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Showing posts with label Bantu languages. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bantu languages. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 5, 2021

Similarities Between Bantu Languages As Reflected In Online Excerpts About Words That Mean "See You Later" In Swahili, Zulu, Sotho, And Venda

Edited by Azizi Powell

This pancocojams post presents an excerpt of the Wikipedia page on Bantu languages.

This post also quotes selected comments from an online discussion about the Swahili term "tutaonana baadaye" (English translation: "See you later") and quotes other comments from that discussion thread about  words that are similar to "tutaonana" in several other Bantu languages.

In addition, this pancocojams post quotes an entire 2013 blog post written by 
James Higby, a White American volunteering in South Africa. That post includes the Venda words "re do vhonana" which mean "See you later".

The content of this post is presented for linguistics and cultural purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post.

****
INFORMATION ABOUT BANTU LANGUAGES
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantu_languages
"T
he Bantu languages... are a large family of languages spoken by the Bantu peoples throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

 The total number of Bantu languages ranges in the hundreds, depending on the definition of "language" versus "dialect", and is estimated at between 440 and 680 distinct languages.[2] 

[...]

The total number of Bantu speakers is in the hundreds of millions, estimated around 350 million in the mid-2010s (roughly 30% of the total population of Africa or roughly 5% of world population).[4] Bantu languages are largely spoken southeast of Cameroon, throughout Central Africa, Southeast Africa and Southern Africa. About one-sixth of the Bantu speakers, and about one-third of Bantu languages, are found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo alone (c. 60 million speakers as of 2015). See list of Bantu peoples. [given as a sidebar of that Wikipedia page.] 

The Bantu language with the largest total number of speakers is Swahili; however, the majority of its speakers use it as a second language (L1: c. 16 million, L2: 80 million, as of 2015).[5]

Other major Bantu languages include Zulu, with 27 million speakers (15.7 million L2) and Shona, with about 11 million speakers (if Manyika and Ndau are included).[6][7] Ethnologue separates the largely mutually intelligible Kinyarwanda and Kirundi, which, if grouped together, have 20 million speakers.

[...]

Name

The similarity among dispersed Bantu languages had been observed as early as the 17th century.[9] The term Bantu as a name for the group was coined (as Bâ-ntu) by Wilhelm Bleek in 1857 or 1858, and popularised in his Comparative Grammar of 1862.[10] He coined the term to represent the word for 'people' in loosely reconstructed Proto-Bantu, from the plural noun class prefix *ba- categorizing 'people', and the root *ntʊ̀- 'some (entity), any' (e.g. Zulu 'uumuntu 'person', abantu 'people').

There is no indigenous term for the group, as Bantu-speaking populations refer to themselves by their endonyms, but did not have a concept for the larger ethno-linguistic phylum. Bleek's coinage was inspired by the anthropological observation of groups frequently self-identifying as 'people' or 'the true people' (as is the case, for example, with the term Khoekhoe, but this is a kare 'praise address' and not an ethnic name).[11]

[…]

The prefix ba- specifically refers to people. Endonymically, the term for cultural objects, including language, is formed with the ki- noun class (Nguni ísi-), as in Kiswahili, 'coast language and culture,' and isiZulu, 'Zulu language and culture'."...

****
ONLINE EXCERPTS ABOUT WORDS THAT MEAN "SEE YOU LATER" IN VARIOUS BANTU LANGUAGES
Excerpt #1
Google translate from Swahili to English:
"tutaonana baadaye - See you later"
-snip-
Googe translate indicates that "baadaye" is a Swahili adverb that means "later"; "after", or "thereafter". 

**
Excerpt #2
Google translate from Zulu to English
"
sizobonana" = see you later
-snip-
Read about similar words in other Bantu languages in Excerpt #4, comment #7 and comment #8.

***
Excerpt #3
From https://www.pivotalplaces.org/learn-venda
Learn Venda
"Goodbye (“Go Well”)
● Other variations of goodbye   Vha tshimbila zwavudi

● Basali swavhuti

● Kabasali

See you tomorrow - Rido vhonana (see you) matshelo (tomorrow)"


****
Excerpt #4
From https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/23025409/Tutaonana-baadaye-Esther-na-Rashidi Tutaonana baadaye Esther na Rashidi"
Translation: See you later Esther and Rashidi

[Pancocojams Editor's Note: Here are selected comments from this discussion thread about this Swahili sentence. These comments are given in chronological order based on their publishing date with the oldest comments given first, except for replies. Numbers are added for referencing purposes only.]


1. Manderjoy,  Jun2 10, 2017
"We will see you later, Esther and Rashidi."

**
Reply
2. Aloeinc, June 10, 2017
"Shouldn't it be "see you both later" as opposed to "see each other later"?"

**
Reply
3. ElDoctr, August 16, 2017
"It is specifically "we will see each other later". The last -na in "tutaonana" makes it "each other".

**
Reply
4.  
RowanM., Feb. 5, 2019 
"I take it "ta" is the future tense marker, like "na" is used for the present tense (and "ma" or "me" or something for the past tense)?"

**
Reply
5. Catriona, Feb. 5, 2019
“Yes, literally: "We will see each other later.
-snip-
The word "will" was written with bold font in that discussion thread, probably to highlight that word but not to emphasize it in the sentence. 

**
6. Pablopublico, April 1, 2018
"-onana" is the reciprocal form ("to see each other") of "-ona" ("to see").

**
Reply
7. Tswelo, Nov. 22, 2018
"Amazing. I've noticed so many similarities between Swahili and my home language South Sotho (Southern African). In my home language there's "retlabonana" which means "we'll see each other { ..}". If said alone, it could imply "we'll see each other some other time (in the near future)". Beautiful.

**
Reply
8. TiyoKakaza, December 4, 2019
Tu = Re = Si = Re , ta = tla = za/ zo = do , ona = bona = bona = vhona , -ana = -ana = -ana = -ana . tutaonana, sizobonana, sizabonana, retlabonana, re do vhonana... If it was not for the Arabic words Southern Africans could easily learn Swahili with its simpler grammar and familiar vocab. It is a pity we do not also have Duolingo from one our languages. Hopefully now that SADC has made Swahili an official language, we will have more people to create for example a duolingo course that is bantu-bantu for example been taught Swahili in Zulu as I think that makes the most sense.

-snip-
From various online sources:
"Tutaonana" is Swahili,  "sizobonana" is Zulu, "sizavonana" is ?; "retlabonana" is Sotho, and "re do vhonana" is Venda.

****
Excerpt #5
From https://higbysafrica.wordpress.com/2011/11/13/lost-in-translation/
James Higby’s South Africa, Nov. 11, 2013
Lost in Translation
"This is a bit about the local language, for those of you who are interested in that sort of thing.  The language is called TshiVenda, (pronounced “Chi-Ven-Da” meaning the language of Venda people.  Venda is a region in the Limpopo province of South Africa.  The place has high temperatures, beautiful mountains, delicious fruits and some interesting traditions which I’ll talk about later.  Venda people call themselves “VhaVenda” (plural) or “MuVenda” (Singular), and they call people like me “VhaKhuwa” or “MuKhuwa”.  So the word for English, or any other whitey language like German or Afrikaans is “TshiKhuwa”.  Tshivenda is a somewhat obscure and uncommonly known language.  There are many subtleties in pronunciation and every syllable ends with a vowel.  There are no gender nouns like with romantic languages, no gender specific pronouns even.  In fact, different pronouns confuse the living hell out of Venda students learning English, so they usually just pick one and go with it for everything.  Like “he”, for example: “James, my sister, he have got a problem with car.  He [the car] is not running because battery.  He [battery] is empty, so we must have cables.  Where is he? [the jumper cables].   This is typical, but if you’re laughing keep in mind that my Tshivenda must sound 100 times more messed up than that because I’m constantly missing subtle pronunciation syntax.  Now although the pronouns for “He” and “She” are the same in Tshivenda, men and women have different greetings.  When a man says hi, he says “Ndaa” when a woman says hi she says “Aa”.  There are also different ways of addressing someone, a respectful (formal) way which you should use when speaking to someone older than you, or the casual way which is used between friends of the same age.

Contrary to my severely analytical nature, I have stopped trying to translate Tshivenda literally in an attempt to understand it.  The reasons for this are as follows:  1) For me, it’s usually impossible.  2) The literal translation is usually ridiculous.  Take this basic conversation for example:  The Bold is Tshivenda, the Italics are the literal translation.  At the end I’ve recapped the conversation using non-literal, vernacular translation.

Ndaa, Ndou.
Hello, Elephant.

Ee Ndaa.
Yes hello.

Vho vuwa hani?
How are you waking up today?

Ndo vuwa zwavhudi.  Ndi vhudzisa ngeo?
I woke up nicely.  I am inquiring about you.

