Ou te le o se papeti Rusia

When I was 9yo and 10yo, I lived on the island of American Samoa in the South Pacific ocean. It was a tropical paradise where I rode my bike down to the beach every day to swim in the ocean. I learned how to shimmy up coconut trees to cut down the fruit and how to kill the giant African snails on the side of our house by dropping them a brine barrel being used to collect rain water.

But it was also a quite poor island and most of the Samoan natives lived in poverty and on government assistance. There were often jokes about the cafeteria food at our school being USDA-rejected food. The education level was often not great and some generations were struggling to balance the Samoan culture and language with the English language and Western culture. I was often called a palagi tama, which is mildly derogatory slang for "white boy".

So it was with great interest that I saw this Huffington post article yesterday about the Samoan word meaning of Dear Leader's most recent spastic tweet, covfefe. In this article, the author discusses a very common word in Samoan that even I remember -- fefe, which means "fear of". The Samoan language does not have the letter C, but there are several words quite similar to "ko" or "kou". It's best if I just quote the article here:

Similar sounding words include the following.

Kefe: Circumcise (original meaning); but recently evolved into an offence or noun that refers to; asshole; and/or putrid person

Fefeke: Inflate and/or fat or large

Fefela: To display ones genitals and/or underwear by voluntarily or involuntarily adjusting ones attire while seated cross legged on the floor.

Based on the phonetic similarities alone, covfefe sounds like the Samoan word combos “ko fefe”, “ko fale”, “kafefe”, “ko kefe” and “kou kefe.”

These combination words are explained as follows:

Ko fefe: pregnant but in fear of it

Ko fale: pregnant from ones own relative

Ko kefe: a pregnancy of the nether region; or pregnant asshole. If we use the original meaning of kefe (circumcise) then this also means; to reach for ones circumcision.

Kafefe: An expression of shock, dismay or surprise, similar to “Oh my!”

Kou Kefe: You assholes

I'll leave it to you to figure out which of these Samoan words Dear Leader was attempting to spastically tweet. His spokesperson insists that it wasn't a mistake because Dear Leader doesn't make mistakes.

Sometimes the best lessons for ESL students are ones that relate directly to their current situations. For instance, a Spanish-speaking ESL learner might learn the English phrases: "Please don't shoot me" and "America is the greatest" to help them in their inevitable encounters with Dear Leader's Deportation Forces.