uMabhengwaneIn isiZulu, there is a specific verb for carrying something on your shoulder or head – ukuthwala. Somehow this verb is at the heart of the phrase titling this blog – the translation of the Stark House words “Winter is Coming”. Allow me to explain. Ukuthwala is derived from the Ur-Bantu word -tu denoting a […]
Last weekend saw the breaking of an interesting story, about how one of the president’s wives allegedly poisoned him. It also saw a very interesting response from the Office of the Presidency, via our arch-Newspeaker, Mac Maharaj. I didn’t hear the response in English, but ngesiZulu (paraphrasing except for the important bit at the end): […]
You may know him by many different names, some more flattering or familiar than others. JGZ. JZ. Jacob. Msholozi. (Dis)honourable Mr President. In my classes, many of my students ask me what his name means, and it’s a side-track on which I am happy to embark. So let’s have a look. Jacob. Biblical Name. Treacherous […]
When it comes to wisdom about relationships and enmity, isiZulu has a total of 94 separate proverbs to use in almost every situation. These are some of my favourites, and I particularly enjoy teaching my Class 10s about threats and grudges. In fact, I could write a whole post just about the 24 common proverbs […]
There are two very common verbs in isiZulu which present a number of problems to first-time speakers – ukukhohlwa and ukukholwa. As you can see, the first problem is that they look and sound very similar to one another. For those of you with a bit of isiZulu under your belts, you will probably also […]
In my favourite isiZulu-English dictionary, there are a few valuable veins of vocabulary, or nodes. I’ve written about them before – amabutho, izinja, imibala, izinyoka, izinyoni, iziphoso, izinhlanzi and izihlobo are the main ones. Today, and for the past few weeks, I’ve been working quite closely with the first of these groups. I(li)butho has three […]
It’s been four months since our last lesson. I realise that as my brain sends the car down unconscious turns, around familiar doglegs and across cautious intersections, through the streets spattered unexpectedly ngomkhemezelo-nje, ngovivi lokusa. The radio plays in the background – Ezanamuhla on uKhozi FM, JGZ spouting promises of an end to corruption while union leaders […]
ngesiZulu, very few iziqu (word stems) begin with the sound ‘O’. The sound is used very often elsewhere in the language, as it the result of a coalescence of ‘A’ and ‘U’ and it is the prefix for plurals of all names, many family members and some borrowed titles (like omama, ogogo, othisha etc) – […]
In trying to explain the way that words are modified ngesiZulu, I often find that the words that isiZulu uses for grammatical terms are far more useful than their English equivalents. The two words above both denote ‘suffixal change’, but they have completely different ways of getting there. isijobelelo – a suffix (literally the modifiable […]
Last week I began with -bomvu, only to be interrupted by the horrors of living in a world where a little girl can almost be raped by a man who’s only defence is that he’s drunk. I’m going to move on now, in the hopes that this will be somewhat therapeutic. Red is -bomvu, as […]