Na nne ndo vuwa.  Ndi khou humbela u vhudzisa?
And me I woke up.  I am politely asking to inquire.

Kha vha vhudzise.
You may inquire.

Madi ndi gaee?
Water is where?

Nga car wash [yes, they would actually say car wash with a slight accent]
At the car wash.

O Luga.  Ndo Livhuwa.
Divine.  I have thanked you.

Ndi zwone, tshimbila zwhavhudi.
You’re welcome, walk nicely.

Ndi zwone, re do vhonana.
Goodbye, we will see each other.


So that was really just: “Hello sir.” “Well hello.” “How’s it going?” “Pretty good, and yourself?” “Just fine.  Can I please ask you something?” “Sure, ask away” “Where can I find water?” “There’s some at the car wash” “Great.  Thank you.” “You’re welcome, go well.”  “OK bye, see you later”.

You may have noticed “Ndi Zwone” is a homonym, it means either “You’re welcome” or “Goodbye” depending on context.  It’s also interesting to note that although the literal translation sounds goofy, they were both using the polite and respectful form of addressing each other.  Make no mistake though, the informal is also goofy when translated literally.  And about that “Elephant” thing, men really do say that and it really does mean elephant.  The people of South Africa all have a different animal which designates their “clan” or something like that, and in the case of Venda it happens to be the elephant.  Even the big town in the Venda region, Thohoyandou, is literally Thoho (Head) ya (of) Ndou (Elephant).  So Thoho = head, which brings me to my next point: some words which are spelled the same have different meanings depending on pronunciation.  Thoho = head but if you give the “T” a little bit more of a plosive sound it becomes “monkey”.  Gezz!  Thoho ya mukhuwa hafta khou vhavha (This white man’s head/monkey hurts)."

****
Here are some comments from that blog's discussion thread, with numbers added for referencing purposes only:
1. 
thabang Says:
April 23, 2013 at 7:07 am
"Its very interesting a lot of the words which are used in venda are almost pronouced like zulu and pedi words"

**
2. Shudufhadzo Matumba Says:
September 17, 2013 at 1:51 pm
"Hi im Venda and ‘Madi ndi gaee?’ does not make sense, ‘Nga Car Wash ” too lol Its ‘Maḓi a ngafhi/ a wanala ngafhi’ then the respose should be ‘A car wash/A wanala car wash’.”…

**
Reply
3. higbysafrica Says:
October 2, 2013 at 7:28 pm
"Yes, I wrote that post with less than 1 month of practical Tshivenda speaking experience. Thanks for the corrections!"

****
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Visitor comments are welcome.

Saturday, July 7, 2018

Cameroonian Singer Annie Anzouer - Oublie Mon Passe' (Forget My Past)

Edited by Azizi Powell

This pancocojams post showcases the song "Oublie Mon Passe'" (Forget My Past) performed by Cameroonian singer and composer Annie Anzouer

Information about Annie Anzouer is including in this post along with the English translation of that song.

The content of this post is presented for cultural, entertainment, and aesthetic purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to Annie Anzouer for her musical legacy. Thanks also to all those who are quoted in this post. And thanks to the producer of this video and thanks to the publisher of this video on YouTube.

****
INFORMATION ABOUT ANNIE ANZOUER
From
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Anzouer&prev=search
Annie Anzouer is a Cameroonian artist and singer. She started with the Zangaléwa group. Bikutsi and Makossa are part of his musical genre.

[...]

Author, composer, singer, Annie Anzouer works with various artists and groups including Patience Dabany , Kwassio Band and Zangalewa before embracing a solo career

[...]

Birth May 15 , 1967 (51 years old)
Lolodorf , Cameroon
Core business Singer-songwriter , dancer , music producer
Musical genre Acoustic , Afrobeat , Ballad , Bikutsi , Makossa , Slow , Zouk , World Music
instruments Voice , guitar ,
active years Since 1980”...

****
SHOWCASE VIDEO: Annie Anzouer: OUBLIE Mon passe'



lipenja, Published on Oct 2, 2010
This is Annie's best song ever . And i hope you like it as much as i do. Enjoy

****
LYRICS: FORGET MY PAST (English translation from French)
(Artist: Annie Anzouer)

Since the time we knew each other
You keep disturbing me
Reminding me, all the time, my past
I had a life before you, you could not erase it
We can not change anything (nothing changed)
Ohh you let me down (you drop me)
And yet, I want you to forget
that you forget forget forget ... ..
My darling, I want you to forget
forget forgets my past
Go Go!
Why not forget, can you forget, forget ...
Why not forget, forget the past is ranked
Why not forget, want to forget, forget ...
Why not forget, forget the past is ranked
We told you this, we told you that, I can not take it anymore
It's all the time the same song
If you really want to keep me, do not listen to the on-say
And yet, I want you to forget
that you forget forget forget ... ..
ahn, I want you to forget
forget forgets my past
Go! Go!
Go, go, go, go, go
Standing men and women
That whoever is able to pay
a thousand-billion-dollar almond still sits
Oh yeah! oh yeah, oh wawa wa Oh wana wa

Source: https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=en&prev=search&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=fr&sp=nmt4&u=https://lyricstranslate.com/en/annie-anzouer-oublie-mon-pass%25C3%25A9-lyrics.html&xid=17259,15700023,15700124,15700149,15700168,15700186,15700190,15700201,15700208&usg=ALkJrhhuftTF3I7frmb0shH97LA2htP5ow

****
SELECTED COMMENTS FROM THIS VIDEO'S DISCUSSION THREAD
This comments are given in relative chronological order and are numbered for referencing purposes only. Translations that are given under the comments are Google Translates' French to English results, unless otherwise noted.

1. vincent MBassi, 2011
"That's great song ever...True , Annie is the best number one ! Le passé est passé ...amazing !"
-snip-
Le passé est passé = French to English meaning "The past is past"

I'm assuming that these lyrics are from this song.

**
2. vincent MBassi, 2011
"That's great song ever...True , Annie is the best number one ! Le passé est passé ...amazing ! Soul, soul, soul....koirimel, email, caramel....i like it ...lol"

**
3. Violet Brown, 2012
"this is my best of Anni Anzouer.Oooh Cameroon love and miss u."

**
4. Dankobueri Bueriberi, 2012
"Me gusta la cancion, es bonita; pero desgraciadamente haqy mucha discriminacion con la musica centroafricana, la de Guinea, cameroun y mas paises colindantes en el mercado europeo, asi como en las radios. Se deberia de promocionar mas, por que siempre hay musica buena por descubrir.."
-snip-
Spanish to English translation: "I like the song, it's beautiful; but unfortunately there is a lot of discrimination with the Central African music, Guinea, Cameroon and other neighboring countries in the European market, as well as on the radio. It should be promoted more, because there is always good music to discover .."

**
5. princesse dejes, 2012
"Oh que de beaux souvenirs ! tres belle chanson pleine de verite's aussi. Go Annie ! GOD bless you !"
-snip-
"Oh, beautiful memories! very beautiful song full of truths too" .Go Annie ! GOD bless you !"
-snip-
"Go [person's name!] is an American exclamation of approval that means "Keep on [doing what you are doing well!]".

**
6. chrischouful, 2012
"quelqu'un peut m'écrire la partie où elle chante en patois là? pas la traduction ! juste l'écrire ! merci oooooooo"
-snip-
"can someone write me the part where she sings in patois there? not the translation! just write it! thanks oooooooo?
-snip-
Unfortunately, it appears that no one has responded to this request at the time of this blog post's publication. However, this comment does indicate that French isn't the only language that is sung in this song. Comment #21 suggests that "Ngoumba" (also known as Kwasio) is the other language that is sung in this song.

**
7. Nkolo Eliane Nkolo, 2015
"Ce clips me touche beaucoup, si nous étions vraiment nombreux à lutter contre cette cause de polygamie, et le fait de jeter les femmes après avoir eu des enfants.Ce n'est pas différent de l'avoir tuer, car elle n'oubliera jamais çà, et les enfants sont malheureux."
-snip-
"This clip affects me a lot, if we were really many to fight against this cause of polygamy, and throwing women after having children.It is no different to have killed, because it will never forget here, and the children are unhappy."

