uMabhengwaneI’m writing for NaNoWriMo, using prompts from Moye Magazine. My plan is to write 30 different stories for this month, all in English (for a change). Enjoy. “Free Palestine! Free Haiti! Free Yemen! Free Tigray!” The shouting from the person on the corner underneath my study window, two stories down, had been going on for […]
The idea of choice is at the heart of an election. E-leg-ere is a Latin verb, meaning ‘to pick out’ or ‘to select’ from a list of candidates. And the Zulu verb uku-khetha means exactly the same thing. I’ve spoken about it before, I think. I should have, at any rate – my darling wife’s […]
I’ve been pondering how to phrase all this for some time now, but finding a way in is tricky. Previously, when I voiced some of these thoughts to my sister-in-law, I was met with the inevitable “don’t you think you’re just being paranoid?” Well, maybe I am. You see, you may not even notice any […]
The first language I connected with you was English. I walked over to you, picking you out from among all the others there, and interrupted your reading. Knowing you now, I realise that I was running a real risk. At least my first observation was one grounded in literature – a comment on Ian McEwan […]
Before anyone else is up, I’ve already had my first dose. Fifteen minutes of current affairs radio while I make tea and Kreemy meal. It’s dark and still, and the last bit of night is lit only by a fragment of the dying moon, by the brightness of Venus just above the eastern horizon. No […]
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 […]
Basola ukuthi uzingqongqisile obebalisa ngendlala – 30 points {front page headline} Basola ukuthi uzibulele obehlala ebalisa ngosizi – 25 points {page 3 article} Owesifazane waseNhlangakazi eNdwedwe obehlala ebalisa ngokweswela kwakhe nomndeni wakhe, kusolwa ukuthi uzithungele ngomlilo waba ngamalahle, kwasinda umzukulu wakhe ngempelasonto kusha indlu abebekuyona. Bashaqekile ngohlahlele intombi wabe esezibulala – 20 points {page 3 […]
Does an etymological difference make any difference to the perception of a thing? This is the question I drove home with after Thursday morning’s lesson with Paul. I had introduced a discussion I’d begun with Claire, about the etymology of the word ‘economy’ and its isiZulu translation ‘umnotho’. ‘Economy’ is traditionally derived from the Greek […]
What monoglots, especially English monoglots, fail to realise is just how limited their world is. Their perception of the universe is coloured by the fact that they can only interact with people who speak their language, and they judge people based on how well or badly they speak it. They can only think about the […]
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