of being kind, I’ve been bossing people around. I can say that I felt a wave on embarrassment. I know some of the people I speak Swahili with also speak fairly fluent English. My only thought is they didn’t want to discourage me from trying to speak Swahili and assumed that I’d figure it out in time. Now I feel like I have to be extra nice to make up for the fool I’ve been. I know it wasn’t intentional. My errors have been out of ignorance. I can say one thing for sure…when I meet with next year’s students, I plan on mentioning this.