As the
South African embassy still didn’t get in touch with me because of my visa, I made
new plans for the time that I’ll have to spend waiting: I’ll try to learn isiZulu.
Along with English, Afrikaans, isiNdebele, isiXhosa, Sepedi, Sesotho, SiSwati, Setswana,
Tshivenda and Xitsonga, isiZulu is one of the eleven official languages of
South Africa and home language to 24% of the population. Also in Johannesburg
and in my project there will be many people speaking Zulu. Even though I guess
that I could get along quite well speaking English, I think that it’s more fun
to learn a new language – especially if it’s one with click consonants! Of
course the clicks – there are three different ones, a dental, an alveolar and a
lateral click - make it much more difficult for me, because I’m just not used
to making these sounds while speaking and it sounds really funny when I try to.
But anyway, I’ll try to do my best!
To let you
participate in my attempt to learn isiZulu I created a Zulu-memory to learn
some names for South African animals. Each of the ten pairs consists of the
English and the Zulu name of an animal. Just click at the cards to open them. Check
it out and have fun!
My Zulu-memory
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