Category Archives: Archive
Lietuvių kalba – 2016-10-21
Abañe’eng – 2016-10-07
isiXhosa – 2016-10-02
Lessons I & II
Highlights:
- the grammatical structure of isiXhosa is very different from that of any European language;
- euphonic or alliterative concord: the prefix of the noun determine those of the subordinate parts of the subject and also of the predicate;
- isiXhosa uses the Latin alphabet, with <c>, <x> and <q> representing click consonants;
- stress falls on the next-to-last syllable;
- there are no articles;
- prefixes come in pairs, one for the singular, the other for the plural.
Examples of nouns in all classes:
| Meaning | Singular | Plural |
| person | umntu | abantu |
| sister | udade | odade |
| word | ilizwi, izwi | amazwi |
| sheep | imvu | izimvu |
| house | indlu | izindlu |
| pig | ihangu (dictionary says it is ihagu) | izihangu, ihangu (or maybe izihagu, ihagu) |
| candle | isibane | izibane |
| rib | ubambo | izimbambo, imbambo |
| rod | uluti | izinti |
| tongue | ulwimi | izilwimi, ilwimi |
| tree | umti | imiti |
| kindness | ububele | – |
| food | ukudla | – |
(From Crawshaw’s First Kafir Course-1903)
Lietuvių kalba – 2016-09-30
Abañe’eng – 2016-09-26
Lietuvių kalba – 2016-09-11
Abañe’eng – 2016-09-08
isiXhosa – 2016-09-07
I will be following the book A First Kafir Course by C. J. Crawshaw. The term “Kafir” is certainly NOT the best to refer to either the language or its speakers, but it is a rather old book (I found only the 5th edition printed in 1903), so the use of the term is understandable. Anyway, despite the title, the book seems to be good, and the language seems to be basically the same as it is used today, as far as I could check.