uMabhengwane
Mehlo madala! It’s been a long time since there’s been a fresh discussion of izaga nesisho here, so I thought we’d talk about izinyoni. Inyoni is one of those isiZulu words that has a high variety of specific words underneath it (338 to be precise), much like utshwala, inja, ibutho and inyoka. The entry in […]
The source of this latest meditation on Proverbs or Izaga ngesiZulu is a proverb that runs amaqili awakhelani the cunning do not build next to one another It falls under Nyembezi’s classificiation of Ukwethembeka nokungathembeki – Honesty and Dishonesty. The first sub-section of these proverbs is Inkohliso (Deception), which I’ve dealt with grammatically in another […]
There is a vast collection of izaga about success and failure ngesiZulu, and these are some of the most common of them all (and some of the most figurative). Luck, misfortune, unsuccesful attempts, impossible feats, failure, despair, uncertainty and rivalry are all discussed in this part of the izaga. The first section of these proverbs […]
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 […]
In the Inqolobane yesizwe, by Nxumalo and Nyembezi, there are 41 different categories of proverbs in isiZulu. 41. Just think about that for a second. The 41st one is ‘miscellaneous’. It alone has 100 different proverbs. There are 929 proverbs collected in this one book. This list is not exhaustive, at all. And all of […]