uMabhengwaneWhen 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 […]
*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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Looking at the two letters above, it’s hard to imagine how significant they are in the language of the amaZulu. You may even be thinking I’m crazy, or lost, or both. Let me show you. -lo is the meaning portion (the root) of the noun isilo, which has izilo as its plural. It has numerous […]
Dábu is an ideophone – a part of speech which in isiZulu has the rather usage-oriented name of ‘isenzukuthi’. What this means is ‘the thing that works using ukuthi’ – so-called because ideophones are used much like the English phrases ‘it goes bang‘ or ‘they always go pop like that’, where the ‘to go…’ is […]
This morning I am torn between two word routes to follow: ukuCwiya or Dábu The first has to do with muthi killings and analysis. The second word route has to do with tearing, cracking & all metaphorical aspects thereof. Like rhegnumi in Greek. Dábu or Cwiya? Cwiya is a verb root, meaning ‘cut off small […]
The loss of language, and so the imperative to preserve language, is actually a fight about the basic metaphors that make up our world. Language is not just language. Language is also the impetus for culture, in that the metaphors and ways of seeing and being and doing, and even the very structure of each […]
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