**
8. Afi Leslie, 2014
"Cool song cool woman cool voice"

**
9. Cristina Mbá, 2014
"Elle est de la tribu bisio!!!! comme moi!!! tres belle voix =)"
-snip-
"She is from the bisio tribe !!!! like me!!! very beautiful voice =)"

**
10. Mbaku Adamu, 2015
"What a voice! It goes deep into the heart."

**
11. Mor Brenda, 2015
"i love this lady.her voice is beautiful."

**
12. Gabriella Youmbi, 2015
"Très belle voix"

**
13. djanatou, 2015
"Annie Anzouer tu restes jusqu'aujourd'hui la meilleure voix féminine camerounaise de tous les temps"
-snip-
"Annie Anzouer you remain until today the best Cameroonian female voice of all time"

**
14. EC Neba,2015
"i just rediscovered a lost chapter of my childhood"

**
REPLY
15. guntz yengwia,2015
"Hahaha me too ec"

**
16. Laurence Ngapingsi, 2016
"still listened until today I really love it .it is really makes me remember some childhood memories"

**
17. Angam Tchoyi, 2016
"merveille de la musique Camerounaise"
-snip-
"marvel of Cameroonian music"

**
18. Tchantcheu BENEDICT Guylin, 2016
"makes me home sick"

**
19. act for all, 2017
"I am Congolese but I confirm this woman it remains the best in Cameroon especially with this song"

**
20. Gilles Morris, 2017
"que l'on veuille ou pas le Cameroun est le réservoir des talents en Afrique de la musique de munu dibango plagié par Michael Jackson. de celle talla André plagié par le grand James Brown sans cité des talentueux toto Guillaume et j'en passe les lions indomptables. stp Mr le président continuez de préserver cette paix et nous sortirons tjs vainqueur. à tt les camers je vous aiment"
-snip-
"whether or not we want Cameroon is the reservoir of talent in Africa of munu dibango music plagiarized by Michael Jackson. from that talla Andrew plagiarized by the great James Brown without city of the talented toto Guillaume and I pass the indomitable lions. The President continue to preserve this peace and we will always come out victorious. to all the camers I love you"

**
21. Naomi Maman, 2017
"Quelle belle langue, le ngoumba!!!!"
-snip-
"What a beautiful language, the ngoumba !!!!."
-snip-
Here's some information about "Ngoumba" (also known as Kwasio":
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwasio_language
"The Kwasio language, also known as Ngumba / Mvumbo, Bujeba, and Gyele / Kola, is a language of Cameroon, spoken in the south along the coast and at the border with Equatorial Guinea by some 70 000 [citation needed] members of the Ngumba, Kwasio, Gyele and Mabi peoples.[citation needed] Many authors[4][5][6] view Kwasio and the Gyele/Kola language as distinct....

Dialects are Kwasio (also known as Kwassio, Bisio), Mvumbo (also known as Ngumba, Ngoumba, Mgoumba, Mekuk), and Mabi (Mabea). The Gyele speak the subdialects of Mvumbo, Gyele in the north and Kola also known as Koya in the south, variously spelled Giele, Gieli, Gyeli, Bagiele, Bagyele, Bajele, Bajeli, Bogyel, Bogyeli, Bondjiel and Likoya, Bako, Bakola, Bakuele, also Bekoe. The local derogatory term for pygmies, Babinga, is also used. Glottolog adds Shiwa.

Kwasio is a tonal language. As a Bantu language, it has noun class system."...

**
22. Ludovic Kengne, 2017
"La seule chanteuse Camerounaise à n'avoir jamais chanté une vilaine chanson, tout ce qui sort de sa bouche est un tube"
-snip-
"The only Cameroonian singer who has never sung an ugly song, everything that comes out of her mouth is a hit"

**
23. Junior Eyoum, 2017
"je ne sais pourquoi j'ai toujours soutenu cette thèse comme "Annie azouè a la plus belle voix du Cameroun par conséquence elle est la plus grande chanteuse après bien-sûr Germaine ebelle" , il y a d'abord Germaine ebelle ensuite Annie azouè les deux meilleures chanteuses malgré que Germaine ebelle n'est pas eu de succès mais quand nous les suivons chanter toutes les deux, nous savons très bien qu'elles ont été, force à vous"
-snip-
"I do not know why I always supported this thesis as "Annie azouè has the most beautiful voice of Cameroon consequently she is the greatest singer after course Germaine ebelle", there is first Germaine ebelle then Annie azouè the two best singers despite Germaine ebelle is not successful but when we follow them singing both, we know very well that they were, force to you"

**
24. fernando santos, 2017
"Amo as musicas africanas , i miss u mom africa . every day i listing music from africa here in brazil."
-snip-
"Amo as musicas africanas" = Portuguese to English = "I love African music"

**
25. Natalia Young, 2018
"Annie Anzouer, tu me fais penser à Bouana Nadine, une très bonne amie partie très tôt de ce monde.... elle était Ngoumba comme toi... Paix à son âme... elle restera toujours dans mon coeur."
-snip-
"Annie Anzouer, you make me think of Bouana Nadine, a very good friend who left early in this world .... she was Ngoumba like you ... Peace to her soul ... she will always remain in my heart."

**
26. Awa Ngoungoure, 2018
"Ça Conseille,C'est Une Émotion,c'est du lourd...c'est comme si cest à moi qu'elle chantait ceci...
il faut oublié Le passé car j'avais une vie avant toi!!!"
-snip-
That advises, It's an emotion, it's heavy ... it's as if it's to me that she was singing this ...
we must forget the past because I had a life before you!"

**
27. Sony 59, 2018
"Elle cest la sirene camerounaise. Je dirais la meilleure voix de mn tres cher beau pays"
-snip-
"She is the Cameroonian siren. I would say the best voice of mn very dear beautiful country"

**
28. Etakah Tabe Ebot Bessem, 2018
"The best thing about her music is that you can feel the emotions"

**
29. Esapa Georgina, 2018
"This song is always lit😗😍
-snip-
"Lit"= an African American Vernacular English term meaning "very good" (an extension of the slang connotations for "very hot"/"fire").

**
30. antonio nsimba, 2018
"La Best Du Cameroun"

****
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Visitor comments are welcome.

Monday, April 24, 2017

Names For The Days Of The Week In Four Bantu Languages That Are Spoken In Zambia, South Africa

Edited by Azizi Powell

This pancocojams post provides information about Zambia, South Africa. This post also provides information and lists for names of the days of the week in four major Bantu languages that are spoken in Zambia, South Africa: chiBemba (Bemba), chiChewa (Chewa, also known as Nyanja), chiTonga (Tonga) and siLozi (Lozi).

Some of these languages may also be spoken in certain other surrounding nations. That information is provided in the summaries that are given below about those languages.

This post is part of an ongoing pancocojams series that provides information about and lists for day names in various African languages. Click the "African languages days of the week" tag to find other posts in this ongoing series.

The content of this post is presented for linguistic, cultural, and educational purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post.

Click the "Bantu languages" tag for more examples of Bantu languages.

****
GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT ZAMBIA
Excerpt #1:
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zambia
"Zambia, officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa,[8] neighbouring the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, Tanzania to the north-east, Malawi to the east, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia to the south, and Angola to the west. The capital city is Lusaka, in the south-central part of Zambia. The population is concentrated mainly around Lusaka in the south and the Copperbelt Province to the northwest, the core economic hubs of the country.

Originally inhabited by Khoisan peoples, the region was affected by the Bantu expansion of the thirteenth century. After visits by European explorers in the eighteenth century, Zambia became the British protectorate of Northern Rhodesia towards the end of the nineteenth century. For most of the colonial period, Zambia was governed by an administration appointed from London with the advice of the British South Africa Company.
On 24 October 1964, Zambia became independent of the United Kingdom”…

[...]

The official language of Zambia is English, which is used to conduct official business and is the medium of instruction in schools. The main local language, especially in Lusaka, is Nyanja, followed by Bemba."...

****
Excerpt #2
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Zambia
"Zambia is widely claimed to have over 72 languages, although many of these might be better regarded as dialects. Some of these languages have a long history within Zambia, while others, such as Lozi, arose as a result of 18th and 19th-century migrations. All of Zambia's vernacular languages are members of the Bantu family and are closely related to one another.

Seven vernacular languages have official status. Together these represent the major languages of each province: Bemba (Northern Province, Luapula, Muchinga and the Copperbelt), Nyanja (Eastern Province and Lusaka), Lozi (Western Province), Tonga (Southern Province), and Kaonde, Luvale and Lunda (Northwestern Province)*. These seven languages are used, together with English, in early primary schooling and in some government publications. A common orthography was approved by the Ministry of Education in 1977.[1][2]

According to the 2000 census, Zambia's most widely spoken languages are Bemba (spoken by 52% of the population as either a first or second language), Nyanja (37%), Tonga (15%) and Lozi (11%).

In some languages, particularly Bemba and Nyanja, Zambians distinguish between a "deep" form of the language, associated with older and more traditional speakers in rural areas, and urban forms (sometimes called "town language" or Chitauni, such as Town Bemba and Town Nyanja) that incorporate a large number of borrowings from English and other innovations.

