It's raining again
Today a sports day was supposed to take place at a stadium not far from school. But because of heavy rainfall during the night, the stadium was so wet that the sports day was cancelled. Because of the sports day, all classes had been cancelled as well... So, the school is almost empty now. It looks like a short day for us today..
We still don't know our plans for the weekend. If the weather doesn't improve, there's not much we can do. There's the plan to go to Stellenbosch tomorrow - it's a town not far from Cape Town and known for it's many wineries. Wine degustation is not too expensive there. We only have one problem - nobody wants to be the sober driver on a wine tour.. :o)
***
A few words about something very interesting which I haven't written about before - the local languages. There are 11 official languages in South Africa - Afrikaans, English, IsiNdebele, IsiXhosa, IsiZulu, Northern Sotho, Sesotho, Setswana, SiSwati, Tshivenda, Xitsonga (I don't know the names by heart, just copied them from an encyclopedia...). The major languages are IsiXhosa, IsiZulu (spoken by the Xhosa and Zulu people respectively). Afrikaans is the mother tongue of 13% of the population and English the native language of only about 8% of South Africa's people.
Traditionally, Afrikaans was first spoken by the descendants of the Boers (white Dutch settlers), now called the Afrikaner. Afrikaans has also become the language spoken by the "Coloured" population (in the Western Cape province where we are, they form the majority of the population). The Xhosa people have traditionally lived in the Eastern Cape but many have come to the Western Cape in search of work. Khayelitsha, the township where we work, is now home to the Xhosa people. Their language is very interesting to us and rather difficult to learn, because of some special click sounds. The Xhosa and Zulu languages are closely related, they belong in the Bantu language family. There are at least 3 different types of clicks, depending on the position of the tongue. I've tried to produce these sounds, but it's far from perfect. So far, I don't know much more than the most basic words, such as "Molo" (hello) and "Molweni" (hello, to a group of people), "Kunjani?" (How are you?) - "Ndiphilile" (Fine).
Afrikaans is similar to Dutch. The people to whom Afrikaans is mother tongue, also speak English, but they have a peculiar accent, which is sometimes difficult to understand. In the beginning it was very difficult to understand the Xhosa people when they were speaking English - their accent is very strong. But now we are more or less used to it.
We still don't know our plans for the weekend. If the weather doesn't improve, there's not much we can do. There's the plan to go to Stellenbosch tomorrow - it's a town not far from Cape Town and known for it's many wineries. Wine degustation is not too expensive there. We only have one problem - nobody wants to be the sober driver on a wine tour.. :o)
***
A few words about something very interesting which I haven't written about before - the local languages. There are 11 official languages in South Africa - Afrikaans, English, IsiNdebele, IsiXhosa, IsiZulu, Northern Sotho, Sesotho, Setswana, SiSwati, Tshivenda, Xitsonga (I don't know the names by heart, just copied them from an encyclopedia...). The major languages are IsiXhosa, IsiZulu (spoken by the Xhosa and Zulu people respectively). Afrikaans is the mother tongue of 13% of the population and English the native language of only about 8% of South Africa's people.
Traditionally, Afrikaans was first spoken by the descendants of the Boers (white Dutch settlers), now called the Afrikaner. Afrikaans has also become the language spoken by the "Coloured" population (in the Western Cape province where we are, they form the majority of the population). The Xhosa people have traditionally lived in the Eastern Cape but many have come to the Western Cape in search of work. Khayelitsha, the township where we work, is now home to the Xhosa people. Their language is very interesting to us and rather difficult to learn, because of some special click sounds. The Xhosa and Zulu languages are closely related, they belong in the Bantu language family. There are at least 3 different types of clicks, depending on the position of the tongue. I've tried to produce these sounds, but it's far from perfect. So far, I don't know much more than the most basic words, such as "Molo" (hello) and "Molweni" (hello, to a group of people), "Kunjani?" (How are you?) - "Ndiphilile" (Fine).
Afrikaans is similar to Dutch. The people to whom Afrikaans is mother tongue, also speak English, but they have a peculiar accent, which is sometimes difficult to understand. In the beginning it was very difficult to understand the Xhosa people when they were speaking English - their accent is very strong. But now we are more or less used to it.
posted by Kadri Aavik at 12:52 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home