uMabhengwaneUmtoliki, umlobi, imbongi, umcwaningi nomqoqi wezakudala, eneziqu zeMasters ngeClassics, okanye esekhuluma izilimi eziyisikhombisa.
Translator, writer, poet, researcher, cook and collector of arcana, with a Masters in Classics and (so far) seven languages under my belt.
Today my father, uMashinashina wakwaMbilaziyawucosha, uMasikisiki’sind’isilo-sakhe, iNkunzi-kayihlehli, will celebrate his 77th circuit around the sun. Last night, sitting in my car in a rainy Joburg in between isiZulu lessons, listening to Abasikibebunda on the radio, he didn’t feel quite as far away as usual – so I wrote him a letter: “I remember many things […]
My old boss called me at 5 on a Friday morning. It just so happened that Friday is usually my regrouping day. And he needed a locum teacher for isiZulu. So I drove through the morning sunlight and airiness of Killarney, avoiding the solid metal mash of the M1, and up to the gates of […]
Dambuza (my step-son) is learning the days of the week in isiZulu. So, in the heat of a late Friday evening, unable to sleep, we’re sitting on the floor of his room. And I have my left hand up, the palm towards me. “So, siyaqala ngesandla sobunxele. We start with the left hand. Specifically, we […]
What kept the owl quiet these past four weeks? Why were there no bits and pieces of linguistic weirdness occasionally scattering across your screen? ngenxa yomsebenzi-nje. because of work. Which is a good thing. uMasingana, the isiZulu name for this month, relates to the verb singa, meaning ‘to look about, to peer out of a […]
Happy New Year to everyone! Ngithemba ukuthi ningene kahle kunyaka omusha (I hope you entered the new year well). There is some linguistic and anthropological interest in this day, when looked at from the perspective of isiZulu – mainly because of its special place as a borrowed custom. The isiZulu word for New Year is […]
Thi and its routes, again. “…bakhona abanohlelo oluTHIze…” There are people with certain ‘agendas’, as opposed to ‘plans’, …as part of a conversation between uKhozi FM’s political analyst and the Vuka Mzansi presenter, Linda Sibiya, Mr Magic. The relative (a type of qualificative word in isiZulu – adjectives, relatives, enumeratives and possessives all ‘qualify’ the […]
Post by Maurice Mackenzie > Nodumo! Isikhova isisilwane esiphila ebusuku, esizingela namehlo alandela izindlebe ezicosha umsindwana ozo veza izilwane ezi phuma sekuhlwile. Sidalwe nobuhlakana olungapezu’kwezinye izilwane. Abadala bathe simela abaphansi ngoba ima sikhala kungathi kumemezana amadlozi noma amandiki. Ngqungqulu ‘dla madoda Translation by Cullen Mackenzie > One-who-thunders-with-thought! The owl is a creature that lives at […]
There are two separate ideas that converge in this word, along with the strange shapes that they make with your mouth when you say it. The first idea is that of ‘winnowing’ or sifting, from the ur-Bantu stem -ĸuŋga, meaning ‘sift’. And the second centres on what I would argue is the nominalised form of […]
Headline from November 1st’s Isolezwe: Waphuza ugologo wadlwengula ugogo. Horrific but rhetorically interesting. The phrase contains homoeoarxheia (words sharing the same prefix), alliteration (words sharing consonants), assonance (words sharing vowel-sounds) and it scans as a pair of semi-inverted 7-beat dactylic pentameters: {long-short-short / short-short-long / short} where Greek would have : ‘Raspberry Strawberry Jam’ {long-short-short […]
I found a cartoon by Qaps Mngadi from the 4th of December, which you can find on my ‘Political Zulu’ blog here: http://politicalzulu.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/zuma-do-you-feel-lucky-punk/