An urban variety of Nyanja is the lingua franca of the capital Lusaka and is widely spoken as a second language throughout Zambia. Bemba, the country's largest indigenous language, also serves as a lingua franca is some areas."...
-snip-
*My intention was to provide the names for the days of the week in all seven of the major languages in Zambia, but unfortunately, I couldn't find the names for the days of the week online for Kaonde, Luvale, or Lunda.

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NAMES OF THE WEEK IN FOUR BANTU LANGUAGES THAT ARE SPOKEN IN ZAMBIA
(Information about these languages are given in alphabetical order)

chiBemba
Excerpt #1:
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bemba_language
"The Bemba language, ChiBemba (also Cibemba, Ichibemba, Icibemba and Chiwemba), is a major Bantu language spoken primarily in north-eastern Zambia by the Bemba people and as a lingua franca by about 18 related ethnic groups, including the Bisa people of Mpika and Lake Bangweulu, and to a lesser extent in Katanga in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, and Botswana. Including all its dialects, Bemba is the most spoken indigenous language in Zambia.[4] The Lamba language is closely related and some people consider it a dialect of Bemba.

History
The Bemba people are descendants of inhabitants of the Luba kingdom, which existed in what is now the Katanga province of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and in north-eastern Zambia.

Bemba is one of the most widely spoken languages in Zambia, spoken by many people who live in urban areas, and is one of Zambia's seven recognized regional languages. Zambia's first president, Kenneth Kaunda, though Malawian by descent, was raised in a Bemba-speaking community, and two of the four Zambian president since have been Bemba-speakers. The third president, Levi Mwanawassa, was a Lenje, who belong to the Bantu Botatwe [three people] ethnic grouping that comprises the Tonga-Lenje-Ila peoples. The Fourth President, Rupiah Bwezani Banda was a Chewa from the Eastern Province. In the years after the MMD took power in 1991, it was accused numerous times of promoting Bemba over other regional languages in the country.[5] Although the lingua franca of the Zambian capital Lusaka is a dialect of Nyanja language, it incorporates numerous Bemba words and expressions.[6]

****
Excerpt #2
From http://kitweonline.com/kitweonline/discover-kitwe/culture/language/bemba-lesson-8-days-weeks-months-seasons.html
"MONDAY - Pali Cimo

TUESDAY - Pali Cibili

WEDNESDAY – Pali Citatu

THURSDAY - Pali Cine

FRIDAY - Pali Cisano

SATURDAY – Pa Cibelushi

SUNDAY - Pa Mulungu

****
chiChewa (Chewa; Nyanja)
Excerpt #1:
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewa_language
"Chewa, also known as Nyanja, is a language of the Bantu language family. The noun class prefix chi- is used for languages,[4] so the language is also called Chichewa and Chinyanja (spelled Cinyanja in Zambia, and Cinianja in Mozambique). In Malawi, the name was officially changed from Chinyanja to Chichewa in 1968 at the insistence of President Hastings Kamuzu Banda (himself of the Chewa tribe), and this is still the name most commonly used in Malawi today.[5] In Zambia, Chewa is spoken by other people like the Ngoni and the Kunda, so a more neutral name, Chinyanja '(language) of the lake' (referring to Lake Malawi), is used instead of Chichewa.
Chewa belongs to the same language group (Guthrie Zone N) as Tumbuka, Sena,[6] and Nsenga.

****
Excerpt #2
From https://dashtomalawi.blogspot.com/2015/08/days-of-week-chichewa.html DASH to Malawi, Once upon a time we went to Malawi, Days of the week (Chichewa), Monday, 31 August 2015
"Days of the week:
Monday - Lolemba
Tuesday - Lachiwiri
Wednesday - Lachitatu
Thursday - Lachinayi
Friday - Lachisanu
Saturday - Loweluka
Sunday - Lamulungu"

****
chiTonga (Tonga)
Excerpt #1:
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonga_language_(Zambia_and_Zimbabwe)
"The Tonga language, Chitonga, of Zambia and Zimbabwe, also known as Zambezi, is a Bantu Language primarily spoken by the Tonga people in those countries who live mainly in the Southern and Western provinces of Zambia, and in northern Zimbabwe, with a few in Mozambique. The language is also spoken by the Iwe, Toka and Leya people, perhaps by the Kafwe Twa (if that is not Ila), as well as many bilingual Zambians and Zimbabweans. It is one of the major lingua francas in Zambia, together with Bemba, Lozi and Nyanja. The Tonga of Malawi, which is classified by Guthrie as belonging to zone N15, is not particularly close to Zambian Tonga, which is classified as zone M64, and can be considered a separate language.*

The Tonga-speaking inhabitants are the oldest Bantu settlers, with the Tumbuka, a small tribe in the east, in what is now known as Zambia. There are two distinctive dialects of Tonga, Valley Tonga and Plateau Tonga. Valley Tonga is mostly spoken in the Zambezi valley and southern areas of the Batonga (Tonga People) while Plateau Tonga is spoken more around Monze district and the northern areas of the Batonga.[4]

Tonga (Chitonga or iciTonga) developed as a spoken language and was not put into written form until missionaries arrived in the area. The language is not standardized, and speakers of the same dialect may have different spellings for the same words once put into written text.[5]

At least some speakers have a bilabial nasal click where neighboring dialects have /mw/, as in mwana 'child' and kumwa 'to drink'.:..
-snip-
*Here's some information about the Tonga language in Malawi:
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonga_people_(Malawi)
"Tonga people (Malawi)
The Tonga (also called Batonga, Lake Shore Tonga or Nyasa Tonga) are an ethnic group living in northern Malawi on the shores of Lake Malawi in the region around Nkhata Bay and Chintheche. They are to be distinguished from the Tonga people of Zambia and Zimbabwe, whose language belongs to a different branch of the Bantu family."

[...]

Language
There are about 170,000 speakers of the Malawi Tonga language.[1]

(Note that the Tonga language in Zambia is also classified as of the Bantu language family, but belongs to a completely different type.[2][3])

The language is called chiTonga. The 'chi' means 'the language of the', like 'ki' in kiSwahili or 'se' in seTswana."
-snip-
I added italics to highlight this last sentence.
-snip-
Note that another language named "Tonga" is the national language of the Polynesian nation of Tonga.

****
Excerpt 2:
From http://www.mulonga.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=179:chitonga-dictionary&catid=43:tonga-culture&Itemid=93
"[Days of the week]
Muvulo - Monday
Bwabili - Tuesday
Bwatatu - Wednesday
Bwane Thursday
Bwasanu Friday
Mugibelo Saturday
Nsondo Sunday"
-snip-
I'm not sure if this list for names of the week is for the Zambian Tonga language or the Malawian Tonga language or if the names of the days of the week are the same in both languages.

****
siLozi (Lozi)
Excerpt #1:
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lozi_language
"Lozi, also known as siLozi and Rozi, is a Bantu language of the Niger–Congo language family within the Sotho languages branch of Zone S (S.30), that is spoken by the Lozi people, primarily in southwestern Zambia and in surrounding countries. This language is most closely related to Northern Sotho (Sesotho sa Leboa), Tswana (Setswana), Kgalagari (SheKgalagari) and Sotho (Sesotho/Southern Sotho). Lozi and its dialects are spoken and understood by approximately six percent of the population of Zambia. Silozi is the autoglottonym or name of the language used by its native speakers as defined by the United Nations. Lozi is the heteroglottonym.

The Lozi language developed from a mixture of two languages: Luyana and Kololo. The Luyana people originally migrated south from the Luba-Lunda empire in the Katanga area of the Congo River basin, either late in the 17th century or early in the 18th century. The language they spoke, therefore, was closely related to Luba and Lunda. They settled on the floodplains of the upper Zambezi River in what is now western Zambia and developed a kingdom, Barotseland, and also gave their name to the Barotse Floodplain or Bulozi.

The Kololo were a Sotho people who used to live in what is now Lesotho. The Kololo were forced to flee from Shaka Zulu's Mfecane during the 1830s. Using tactics they had copied from the Zulu armies, the Kololo conquered the Luyana on the Zambezi floodplains and imposed their rule and language. However, by 1864 the indigenous population revolted and overthrew the Kololo. By that time, the Luyana language had been largely forgotten; the new hybrid language is called Lozi or Silozi and is closer to Sesotho than to any other neighbouring languages in Zambia.

Lozi is also spoken in Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Namibia (Zambezi Region)."...

****
Excerpt #2:
From https://www.facebook.com/LearnLozi/posts/1037003909684371 Learn Lozi, January 30, 2016 ·
"Days of the week | Mazaza a sunda.
Sunda » Sunday
Kachanu kila sunda | Today its sunday.

Mubulo ». Monday
La mubulo | On Monday

Bubeli» Tuesday
Nikaya kwa musika la bubeli | I will be going to th market on tuesday.

