Headline from pg 6 of today’s Isolezwe Newspaper: Bazalela ukuthola imali yeqolo: ucwaningo Translated, this means: They have kids to get welfare money: research Now, apart from the obviousness of this headline, there’s an interesting bit of linguistics, and specifically metonymy. iqolo is ‘the small of the back; the lumbar region’ – so imali yeqolo […]
Category: Linguistics / ubuLimi
This is a column in Isolezwe Newspaper, written by Volovolo Memela. He has a crazy style of writing, and is usually very amusing (and sometimes a bit harsh and biting, in the way of all satire). Today’s Ngeso likaVolovolo had the following headline: Ningabhubhudli imali ngoKhisimusi nibhave ngobhiya bese sinibona ngoJanuwari seniphashile! When translated, this […]
This morning, listening to uKhozi as usual on my way to work, I heard the latest incarnation of the ‘No Limits’ adverts for Telkom. And it’s worse. I didn’t think it could be, but it is. It seems that, in their effort to cling to the English phrase ‘No Limits’, they’ve found another word to […]
Today I’m cheating a bit – you’ll find the blog on my other page: http://anthrozulu.wordpress.com/2012/12/10/continuum-of-respectful-language/ Of interest in this blog is the way that language is used in different situations, depending on the level of familiarity and respect in the interaction. Enjoy! 🙂
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Abandonment Parsing
When I was walking back from the Southdale centre, tramping through the dust and skirting the fresh puddles from the 3am thunderstorm, I saw MaSibeko approaching (uZodwa). Since we had already greeted each other that morning, she simply continued the conversation from three hours earlier: … sekushiyelekile. It took me a moment to realise what […]
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Word Route – *hlang
When it comes to this word, there are two interesting aspects – the way that the noun is used relative to the creation myths of the amaZulu, and the link with the verb *hlangana. The pictures created by these two aspects are intriguing and evocative – you’ll see why. At the heart of today’s word […]
*ba, *fa, *ga, *hlwa, *kha, *lwa, *ma, *mba, *na, *nya, *pha, *sa, *sha, *sho, *tha, *thi, *va, *wa, *ya, *za & *zwa These are the smallest verbs that there are in isiZulu, although many of them have a huge impact on the language. I have called them ‘monoconsonantal’ because the meaning doesn’t actually lie in […]
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Word Route – *fa
It’s one of the 21 monosyllabic (or, more correctly, monoconsonantal) verbs in isiZulu (which I’ll write more about in another blog post): *ba, *fa, *ga, *hlwa, *kha, *lwa, *ma, *mba, *na, *nya, *pha, *sa, *sha, *sho, *tha, *thi, *va, *wa, *ya, *za & *zwa It has 5 major meanings (and countless idiomatic ones), 8 nominal […]
I’ve just been reading a journal article: Basque Language: History and Origin by John D. Bengtson. It is a labyrinthine exploration of the intricate and sometime alien language that is Basque. Something caught my eye, though, on the third page: “According to George Starostin (Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow) the 50 most basic and […]
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Word Route: -vuma
This is by no means a simple word route today (not that they ever are, really) – 23 separate derivations from the original stem, which itself has over 11 subtly different meanings. The history of the word is important – it’s derived from the ur-Bantu root -lûma, meaning ‘to roar’ and ‘to allow’. For its […]
uMabhengwane 