Talk:Zulu language

message: Wish I'd found this discussion earlier! I'm trying to accummulate refs to different names for languages at User:JackyR/African language names - current usage. Feel free to ADD YOUR KNOWLEDGE here! Cheers! JackyR 19:24, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Compiling all this

message: Is there a reference for the claim that the fictional Jawa language from Star Wars is electronically sped-up Zulu? Joziboy 28 June 2006, 17:29 (UTC)
:Even if there was, I think a reference to that belongs only in some Star Wars sub-article. We're not the encyclopedia of pop-culture. — mark ✎ 06:55, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've removed that;  the alien race doesn't even have its own article. Graham talk 12:39, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Jawa language 

message: isiZulu.net lists the gender 17 on their grammar page. But this article doesn't. Who is right? --Leokor 02:47, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gender 17? 

message: The 'k' consonant in "ukuza" is not ejective, as described in the article. It's a voiced velar implosive. --Leokor 19:14, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Uhm, no. This is a velar ejective. Please don't make claims without knowing what you are speaking about first. Vaaht (talk) 01:31, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  As far as I know the letter k represents to 2 phonemes, one is an ejective and if I  recall corectly is only used at the beginning of stems and following a prenasalization, the other one is described as a softer sound and may very well be an implosive. the k in the uku-prefix  is acording to my grammar book an example of the latter sound.--Merijn2 (talk) 19:36, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: It has two allophones, but they aren't different phonemes.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.46.222.172 (talk) 19:05, 18 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Voiced velar implosive 

message: Zulu does not have any infixes; it only has prefixes and suffixes. An infix is when the root is split up by a morpheme. For example, the word "fucking" in English can be an infix, as in "abso-fucking-lutely" or "Massa-fucking-chusetts". For a word in Zulu like "ngiyadlala" it is composed of four morphemes: ngi- (1st person, singular), ya- (present tense for a verb without an object/verb focus), -dlal- (root "play"), -a (final vowel). I am going to go through the article and correct all instances of "infix" in it. However, I am not going to correct the misuse of the hyphen that occurs throughout the article because I don't have the time. Any time a prefix is listed, it should have a hyphen as follows: prefix-. Any time a suffix is listed it should have a hyphen as follows: -suffix. This should be corrected. Vaaht (talk) 02:03, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It is common practice in Nguni linguistics to write non-initial prefixes with hyphens on both sides. Smashhoof2 (talk) 08:11, 22 December 2017 (UTC)
replies: text:  Indeed, the hyphen just indicates that more stuff must occur there. It has nothing to do with infixation. Rua (mew) 11:45, 22 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Infixes 

message: I see no mention of ejective consonants for Zulu, despite the fact that they are well-attested in the language.  Vaaht (talk) 02:39, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ejective Consonants 

message: If you are a native speaker of Zulu then you can add this template to your userpage:
 
--Amazonien (talk) 03:35, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Zulu language template

message: Richard D. Lewis claims in "When Cultures Collide" (p.8-9) that there are 39 words for "green" in Zulu. This is quite obviously a variant of the urban legend concerning Eskimo words for snow (which he also naively presents as true on p.4). Does Zulu have more than one root word for "green" to which it attaches different affixes? The examples given by Lewis's informant/"expert" can be found here or here. --Espoo (talk) 20:35, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  39 Zulu words for "green" 

message: When I was reading the article on "Zulu language", under "Nouns" section I picked up the following statement which I thought was incorrect:
ame- occurs only in one instance, namely amehlo (eyes) the plural of iso (eye; originally: ihlo).
Actually the prefix ame- for class 6 nouns I believe occurs in two instances, namely amehlo(eyes) and ameva(thorns)the plural of iva. I've since edited the corrections.
Is there anyone out there who agrees/disagrees?
Smzuma (talk) 10:05, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Corrections made under "Nouns" section of " Zulu language" article 

message: I think this is a great article, simply because it gives a lot of useful, specific information. However, the grammar section is so extensive that it completely dominates the article. Wouldn't is be wise to split this section off to a new article called Zulu grammar and replace the it here with a more concise grammar paragraph? Steinbach (talk) 21:33, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Splitting it up 

