Some isiZulu trivia

Hey guys!

I'm a native language English and Afrikaans speaker who is busy learning isiZulu. I thought it would be fun to share some isiZulu trivia!

• In isiZulu if you want to know what time it is you would say: "Isikhathi 'bani?". Which is basically the English equivalent for "Who is the time?"
• isiZulu has no gender when referring to he/she instead they have a gender neuter pronoun that is used. So when you ever stumble across an amaZulu person and they refer to their son as "she" you'll understand why,
• Although the clicks might seem daunting at first they're quite easy to get used to. isiZulu has three clicks which are represented by the letters 'c', 'q' and 'x'. Some of these sounds are usually sounds that some people already know how to make, now they must just learn to see it as a letter that can be used in a language.

That's all the trivia I have for today, If you guys find this interesting I'll be sure to upload more in the future!

Isipho sosuko (gift of the day): Whilst studying isiZulu in the university library that I go to it is basically impossible to quietly output isiZulu because although you try to whisper what you are learning every now and then an audible click will still ring out,  

I'm curious - as a learner of isuZulu, do you find Swahili comprehensible at all?

leosmith wrote:

I'm curious - as a learner of isuZulu, do you find Swahili comprehensible at all?

Unfortunately there is no mutual intelligibility. However there are a few words that are similar. For example Nyama means meat in both isiZulu and Kiswahili. Another interesting thing to note is that because both languages are Bantu, they have a lot of the same structures. isiZulu is the first Bantu language that I'm learning and it is quite difficult because I have no frame of reference for it due to me coming from a Germanic background. But I find some peace of mind in the fact that if I finally acquire isiZulu the other Bantu languages I want to learn like Setswana will be much easier.