Zulu Words in South African English
South African English has absorbed many words from the Zulu language. Others, such as the names of local animals (impala and mamba are both Zulu names) have made their way into standard English. A few examples of Zulu words used in South African English:
- muti (from umuthi) – medicine
- donga (from udonga) – ditch (udonga actually means 'wall' in Zulu)
- indaba – conference (it means 'an item of news' in Zulu)
- induna – chief or leader
- shongololo (from ishongololo) – millipede
- ubuntu – compassion/humanity.
Read more about this topic: Zulu Language
Famous quotes containing the words words, south, african and/or english:
“God pity them both! and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall.
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: It might have been!”
—John Greenleaf Whittier (18071892)
“Up from the South at break of day,
Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay,
The affrighted air with a shudder bore,
Like a herald in haste, to the chieftains door,
The terrible grumble, and rumble, and roar,
Telling the battle was on once more,
And Sheridan twenty miles away.”
—Thomas Buchanan Read (18221872)
“Like dreaming, reading performs the prodigious task of carrying us off to other worlds. But reading is not dreaming because books, unlike dreams, are subject to our will: they envelop us in alternative realities only because we give them explicit permission to do so. Books are the dreams we would most like to have, and, like dreams, they have the power to change consciousness, turning sadness to laughter and anxious introspection to the relaxed contemplation of some other time and place.”
—Victor Null, South African educator, psychologist. Lost in a Book: The Psychology of Reading for Pleasure, introduction, Yale University Press (1988)
“The English are probably more capable than most peoples of making revolutionary change without bloodshed. In England, if anywhere, it would be possible to abolish poverty without destroying liberty.”
—George Orwell (19031950)