Bulaalu » Wednesday
Nenile kwa sikolo la balaalu | I went to school on wednesday.

Bune » Thursday
Kamuso kila bune | Tomorrow is Thursday.

Bufaifi » Friday
Maluba lani la bufaifi | Previous day was friday.

Pelekelo » Saturday
Kachenu kila pelekelo | Today its saturday."

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Visitor comments are welcome.

Saturday, April 22, 2017

Names For The Days Of The Week In Arabic & In Seven (African) Bantu Languages

Edited by Azizi Powell

This pancocojams post provides information about and lists for names of the days of the week in Arabic and provides general information about Bantu languages.

This post also presents information about and names for days of the week in seven Bantu languages in Africa: chiShona, Kikongo, Kikuyu, Kimbundu, KiSwahili, Lingala, and Luganda.

This post is part of an ongoing pancocojams series that provides information about and lists for day names in various African languages. Click the "African languages days of the week" tag to find other posts in this ongoing series.

The content of this post is presented for linguistic, cultural, and educational purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post.

Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2017/04/an-excerptfrom-joseph-k-adjayes-book.html for more historical and cultural information related to the names of the days of the week in KiSwahili, Lingala, and Luganda.

Also, click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2017/04/names-of-days-of-week-in-nine-south.html for Part 1 of a two part series on the names for days of the week in nine South African languages. The link for Part II is given in that post. All of the featured languages in that series are Bantu languages.

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GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT ARABIC, INFORMATION ABOUT ISLAM IN AFRICA, AND NAMES FOR DAYS OF THE WEEK IN ARABIC
Excerpt #1:
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic#Arabic_speakers_and_other_languages
"Arabic ... is a Central Semitic language that was first spoken in Iron Age northwestern Arabia and is now the lingua franca of the Arab world.[4] Arabic is also the liturgical language of 1.7 billion Muslims.[5][6][7] It is one of six official languages of the United Nations.[8] It is named after the Arabs, a term initially used to describe peoples living from Mesopotamia in the east to the Anti-Lebanon mountains in the west, and from northwestern Arabia to the Sinai in the south.

Arabic is considered, in its standard form and dialects, a single language; it is spoken by perhaps as many as 422 million speakers (native and non-native) in the Arab world,[9] making it one of the five most spoken languages in the world."

****
Excerpt #2
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Africa
"Africa was the first continent into which Islam spread from Asia in the early 7th century. Almost one-third of the world's Muslim population resides in the continent.Most Muslims in Africa are Sunni; the complexity of Islam in Africa is revealed in the various schools of thought, traditions, and voices in many African countries. African Islam is not static and is constantly being reshaped by prevalent social, economic, and political conditions. Generally Islam in Africa often adapted to African cultural contexts and belief systems forming Africa's own orthodoxies.

It was estimated in 2002 that Muslims constitute 48% of the population of Africa.[2] Islam has a large presence in North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Swahili Coast, and much of West Africa, with minority but significant immigrant populations in South Africa. However, Islam has encountered criticism and resistance in several nations of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Spread of Islam in Africa

On the advice of Muhammad, in Rajab 8BH, or May 614AD, twenty three Muslims migrated to Abyssinia where they were protected by its king, Al-Najashi, who may have accepted Islam later. They were followed by 101 Muslims later in the same year. Most of those Muslims returned to Medina in 7H/628AD but some settled in the neighboring Zeila which was at that time part of Bilad al-Barbar. Those that settled there later built Masjid al-Qiblatayn. In 20H/641AD during the reign of Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab, Muslim troops took over current Egypt and conquered current Libya the following year. Muslims then expanded to current Tunisia in 27H/647AD during the reign of the third Muslim Caliph, Uthman Ibn Affan.

The conquest of North Africa continued under the Umayyad dynasty,taking Algeria by 61H/680AD, and Morocco the following year. From the latter Muslim troops crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to Europe in 92H/711AD. Islam gained momentum during the 10th century in West Africa with the start of the Almoravids movement on the Senegal River and as rulers and kings embraced Islam.[citation needed] Islam then spread slowly in much of the continent through trade and preaching.[3] By the 9th century Muslim Sultanates started being established in the Horn of Africa, and by the 12th century the Kilwa Sultanate had spread as far south as Mozambique. Islam only crossed deeper into Malawi and Congo in the second half of the 19th century under the Zanzibar Sultanate. Then the British brought their labor force from India, including some Muslim-Indian nationals, to their African colonies towards the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries."...
-snip-
This quote was reformatted for this post to enhance its readability.

****
Excerpt #3:
From https://wordadayarabic.com/2013/02/17/days-of-the-week/
..."The Arabic word for “day” is يَوم (yawm), and properly the name of each day is يَوم plus the word from the list below (as, in English, we append “day” onto other words to create the names of the days: “Sun” + “day” = “Sunday,” etc.). However, you will often see يَوم omitted and the days simply called by the names listed below:

Monday = الإثْنَين (al-ithnayn)
Tuesday = الثَلاثاء (al-thalāthāʾ)
Wednesday = الأربَعاء (al-arbaʿāʾ)
Thursday = الخَميس (al-khamīs)
Friday = الجُمُعة (al-jumuʿah)
Saturday = السَبْت (al-sabt)
Sunday = الأحَد (al-aḥad)

Other than Friday and Saturday, these names are derived from the cardinal numbers.... So “Sunday” is literally “first day,” Monday “second day,” and so on.

“Week” is أسبوع (usbūʿ), from سَبَع (sabaʿ) or “seven,” and “days of the week” is أيام الأسبوع (ayām al-usbūʿ).

The makeup of the work week in the Arab world varies by country. Friday, you probably know, is the Islamic Sabbath. This is actually reflected in the word for “Friday,” which is derived from the verb جَمَعَ (jamaʿa), meaning “to collect,” which in other forms can mean “meeting” or “congregating,” and so the name of the day refers to the fact that Friday is the one day when Muslims are expected to attend a large congregational mosque for formal prayer services (Islam requires several daily prayers, but these can be done alone, in small or large groups, in small or large mosques or any other suitable location; the midday Friday prayer is the one obligatory weekly large group prayer in the mosque).

The traditional Islamic “weekend” was Thursday-Friday, mirroring our Saturday-Sunday, but globalization and the demands of interacting with non-Muslims for business have caused a number of countries to shift to a Friday-Saturday weekend, which means their work week and non-Muslims’ work week are only off by two days rather than four. Saudi Arabia, Oman, and the Yemen still practice the Thursday-Friday weekend according to the fine folks at Wikipedia, while Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Qatar, the Sudan, Syria, and the UAE use the Friday-Saturday weekend. Lebanon, Morocco, and Tunisia actually use a Saturday-Sunday weekend; this makes a certain amount of sense in the case of Lebanon, where Christians were in the majority at least until the mid-20th century, but I am at a loss as to why Morocco and Tunisia are on that schedule (or at least why they would be Saturday-Sunday while Algeria was Thursday-Friday until 2009, when it went to Friday-Saturday)."
-snip-
This excerpt replaces a shorter one that I initially quoted in this post and is reformatted for this post to enhance its readability .

This list is also found in Part I of the pancocojams series because Arabic influenced certain West African languages:
https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2017/04/names-of-week-in-ten-traditional.html Names For Days of The Week In Ten Traditional Nigerian Languages.

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GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT BANTU LANGUAGES
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantu_languages
"The Bantu languages technically the Narrow Bantu languages (as opposed to "Wide Bantu", a loosely defined categorization which includes other Bantoid languages), constitute a traditional branch of the Niger–Congo languages. There are about 250 Bantu languages by the criterion of mutual intelligibility,[3] though the distinction between language and dialect is often unclear, and Ethnologue counts 535 languages.[4] Bantu languages are spoken largely east and south of present-day Cameroon, that is, in the regions commonly known as Central Africa, Southeast Africa, and Southern Africa. Parts of the Bantu area include languages
from other language families (see map).

Estimates of number of speakers of most languages vary widely, due both to the lack of accurate statistics in most developing countries and the difficulty in defining exactly where the boundaries of a language lie, particularly in the presence of a dialect continuum.

The Bantu language with the largest total number of speakers is Swahili; however, the majority of its speakers know it as a second language. According to Ethnologue, there are over 180 million L2 (second-language) speakers, but only about 2 million native speakers.[5]

Other major languages include Zulu with 27 million speakers (15.7 million L2) and Shona with about 11 million speakers (if Manyika and Ndau are included).[6][7] Ethnologue separates the largely mutually intelligible Kinyarwanda and Kirundi, which, if grouped together, have 12.4 million speakers.[8]

[...]

