Month 17.1. Empty words.

1.

Wait a second, have I really been here seventeen months? Holy smoking cow. Don’t really know how that happened.

2.

Cool words in English:

· Jowly. (Means something like “having a lot of cheek area.”)

· Anticipatory.

· Ecumenical. Ranks along with “ecclesiastic” and “Episcopalian.” I don’t really understand any of them, but they have to do with churches.

· Whiz. But only when you aspirate the “w.” (Means “to pee,” or is an adjective describing smart kids.)

· Australopithecus. (The name of an early type of human.)

· Parallelogram. Ranks with “parallelepiped.”

· Agrarian. Ranks along with “bucolic,” since they have similar semantic and oxymoronic qualities. (Both words evoke images of peaceful farming, which inspires reactions contrary to “grrrrrrr,” trying to rear your horse, puking, and colic illness.)

Uncool words in English:

· Dribble.

· Dollop.

· Dabble.

· Clad.

· Germane. (Means “relevant.”)

· Gregarious. (Means “having a tendency not to go solo.”) It’s just too close to so many other words. “Hi, I’m Greg, I’m gregarious.” “Hi Greg, I’m Gary. I’m also gregarious.” “You sure you’re not egregious?” “Uh, well I thought you were egregious.” “Well for sure I’m gregarious, but that doesn’t make me Gregorian.” “Are you being garrulous?” “No, Gary, that’s you.” “Oh, I thought I was garish.” “Dammit, Gary.”

· Prod.

· Prong. Ewwww. Worst word ever, second only to “dollop.”

3.

Cool words in Croatian:

· Prtljaga. (Luggage)

· Razlog. (reason)

· Vrh. (peak)

· Češće. (more often)

· Devedesetogodišnjakinja (girl in her twenties)

· Mogućnost (possibility)

· Otok (island). Ranks with “otoci” (islands) and “otocima” (in the islands).

· Najjednostavniji. This one really deserves a drum-roll. Its meaning is… “simplest.”

4.

Betcha don’t know anything about Zulu.

Zulu is spoken by nearly ten million people, mostly in South Africa. It’s the language of Johnny Clegg, Lucky Dube and Desmond Tutu. Zulu has one of the richest phonemic inventories of any language in the world. Of interest is one sound, written hl, that only exists in Welsh. It’s like saying “sh” with a lisp. Even more interesting are the clicks. There are three basic types: the letter x is the sound you make to make a horse come to you. The letter q is like a bottle popping, and c is like tsk-tsk.

I’ve read arguments that the diversity of sounds in southern African languages supports the hypothesis that they are the oldest languages on earth. There is an analogous argument in genetics - there is higher genetic diversity in regions that have been inhabited longest. So, if the arguments are correct, Africa is the land of both our genetic and linguistic origins.

Wanna know how to make a sentence in Zulu? I knew you did. First, we take a verbal root. Let’s take –qond- which means “to understand.” Second, we take a subject. Let’s take –u- which means “he” or “she.” We’re going to put the subject and the verb together, and there are different possible ways to do this.

We must choose the verb tense. The verb tense will give us the format for how the subject and the verb are put together. Let’s take the present, to mean “he understands.” The format is [subject]+ya+[verb]+a. “ya” and “a” don’t mean anything, they’re just part of the format. So we get uyaqonda which means “he understands.”

If we want to stick in an object, it comes after ya. The first person “I” or “me” is –ngi-. So, “he helps me” is uyangiqonda, which breaks down to u + ya + ngi + qond + a.

If we want to say a negative sentence, we use a different format: a+[subject]+[verb]+i. Here, “a” and “i” are meaningless, just part of the negated sentence format. So, “I don’t understand” is angiqondi, which breaks down to a + ngi + qond + i.

And that’s all you’ll ever need to know of Zulu!