message: The table of consonants is rather bewildering currently. I can't help but wonder how many of the sounds listed there are actually phonemes. It seems to me that several of them could be analysed as single phonemes with multiple allophones. The table and surrounding text doesn't say anything about this, although it does put all the pronunciations in square brackets (which indicate a narrow phonetic/subphonemic representation). Could more information about actual phonemic contrasts be added? CodeCat (talk) 01:45, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I added what looks to be a very good source, in the biblio, but can't access it myself apart from snippets at GBooks.  If you're able to gain access, that would be a huge help.  I changed the slashes to brackets a couple years ago because I was concerned that some of the entries were just allophones.  (If they're not, the transcriptions of the example words would seem to be wrong in some cases, e.g. for ŋ.)  So the charts should already be phonemic:  they just need to be confirmed with a RS.  — kwami (talk) 03:40, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  There is still considerable allophony even if they can be phonemes in some environments. Aspiration is lost after a nasal, for example: inkosi pluralises as amakhosi. CodeCat (talk) 14:21, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  The consonant phonemes 

message: The section on tone is inconsistent.  We say that Zulu has no phonemic vowel length, but then say that it has two phonemic tones, high and falling, the latter only occurring on long vowels. Is there ever a contrast between high and falling on a penultimate vowel, when the ultima is low?
Here's what I'm guessing is going on:  A non-tonic vowel takes a falling contour when between a tonic and non-tonic vowel.  Or maybe this is described as mid except when the vowel is penultimate (long).  A tonic vowel takes a falling contour when penultimate and followed by a non-tonic vowel.  
That is, 
:/H/ → [F:]/__L#
:/L/ → [H]/H__H
:/L/ → [F]/H__L...
:/L/ → [F:]/H__L#
Ignoring depressor consonants, is it more complicated than that?  — kwami (talk) 18:54, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dubious: falling tone 

message: The first written document in Zulu was a Bible translation that appeared in 1883.
No citation is given for this assertion, which is demonstrably incorrect, viz.
The first complete book of the Bible translated into isiZulu was the Gospel of Matthew, which was translated by Rev. George Champion of the American Board Mission and was printed in 1848. The New Testament (also translated by the missionaries of the American Board Mission) was published in 1865. The first complete Bible (again, translated by the American Board Mission) was published by the American Bible Society in 1883. In 1855 Bishop Colenso produced the 1848 translation of the American Board Mission with adaptations and in 1897 the New Testament (Hermanson 1995:144,145). [1]
1) Masubelele, M. R. "Missionary interventions in Zulu religious practices: The term for the supreme being." Acta Theologica 12, no. 1 (2011). http://www.ajol.info/index.php/actat/article/viewFile/67245/55345 58.164.145.147 (talk) 23:17, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  The first written document in Zulu 

message: Hey, I know those who don't remember history are doomed to repeat it and all, but is it really appropriate for the only photographic (non-cartographic) image used to illustrate our article on the Zulu language to be this? I briefly glanced at the caption first (not noticing "Apartheid era"), then started slowly analyzing the Zulu portion of the sign in comparison with the English to see if I could find any cognate loanwords (I'm a nerd, I know), and had actually been looking at the sign for like two minutes before I realized what it actually said and was completely blown away. Are there no post-Apartheid bilingual or trilingual signs we could show pictures of instead? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 14:44, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Racist Apartheid photograph? 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified  on Zulu language. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070927174231/http://www.pavelicpapers.com/documents/odpor/index.html to http://www.lmp.ucla.edu/
*Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20070114015602/http://translate.org.za:80/content/view/1610/54/ to http://translate.org.za/content/view/1610/54/
*Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20070324112647/http://translate.org.za:80/content/view/17/32/ to http://translate.org.za/content/view/17/32/
*Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20070210160756/http://translate.org.za:80/content/view/1611/54/ to http://translate.org.za/content/view/1611/54/
*Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20070324203655/http://translate.org.za:80/content/view/1612/54/ to http://translate.org.za/content/view/1612/54/
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 18:35, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Is there any information on [ŋ] vs [ŋɡ]? I've noticed that some speakers always use [ŋ], but some use [ŋɡ]. I've noticed my Zulu professor uses both, seemingly in free variation. Is there dialectal variation? Allophonic variation? If my observations are correct, then /ŋ/ is not phonemic for all speakers.
: I think you are correct. Perhaps the solution is to represent the phonemes as /ŋɡ/ and note that this is realised as [ŋ] for some speakers. CodeCat (talk) 11:24, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  /ŋ/ 

message: Cope in his (somewhat weird) description of tonal morphology notes that for the simple form of inja, namely nja, the n is sometimes syllabic and sometimes it isn't. He says that it's syllabic when it's used as a vocative (ǹnjá! "dog!"), but not when it's after a demonstrative (lê-njá "this dog", léyò-njá "that dog"). So I would guess that the nasal is syllabic when there is no preceding word to "connect" the nasal to. CodeCat (talk) 11:28, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I will try to find some other sources regarding syllabic nasals. --Smashhoof2 (talk) 19:29, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Syllabic nasals 