The technical term Bantu, meaning "human beings" or simply "people", was first used by Wilhelm Bleek (1827–1875), as this is reflected in many of the languages of this group. A common characteristic of Bantu languages is that they use words such as muntu or mutu for "human being" or in simplistic terms "person", and the plural prefix for human nouns starting with mu- (class 1) in most languages is ba- (class 2), thus giving bantu for "people". Bleek, and later Carl Meinhof, pursued extensive studies comparing the grammatical structures of Bantu languages."...

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THE NAMES OF DAYS OF THE WEEK IN FIVE BANTU LANGUAGES IN AFRICA.
(This list is given in alphabetical order, with the exception of KiSwahili since the names of the days for a number of these languages were influenced by KiSwahili.)

KiSwahili (Swahili)
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swahili_language
"Swahili, also known as Kiswahili, is a Bantu language and the first language of the Swahili people. It is a lingua franca of the African Great Lakes region and other parts of eastern and southeastern Africa, including Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.[7] The closely related Comorian language, spoken in the Comoros Islands, is sometimes considered a dialect.

Estimates of the total number of Swahili speakers vary widely, from 50 million to over 100 million.[2][8] Swahili serves as a national language of three nations: Tanzania, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Shikomor, the official language in Comoros and also spoken in Mayotte (Shimaore), is related to Swahili. Swahili is also one of the working languages of the African Union and officially recognised as a lingua franca of the East African Community.[9]

A significant fraction of Swahili vocabulary is derived from Arabic through contact with Arabic-speaking Muslim inhabitants of the Swahili Coast.[10]

[...]

Origin
Swahili is traditionally regarded as being the language of coastal areas of Tanzania and Kenya. It was formalised after independence by presidents of the African Great Lakes region but first spoken by natives of the coastal mainland. It spread as a fisherman's language to the various islands surrounding the Swahili Coast. Traders from these islands had extensive contact with the coastal peoples from at least the 2nd century A.D., and Swahili began to spread along the Swahili Coast from at least the 6th century. There is also cultural evidence of early Zaramo people settlement on Zanzibar from Dar es Salaam in present-day Tanzania.

The earliest known documents written in Swahili are letters written in Kilwa in 1711 A.D. in the Arabic script that were sent to the Portuguese of Mozambique and their local allies. The original letters are now preserved in the Historical Archives of Goa, India.[12]

[...]

Name
Kiswahili is the Swahili word for the language and is also sometimes used in English. The name Swahili comes from the plural sawāḥil (سواحل) of the Arabic word sāḥil (ساحل), meaning "boundary" or "coast", used as an adjective meaning "coastal dwellers". (The same word is the origin of the term Sahel.) With the prefix ki-, it means "coastal language", ki- being a prefix attached to nouns of the noun class such as languages.”...

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Excerpt #2:
From http://www.surfacelanguages.com/language/Swahili/reviewwords/Days-of-the-week.html
"Monday - Jumatatu
Tuesday - Jumanne
Wednesday- Jumatano
Thursday- Alhamisi
Friday- Ijumaa
Saturday- Jumamosi
Sunday- Jumapili"
-snip-
Note this sentence clip: "ki- being a prefix attached to nouns of the noun class such as languages.”...
The prefix "ki" is also found in other languages that are highlighted in this post (as well as in the names for some of the days of the week in those languages).

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chiShona (Shona)
Excerpt #1:
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shona_language
"Shona or chiShona, is the most widely first spoken Bantu language, native to the Shona people of Zimbabwe. The term is also used to identify peoples who speak one of the Central Shona varieties: Zezuru, Karanga, Manyika and Korekore. Based on Clement Doke's 1931 report, Union Shona or Standard Shona was developed from the Central Shona varieties. Because of the presence of the capital city in the Zezuru region, that variety has come to dominate in Standard Shona.

Shona is an official language of Zimbabwe. Other countries that host Shona language speakers include Botswana, Mozambique and South Africa due to the influx of economical refugees fleeing the economic crisis in Zimbabwe.

The larger group of historically related languages (called Shona languages by linguists) also includes Ndau (Eastern Shona) and Kalanga (Western Shona), but speakers of those languages prefer their distinct identities and usually reject any connection to the term Shona."

****
Excerpt #2
[Shona] Days of the week
"Monday: muvhuro
Tuesday: chipiri
Wednesday: chitatu
Thursday: china
Friday: chishanu
Saturday: mugovera
Sunday: svondo"
-snip-
-snip-
Notice the prefix "chi" in the language name "chiShona". This prefix is used in some Bantu languages to designate language. Here's an quote about other examples of this "chi" prefix used to designate Bantu languages:
"Chewa, also known as Nyanja, is a language of the Bantu language family. The noun class prefix chi- is used for languages,[4] so the language is also called Chichewa and Chinyanja (spelled Cinyanja in Zambia, and Cinianja in Mozambique)." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewa_language

****
Kikongo (Kongo)
Excerpt #1:
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kongo_language
"Kongo or Kikongo is one of the Bantu languages and is spoken by the Kongo and Ndundu people living in the tropical forests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo and Angola. It is a tonal language. It was spoken by many of those who were taken from the region and sold as slaves in the Americas. For this reason, while Kongo still is spoken in the above-mentioned countries, creolized forms of the language are found in ritual speech of Afro-American religions, especially in Brazil, Cuba, and Haiti. It is also one of the sources of the Gullah language and the Palenquero creole in Colombia. The vast majority of present-day speakers live in Africa. There are roughly seven million native speakers of Kongo, with perhaps two million more who use it as a second language.

Kikongo is the base for a creole used throughout the region: Kituba, also called Kikongo de L'état or Kikongo ya Leta ("Kongo of the state" in French or Kongo), Kituba and Monokituba (also Munukituba). The constitution of the Republic of the Congo uses the name Kitubà, and the one of the Democratic Republic of the Congo uses the term Kikongo, even if Kituba is used in the administration.

[...]

English words of Kongo origin
The Southern American English word "goober", meaning peanut, comes from Kongo nguba.[8]

The word "zombie" comes from Kongo nzombie, meaning "dead.". "Nfumu ya nzombie" is "Chief of the dead", or God.

The word funk, or funky, in American popular music has its origin, some say, in the Kongo word Lu-fuki.[9] [10]

The name of the Cuban dance mambo comes from a Bantu word meaning "conversation with the gods"."..

****
Excerpt #2:
From http://www.masteranylanguage.com/c/r/o/Kongo/DaysOfWeek/2 Kongo Days Of The Week
"Kimosi - Monday

Kizolé - Tuesday

Kitatu - Wednesday

Kiyá - Thursday

Kitanu - Friday

Sabala - Saturday

Lumingu – Sunday"

****
Kikuyu (Gikuyu)
Excerpt #1:
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kikuyu_language
"Kikuyu or Gikuyu … is a language of the Bantu family spoken primarily by the Kikuyu people (Agĩkũyũ) of Kenya. Numbering about 7 million (22% of Kenya's population),[4] they are the largest ethnic group in Kenya.[5] Kikuyu is spoken in the area between Nyeri and Nairobi. Kikuyu is one of the five languages of the Thagichu subgroup of the Bantu languages, which stretches from Kenya to Tanzania. The Kikuyu people usually identify their lands by the surrounding mountain ranges in Central Kenya which they call Kĩrĩnyaga.

Dialects
Kikuyu has four main mutually intelligible dialects. The Central Province districts are divided along the traditional boundaries of these dialects, which are Kîrînyaga, Mûrang'a, Nyeri and Kiambu. The Kikuyu from Kîrînyaga are composed of two main sub-dialects – the Ndia and Gichugu who speak the dialects Kĩndia and Gĩgĩcũgũ. The Gicugus and the Ndias do not have the "ch" or "sh" sound, and will use the "s" sound instead, hence the pronunciation of "Gĩcũgũ" as opposed to "Gĩchũgũ". To hear Ndia being spoken, one needs to be in Kerugoya, the largest town in Kîrînyaga. Other home towns for the Ndia, where purer forms of the dialect are spoken, are located in the tea-growing areas of Kagumo, and the cool Kangaita hills. Lower down the slopes is Kutus, which is a bustling dusty town with so many influences from the other dialects that it is difficult to distinguish between them.

The unmistakable sing-song Gichugu dialect (which sounds like Embu, a sister language to Kikuyu) can be heard in the coffee-growing areas of Kianyaga, Gĩthũre, Kathũngũri, Marigiti. The Gichugu switch easily to other Kikuyu dialects in conversation with the rest of the Kikuyu.

**
Excerpt #2:
From https://quizlet.com/134014970/kikuyu-days-of-the-week-flash-cards/ Days Of The Week In Kikuyu
"Monday
(Mũthenya) wa mbere - the first day (not in common usage)

Jumatatũ
From Kiswahili (in common usage)

Tuesday
(Mũthenya) wa kerĩ - the second day

Wednesday
(Mũthenya) wa gatatũ - the third day

Thursday
(Mũthenya) wa kana - the fourth day

Friday
(Mũthenya) wa gatano - the fifth day, (Mũthenya)
Juma From Kiswahili

Saturday
Mũthenya) wa Jumamothi
From Kiswahili
The logical (Mũthenya) wa gatandatũ, is not used today.

