allyson and bryan

VIDEO: Could You Click for Xhosa? /

Contrary to popular belief, English is not the first language of the kids we're working with in South Africa. Instead, it's "Xhosa," pronounced "Ko-sa," unless, of course, you can click.

Xhosa is a tribal language spoken by locals in southeast Africa; according to Wikipedia, it descends from a leader named uXhosa and is spoken by 8 million people. Luckily Xhosa uses the same alphabet as English. Unluckily, at least from the learning perspective, there are three letters that call for distinctive clicking sounds: x, c, and q. The kids click like mad when talking to each other or the permanent staff at Baphumelele. It's pretty damn cool.

The fact that English is a second language obviously makes it a little more challenging to communicate with our charges at the orphanage, especially when it comes to the younger ones. In the spirit of cultural exchange, we've tried to learn at least some basic, helpful words and phrases. (Learning and remembering 80 kids' names is already a task of monumental proportions, so don't expect to much from us.) Here are a few we've mastered:

Hello, to one person: Molo
Hello, to a group: Moloweni
Throw: Jula
Kick: Kaba
Sit down: Solaponzi
Share: Isabelo
See You tomorrow!: Sobanana

Above I've included a video of our Robben Island tour guide reeling off a Xhosa sentence with lots of clicks. (He entertained our busload of tourists with it early into the tour, and me, the annoying American, asked him to repeat it for my little video project. He was very cute.)

In addition to English and Xhosa, another language spoken by most Cape Townians is Afrikaans. I don't know all the specifics, but I do believe Afrikaans is spoken predominantly in the cities and by the more educated groups; it's a derivative of Dutch and German and also has the propensity to be highly entertaining.

Sometimes just plain English makes me giggle here in South Africa. Traffic lights are called "robots" and alarms are called "hooters." What else do you need in a country, anyway?

stars, they're just like allyson @ 12:07 PM  

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