I just read that the SABC will no longer show footage of violent protests. I almost have no words. I understand that there might be issues around showing violence in general, but there is also the imperative to report accurately on what is happening in South Africa every day. It happens in many many parts of […]
Tag: euphemism
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umnyamangabomu
I’m tired of the term ‘load-shedding’. In isiZulu, it’s borrowed wholesale: i-load-shedding. That makes me like it even less. It’s a euphemism, which is one figure of speech governments use with amazing liberty in order to fudge their errors and make their distasteful utterances slightly more palatable. They are called blackouts. Entire neighbourhoods have their […]
If you’re still willing to read more, there are three more branches to the isiZulu concept of ‘abuse’ (and possibly many more undocumented or as yet unfound, seeing as how abuse combines so many taboos, therefore having so much euphemism associated with it): potoza, cubhacubha & d(l)wengula Firstly, potoza. It has only one meaning: “press […]
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 […]
uMabhengwane 