Sunday
(Mũthenya) wa Kiumia
Literally the day of coming out/stopping what you are doing.

The logical (Mũthenya) wa mũgwanja - the seventh day - is not used."

****
Kimbundu (North Mbundu)
Note that Kimbundu is now considered one of two languages [the other being Umbundu) that are collectively called Mbundu.

Excerpt #1
From http://afkinsider.com/51513/most-commonly-spoken-bantu-languages/3/
Mbundu – 6 million [speakers]
"Mbundu is comprised of two langauges: Kimbundu, or North Mbundu, and Umbundu, or South Mbundu. They are spoken throughout Angola, and both reflect a heavy Portuguese influence from the country’s colonial period. A 1919 colonial decree banned the use of local languages in schools, making Portuguese obligatory. This reduced the number of native speakers, but Mbundu remains a prominently spoken language in Angola today."

****
Excerpt #2:
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimbundu
"Kimbundu, or North Mbundu, one of two Bantu languages called Mbundu (see Umbundu), is the second-most-widely spoken Bantu language in Angola. It is concentrated in the north-west of the country, notably in the Luanda Province, Bengo Province, Malanje Province and the Cuanza Norte Province. It is spoken by the Ambundu.[4]"...

****
Excerpt #3:
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbundu
Umbundu, or South Mbundu..., one of two Bantu languages of Angola called Mbundu (see Kimbundu), is the most widely spoken language of Angola. Speakers are known as Ovimbundu, who constitute a third of the Angolan people. Their homeland is the Central Highlands of Angola and the coastal region west of these highlands, including the cities of Benguela and Lobito. Because of recent internal migration there are now also large communities in Luanda and its surrounding province, as well as in Lubango."...

****
Excerpt #4:
[Excerpt from Folk-tales of Angola: Fifty Tales, with Ki-mbundu Text, Literal English Translation, Volume 1 by Héli Chatelain [1884] [Google books, page 270], given as is [without accent marks in the word "kizua"]
"Kia-lumingu The full form is kizua kis lumingu, i.e. the day of lumingu. This lumingu is the Ki-mbundu pronunciation for the Portuguese "Domingo", which again is the Portuguese pronunciation of the Latin "Domincus", i.e. "the Lord". Therefore, kia-lumingu means in its Latin origin "the day of the Lord". It is used for Sunday. The days of the week, in Ki-mbundu, are, Sunday, kia-lumingu; Monday, kia-xikunda, from Portuguese "segunda (fiera), i.e. second (holy day); Tuesday - kia-telesa, from "tercs"; Wednesday -kia-kinda from "quinta"; Friday, kia-sexta, from "sexta", Saturday- kia-sabalu, from "sabbado". In literary Kimbundu, these exotic names will probably be superseded by the native names Kia-Ngana, Kiaiadi, Kiatatu, Kianana, Kiatanu, Kiasamanu, Kiasambuadi"
-snip-
A digitized form of this book can be found at https://archive.org/stream/folktalesangola00chatgoog/folktalesangola00chatgoog_djvu.txt

****
Lingala
Excerpt #1
From
"Lingala (Ngala) is a Bantu language spoken throughout the northwestern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and a large part of the Republic of the Congo, as well as to some degree in Angola and the Central African Republic. It has over 10 million speakers.

History
In the 19th century, before the creation of the Congo Free State, the Bangala (literally: 'river people') were a group of similar Bantu peoples living and trading along the bend of the Congo River that reached from Irebu at the mouth of the Ubangi River to the Mongala River. They spoke similar languages, such as Losengo, but their trade language was Bangi, which was the most prestigious language between Stanley Pool (Kinshasa) and Irebu. As a result, people upstream of the Bangala mistook Bangi for the language of the Bangala and called it Lingala (language of the Bangala), and European missionaries followed suit.

[...]

Name
European missionaries called the language Bangala, after the Bangala people, or Lingala. The latter was intended to mean '(language) of the Bangala' or 'of the River' (that is, 'Riverine Language'). However, this was an error, as the proper Bangi form would have been Kingala.[4] The name Lingala first appears in writing in a publication by the C.I.C.M. missionary Egide De Boeck (1903).

Characteristics and usage
According to some linguists, Lingala language is a Bantu-based creole of Central Africa.[5] In its basic vocabulary, Lingala has many borrowings words from different other languages such as in French, Spanish, Portuguese, and English.

In practice, the extent of borrowing varies widely with speakers of different regions (commonly among young people), and during different occasions."...

****
Excerpt #2:
From http://afkinsider.com/51513/most-commonly-spoken-bantu-languages/7/
"Lingala – 10 million [speakers]

Spoken primarily in the northwestern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and large swaths of the Republic of Congo, Lingala is the product of a blending of several dialects that were historically spoken by peoples living along the Congo River. There are several variations of Lingala, with Standard Lingala used most widely in public and official spaces (including in education and media broadcasting), while Spoken Lingala is more common in day-to-day use."

****
Excerpt #3:
From https://quizlet.com/55854930/days-of-the-week-in-lingala-flash-cards/
[Lingala Days Of The Week]
"Monday - mokolo ya loboso

Tuesday - mokolo ya mibale

Wednesday - mokolo ya misato

Thursday - mokolo ya minei

Friday - mokolo ya mitano

Saturday - mokolo ya mposo

Sunday - Mokolo ya yenga"

****
Luganda (Ganda)
Excerpt #1:
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luganda
"The Ganda language, Luganda, is one of the major languages in Uganda, spoken by five million Baganda and other people principally in Southern Uganda, including the capital Kampala. It belongs to the Bantu branch of the Niger–Congo language family. Typologically, it is a highly agglutinating language with subject–verb–object word order and nominative–accusative morphosyntactic alignment.

With about four million first-language-speakers in the Buganda region and a million others who are fluent, it is the most widely spoken Ugandan language. As second language it follows English and precedes Swahili. The language is used in some primary schools in Buganda as pupils begin to learn English, the primary official language of Uganda. Until the 1960s, Luganda was also the official language of instruction in primary schools in Eastern Uganda.

[...]

Phonology
A notable feature of Luganda phonology is its geminate consonants and distinctions between long and short vowels. Speakers generally consider consonantal gemination and vowel lengthening to be two manifestations of the same effect, which they call simply "doubling" or "stressing".

Luganda is also a tonal language; the change in the pitch of a syllable can change the meaning of a word. For example, the word kabaka means 'king' if all three syllables are given the same pitch. If the first syllable is high then the meaning changes to 'the little one catches' (third person singular present tense Class VI ka- of -baka 'to catch'). This feature makes Luganda a difficult language for speakers of non-tonal languages to learn. A non-native speaker has to learn the variations of pitch by prolonged listening.[6]"...

****
Excerpt #2:
From http://www.buganda.com/ggulama.htm#daywk
"Ganda Days of the Week

Note: the week starts on Monday!

Classical Name
Kazooba
Walumbe
Mukasa
Kiwanuka
Nnagawonye
Wamunyi
Wangu

Alternative Name
Bbalaza
Lwakubiri
Lwakusatu
Lwakuna
Lwakutaano
Lwamukaaga
Ssande"

****
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Visitor comments are welcome.

Friday, April 21, 2017

Names For Days Of The Week In Nine Bantu Languages That Are Spoken In The Nation Of South Africa (Part II)

Edited by Azizi Powell

This is Part II of a two part pancocojams series on the names for the days of the week in nine traditional languages in the nation of South Africa.

Part II of this series provides information about and lists of the days of the week in Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa and Zulu languages.

Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2017/04/names-of-days-of-week-in-nine-south.html for Part I of this series. Part I provides a general overview of South Africa's official languages and provides information about and lists of the days of the week in Ndebele, Northern Sotho, Sotho, and Swazi languages.

Note that the languages featured in this series may also be spoken in other Southern African nations.

This pancocojams series is part of an ongoing series that provides information about and lists of day names in various African languages. Click the "African languages days of the week" tag to find other posts in this ongoing series.

The content of this post is presented for linguistic, cultural, and educational purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post.

****
DAYS FOR DAYS OF THE WEEK IN FIVE TRADITIONAL NIGERIAN LANGUAGES
(This list is given in alphabetical order.)

SETSWANA (Tswana)
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tswana_language
"The Tswana language, Setswana, is a language spoken in southern Africa by about five million people.[1] It is a Bantu language belonging to the Niger–Congo language family within the Sotho-Tswana branch of Zone S (S.30), and is closely related to the Northern- and Southern Sotho languages, as well as the Kgalagadi language and the Lozi language.

