khona

Most people who speak even a little bit of isiZulu know that one of the responses in the greeting, usually to “unjani?” or “ninjani?” can be “ngikhona” or “sikhona”. And you may also have an idea that it means the equivalent of “I’m fine” or “we’re fine”. But that’s not all that khona means. Not even by a long shot.

Firstly, what is it, grammatically speaking? It’s an absolute pronoun (think of mina, wena, lona, zona and yona), and it relates to the uku* noun class. If this is your first time reading about noun classes, go and read something I wrote on them.

As a pronoun, it stands for any uku* noun that is apparent to those speaking, listening or reading, or has been previously mentioned, or in fact to any potential uku* noun. These nouns are all actions or states of being, and the stems of all nouns in this class are used in uhlelo lwesenzo.

Khona, therefore, means

the action or state of being which is apparent or which I just mentioned

As if this wasn’t complicated enough already, there’s an added wrinkle to this bit of grammar – in the uku* class, there is a sub-group of words that are refugees from the (a)pha* class. These nouns, including phandle, phakathi, phansi and phesheya, denote position in space, relative to objects. Oh, and they also denote position in time. Yeah, isiZulu is pretty cool like that – see this post from a few years back for more on this.

And so khona also means

the place or time relative to some object or action

As a result of this sub-group on nouns being present in the uku* noun class, it is assumed that all locatives (apparent or already mentioned) can be referred to using khona. It must also be noted that locatives are adverbs of space as well as time. So what does “ngikhona” mean, in answer to the ubiquitous queries about health?

“I’m [insert action or state]”

“I’m [insert place or time]”

“I’m [this present situation]”

“I’m fine”

So that solves that. It’s pretty vague. A bit like “I’m fine”.

But here’s where it gets even vaguer. As a result of the fact that khona means “a place or time or state of being or action”, it encompasses the following in English:

now, then, sometime

here, there, somewhere

present, existing

I’m going to leave it there, for now. And for those who don’t have an earworm right now, here’s a link to a song illustrating the versatility of khona.