Voice on the left, with a loooooong excursus into isiZulu’s preference for the passive. Archaic transitive/intransitive switches in isiZulu, combined with more recent izimpambosi structures.
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Tag: impambosi
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, […]
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impambosi yokwenzisa
This is one area in which isiZulu is fundamentally different from isiLungu. In isiLungu, there are tendencies toward creating compound verb-forms using prepositions (partially in the isiJalimani family (verander, income ensovoorts), but also in isiLatini (perfacere, inducere etcetera) and isiGiliki (katabaino, periphrazo kai ta loipa). These verb-forms are quite often paired up with a prepositional […]
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uku-val-el-is-an-a
Since I haven’t yet written a proper post about izimpambosi, I must begin this one with an apology – although this will serve as a practical explication of the concept. Yesterday, I navigated the northern channels of the Jozi vascular system, charting a course once again along roads named after dead white men until I […]
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Sebuthwese (Winter is coming)
In 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 […]
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 […]
uMabhengwane 