message: Does anyone use this at all, or is this something that was just invented? CodeCat (talk) 15:44, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't have an information about usage of this alphabet. It was rather a project of an alphabet for Zulu Muslims. The article "Zulu in the Arabic script" contains only a brief explanatory text, list of letters and a short simple text (in Latin and Arabic orthographies). -- صلاح الأوكراني (talk) 19:35, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arabic script 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 3 external links on Zulu language. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20050306060945/http://www.newt.clara.co.uk/isizulu/ to http://www.newt.clara.co.uk/isizulu/
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20040413044749/http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Zulu-english/ to http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Zulu-english/
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20051027002008/http://literature.kzn.org.za/lit/index.html to http://literature.kzn.org.za/lit/index.html
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 03:12, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The article lead describes Zulu as "the second most widely spoken of the Bantu languages, after Shona", and cites Ethnologue's page on Shona for this claim. However, the linked page does not make any mention of Zulu or of rankings of widely-spoken Bantu languages. I can only suppose that the author of that claim used Ethnologue's numbers of speakers to determine the claim, in which case further evidence than that one page is needed (and it's edging close to original research in any case).
The biggest problem in my opinion is defining "most widely spoken". The Shona article calls it "the most widely spoken Bantu language as a first language" (emphasis added), which is an important distinction! For instance, Swahili is spoken by far more people than either Zulu or Shona, but (assuming the claim is valid at its core) it would have fewer first-language speakers than those two. -- Perey (talk) 11:12, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: You are right. Have tried to fix. ─ ReconditeRodent « talk · contribs » 03:08, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Most widely spoken? 

message: The founders of amaBhungane have claimed that the name means "dung beetle" in isiZulu.  However, on 2018-08-21 Google Translate rendered it as "butterfly". 
I see three possibilities: 
# Google translate is wrong.
# The founders of amaBhungane are wrong.  
# The same word is used for both "dung beetle" and "butterfly", perhaps in different local dialects of isiZulu.  
What might be done to obtain a more authoritative rendering of this word in isiZulu?  Thanks, DavidMCEddy (talk) 21:38, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[amaBhungane]] 

message: The IPA chart contradicts the part about Latin orthography, as well as the IPA help page on Nguni. (Examples would be disagreeing as to whether B is an implosive or pulmonic consonant). I've tried to fix some of the mistakes on the latter but I'm not an expert on this subject. It would be really helpful if someone could revert these changes without affecting other edits, as I don't know how to that. Most of these edits seem to come from one user.
-MToumbola (talk) 11:16, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Phonology? 

message: i have no knowledge about zulu, so i can only rely on the information given in this hole page. and it is contradicting:
in the table of the phoneme inventory, 3 sorts of clicks are present: dental, lateral, alveolar/"retroflex", with the IPA symbols (i use normal ASCII now for ease) |, ||, !, respectively.
in the orthography section, the lateral click || is not present at all, but we have # (with a single vertical bar) instead, the IPA character for the palatal click. so is it just a typo, or does zulu have palatal clicks as well and it is missing in the phoneme table?
i wont edit anything unless i am sure what's right  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hyperbaton (talk • contribs) 00:14, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  wrong click notation in chapter "orthography" ? 

message: Hi, I don't know anything about Zulu but this phoneme chart is baffling.
1. The chart has several columns labeled "slack-voiced," but all of the consonants in those columns are labeled with the breathy voice diacritic (e.g. z̤). What's up with this?
2. Similarly, the chart has "slack-voiced" clicks, which are labeled with the other notation for breathy voice! (e.g. ᶢǀʱ) This really seems to suggest that whoever wrote this table mixed up breathy and slack voice, but knowing nothing about the language it's hard to say what exactly happened.
3. There is a single consonant, /ɦ̥/, which is labeled with the correct diacritic for slack voice. This is not explained. Is it supposed to be slack voiced? Why was a different diacritic used for /ɦ̥/ instead of all the other "slack-voiced" phonemes? Or does it mean something else?
4. The plain stops are all labeled as "plain" but the symbols in the chart are ejectives. The section underneath says that they are "realized as ejectives." If they're ejectives -- put them in an ejectives row, don't put them in a plain row. If there's some reason to do this, justify it in the section underneath the table.
5. There are no citations for any of this. The only citation in the entire phonology section is PHOIBLE, which doesn't doesn't say anything about breathy voice. For the record, PHOIBLE also lists /p/ distinct from /p'/, and doesn't include a velar implosive.
I'm going to put a citation needed or something in the article because this is really confusing and something in here is almost certainly wrong. Hopefully someone who knows more than I do will stop by and make some corrections (and cite a source, please). Geckoarcher (talk) 01:51, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Phoneme table is baffling and probably wrong