uMabhengwaneI’m going to do it. No, I’m doing it. I’m translating Homer into isiZulu. And there are so many different ways to start that it doesn’t feel like I’ve begun. But I have. There are about 200 translation equivalents already loaded between the two languages. Awesome. I’ve translated some of the names. Winning. So of […]
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.
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 […]
*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 […]
uMabhengwane