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.
Kade sagcinana! Mehlo madala! It’s been too long since I last wrote anything on here. All that I’ve been able to connect with are a few glances at analytics every now and then, but no writing. And it’s not because I haven’t had things to write about! It’s rather that I haven’t had the headspace […]
In the interests of protestors everywhere, here are some iziqubulo. I’ve kept them ad rem rather than ad hominem, cos that’s how I roll. Phansi dominates, of course. Down. Metaphors of falling are common in protests. Same here, though with some added UJoji. Translations are welcome in the comments. Protest as you are able and […]
Happy St Patrick’s Day! Make sure you’re wearing into eluhlaza! Blue-green conflation is what I like to call it. Others prefer ‘confusion’ rather than ‘conflation’, and still others talk about ‘Grue’ languages – ones that do not have separate words for those two colours. What matters to me is that my students almost universally react […]
In my endless research on izenzukuthi (ideophones), I have begun to get an idea of different groups – monosyllabic, disyllabic and polysyllabic – and what sort of sounds are associated with what ideas. Because, in case you didn’t already know this, ideophones are all about sound. Specifically, they represent the association of a sound with […]
caution: this blog contains some swearing / isixwayiso: kunenhlamba kuleli blog I had my fighting shoes on. Tan brown hightops, white t-shirt and jeans. I strode in there demanding justice, and was met with four occupied attendants. So I sat down, and waited, and surveyed the battlefield. Yellow. Everything was yellow. The colour of ubuhlanzo. […]
Unwele olude, more usually heard as nwel’olude, is an expression of a wish for prosperity, and I’ve always understood it as directly relating to a wish for the person to experience a sustained period of happiness. It’s most often said on the occasion of someone’s birthday, along with other lovely phrases such as ‘khul’ukhokhobe’. But why […]
There’s a verb stem that seems, strangely, to be on everyone’s lips. It’s strange because the stem has, up until recently, only been used in religious or political contexts – but now it’s used to talk about a particularly virulent form of intergenerational transactional sex. Here’s a riddle for you – how are State Capture, […]
On Wednesday, the report was made public. You must know which one I’m talking about – it’s all anyone can talk about. And while I’m interested in many aspects of it, for me the choice of language on uKhozi FM was… enlightening. You see, two weeks ago, the phrase for ‘state capture’ was ukugwamanqa kombuso. […]
I folded the A3 sheet into 8 rectangular sections, and laid it out in landscape – 4 on the top and 4 on the bottom. I arranged four different coloured pens, each for a specific aspect of the exercise. And then, from memory and from various sources scattered around the room, I began to fill […]
On my way to a lesson on Wednesday evening there it was, described in relation to the issue of the Langlaagte mine, by a representative of the Zimbabwean nationals working on the site. He stated very clearly that, even though it was the amaBhunu who had taken the land from local people in the Transvaal, […]