Day 424

You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives. ~Clay P. Bedford

It’s 8: 29 PM on day 424 of my journey towards independence and I’ve managed to brush my teeth, feed myself baked beans on toast for breakfast, prepare and publish my Disability of the Day feature,  tweet about my Clean Water For All Campaign – no luck – feed myself a chickem nugget sandwich for lunch, tweet about my campaign some more–Christian Hollingsworth  over at http://smartboydesigns.com/ made a $107.69 donation and I am calling on everybody to follow in his footsteps even if you can’t donate $107 you can donate $25 and participate in my Sit for Water event which is taking place tomorrow–  feed myself rice and curry for dinner and brush my teeth once more.

As you may or may not know South Africa has eleven official languages and since I like sharing what I know I have compiled a list of commonly used Xhosa words – Xhosa is an African language that is commonly spoken in the Eastern Cape (I had to learn it while in boarding school because the kids there didn’t speak any English). Take a look:

Xhosa 101: Words and daily conversation you need to know to survive in Eastern Cape, South Africa

Xhosa words translated into English for
beginners.

The accuracy of these words is not
guaranteed, but care has been taken to provide an accurate or closest
translation

SIFUNDA ISIXHOSA

WE ARE LEARNING XHOSA


Amagama
esiXhosa



English
words


Mama Mother
Bawo/Tata Father
Molo Hi
Kunjani How
are you/How are things?
Sikhona We
are fine/We are here
Igama Name
Mna Me
Yena him/her
Wena You
Bona Them
Dadewethu my
sister
Mfowethu my
brother
intombi/intombazane unmarried woman/girl
Inkwenkwe boy
Umfazi married woman
Indoda Man
uxolo/ixolo                           forgiveness/peel
Enkosi Thank
you

 

Daily Conversation

Ndifuna ukudla I want food
Ndifuna ukutya
okunesondlo
I want food with
nourishment
Ndicela undibonise
umzi ka…
Please show me the
house of …
Iphi imbizo? Where is the
meeting?
Ndifuna ukukhwela
uduladula
I want to ride in/on
a bus
Baphi abantu
abadala/abakhulu
Where are the older
people of the house
Lumkela inja Beware of the dog
Imini nobususku Day and night
Waphukelwe
yintliziyo
He/She has a broken
heart
Uvelemva One who appears last
Inja phandle Dogs out!

 

(Note: The information above is courtesy of IsiXhosa Dictionary)

 

Are we connecting on Twitter? If not, say hi at http://twitter.com/Nisha360

If you’ve given to my cause or you can’t give now, please help me by sharing my cause with others. You can tweet about it like my friend Stan Faryna. This is the tweet he uses: @Nisha360 is a brave, smart young woman trying to make a better world for us all. Please help her do an amazing thing. http://bit.ly/hC7vOu

Stan’s very sweet for saying so, but feel free to write what reflects you best.

Thanks to all my friends out there who are helping me make my dream come true: to make a better world for all of us!

4 thoughts on “Day 424

  1. Chrissy Pappas

    I better start practicing if we’re ever going to meet 😉 Thanks for the tips and great website!

  2. nisha360 Post author

    If you’re going to learn all the languages I know before we meet it might take a while … I also know Malayalam – an Indian language – LOL 🙂

    Yours truly,
    Nisha

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