Tswana is an official language and lingua franca of Botswana. The majority of Tswana speakers are found in the north of South Africa, where four million people speak the language, and where an urbanised variety known as Pretoria Sotho is the principal language of that city. The two South African provinces with largest number of speakers are Gauteng (circa 11%) and North West (over 63%). Until 1994, South African Tswana people were notionally citizens of Bophuthatswana, one of the bantustans of the apartheid regime. Although Tswana language is significantly spoken in South Africa and Botswana, a small number of speakers are also found in Zimbabwe and Namibia, where respectively an unknown number of people and about 10,000 people speak the language.[1]"...

****
Excerpt #2:
From http://www.salanguages.com/setswana/words.htm
"Days of the week [Setswana]
Sunday - Latshipi
Monday - Mosupologo
Tuesday - Labobedi
Wednesday - Laboraro
Thursday - Labone
Friday - Labotlhano
Saturday - Lamatlhatso"

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TSONGA
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsonga_language
Tsonga (Xitsonga) is a southern African Bantu language spoken by the Tsonga people. It was officially created in 1875 at the Valdezia Mission Station and Elim/Waterval/ Shirley Mission Stations by two Swiss missionaries, Reverend Paul Berthoud and Reverend Ernest Creux. Prior to the arrival of the Missionaries at Valdezia, the Tsonga people in that region that includes, Bungeni, Chavani, Mbhokota, Shirley, Riverplaats, Elim, Waterval, Nwaxinyamani and adjacent areas did not speak one language, but rather, they spoke a diverse of east coast dialects all related to modern Tsonga language. The Swiss Missionaries combined all these east coast dialects, such as Xigwamba, XiNkuna, Xihlengwe, XiTembe, XiValoyi, XiNyembani, Xitswa, XiRonga, and XiChopi to form a new unified superlanguage which they called 'Thonga', but they later modified it and renamed Xitsonga or simply Tsonga.

[...]

Official status
Tsonga is an official language in South Africa. It has been suggested to be made official in Zimbabwe according to the new constitution. All Tswa-Ronga languages are recognised in Mozambique. It is not official in Swaziland.

****
Excerpt #2:
From http://www.salanguages.com/xitsonga/words.htm
"Days of the week [Tsonga]
Sunday - Sonto
Monday - Musumbunuku
Tuesday - Ravumbirhi
Wednesday - Ravurharhu
Thursday - Ravumune
Friday - Ravunthlanu
Saturday – Muqivela"

****
VENDA
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venda_language
Venda

"Venda, also known as Tshivenḓa or Luvenḓa, is a Bantu language and an official language of South Africa. It is mainly spoken by the Venda people in the northern part of South Africa's Limpopo Province, as well as by some Lemba people in Zimbabwe. The Venda language is related to Kalanga (Western Shona, different from Shona, official language of Zimbabwe) which is spoken in Botswana and Zimbabwe. During the Apartheid era of South Africa, the bantustan of Venda was set up to cover the Venda speakers of South Africa."...

****
From http://www.omniglot.com/language/time/days.htm
Venda days of the Week
Musumbuluwo [Monday]
Ḽavhuvhili [Tuesday]
Ḽavhuraru [Wednesday]
Ḽavhuṋa {Thursday]
Ḽavhutanu [Friday]
Mugivhela [Saturday]
Swondaha [Sunday]

****
isiXHOSA
Excerpt #1
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xhosa_people
"The Xhosa people are a Bantu ethnic group of Southern Africa mainly found in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, and in the last two centuries throughout the southern and central-southern parts of the country. There is a small but significant Xhosa (Mfengu) community in South Africa with its language, Xhosa, being a recognized South African national language.[4][5]

[...]

Presently approximately 8 million Xhosa are distributed across the country, and the Xhosa language is South Africa's second-most-populous home language, after Zulu, to which Xhosa is closely related. The pre-1994 apartheid system of Bantustans denied Xhosas South African citizenship, but enabled them to have self-governing "homelands" namely; Transkei and Ciskei, now both a part of the Eastern Cape Province where most Xhosa remain. Many Xhosa live in Cape Town (eKapa in Xhosa), East London (eMonti), and Port Elizabeth (eBhayi).

[...]

Xhosa is an agglutinative tonal language of the Bantu family. While the Xhosas call their language "isiXhosa", it is usually referred to as "Xhosa" in English. Written Xhosa uses a Latin alphabet–based system. Xhosa is spoken by about 18% of the South African population, and has some mutual intelligibility with Zulu, especially Zulu spoken in urban areas. Many Xhosa speakers, particularly those living in urban areas, also speak Zulu and/or Afrikaans and/or English.

Among its features, the Xhosa language famously has fifteen click sounds, originally borrowed from now extinct Khoisan languages of the region. Xhosa has eighteen click consonants, pronounced at three places in the mouth: a series of dental clicks, written with the letter "c"; a series of alveolar clicks, written with the letter "q"; and a series of lateral clicks, written with the letter "x". "...

****
Excerpt #2:
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xhosa_calendar#Days_of_the_week
"Days of the week [Xhosa]
Sunday - iCawe
Monday - uMvulo
Tuesday - uLwesibini
Wednesday - uLwesithathu
Thursday - uLwesine
Friday - uLwesihlanu
Saturday - uMgqibelo"

****
isiZULU
Excerpt #1:
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zulu_people
"The Zulu (Zulu: amaZulu) are a Bantu ethnic group of Southern Africa and the largest ethnic group in South Africa, with an estimated 10–11 million people living mainly in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. Small numbers also live in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique.

[...]

Language
The language of the Zulu people is "isiZulu", a Bantu language; more specifically, part of the Nguni subgroup. Zulu is the most widely spoken language in South Africa, where it is an official language. More than half of the South African population are able to understand it, with over 9 million first-language and over 15 million second-language speakers.[5] Many Zulu people also speak Afrikaans, English, Portuguese, Xitsonga, Sesotho and others from among South Africa's 11 official languages.

[...]

Modern Zulu population
The modern Zulu population is fairly evenly distributed in both urban and rural areas. Although KwaZulu-Natal is still their heartland, large numbers have been attracted to the relative economic prosperity of Gauteng province. Indeed, Zulu is the most widely spoken home language in the province, followed by Sotho."...

****
Excerpt #2
From http://www.phrasebase.com/archive2/zulu/days-of-the-week.html
"Zulu Days of the week:
Monday - uMsombuluko (the day of unfolding)

Tuesday - uLwesibili (the second day - bili = two)

Wednesday - uLwesithathu (the third day - thathu = three)

Thursday - uLwesine (4th)

Friday - uLwesihlanu (5th)

Saturday - uMgqibelo (note the click!)

Sunday - Isonto (which also means 'church' - ie, the day of Church, and 'week' - ie, the period between church days)"

****
This concludes this two part series on nine South African languages.

Thanks for visiting pancocojams.

Visitor comments are welcome.

Names For Days Of The Week In Nine Bantu Languages That Are Spoken In The Nation Of South Africa (Part I)

Edited by Azizi Powell

This is Part I of a two part pancocojams series on the names for the days of the week in nine traditional languages in the nation of South Africa.

Part I provides a general overview of South Africa's official languages and provides information about and lists of the days of the week in Ndebele, Northern Sotho, Sotho, and Swazi languages.

Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2017/04/names-of-days-of-week-in-nine-south_21.html for Part II of this series. Part II provides information about and lists of the days of the week in four South African languages- Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa and Zulu languages.

Note that the languages featured in this series may be spoken in other Southern African nations.

This pancocojams series is part of an ongoing series that provides information about and lists of day names in various African languages. Click the "African languages days of the week" tag to find other posts in this ongoing series.

The content of this post is presented for linguistic, cultural, and educational purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post.

****
GENERAL OVERVIEW OF SOUTH AFRICA'S OFFICIAL LANGUAGES
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_South_Africa
"There are eleven official languages of South Africa: Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Northern Sotho, Sotho, Swazi, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa and Zulu. Fewer than two percent of South Africans speak a first language other than an official one.[2] Most South Africans can speak more than one language. Dutch and English were the first official languages of South Africa from 1910 to 1925. Afrikaans was added as a part of Dutch in 1925, although in practice, Afrikaans effectively replaced Dutch, which fell into disuse. When South Africa became a republic in 1961 the official relationship changed such that Afrikaans was considered to include Dutch,[3] and Dutch was dropped in 1984, so between 1984 and 1994, South Africa had two official languages: English and Afrikaans.[4]

Different government departments and official bodies use different terms to denote Northern Sotho.[5][6] In South Africa, Southern Ndebele is known simply as Ndebele, as most speakers of Northern Ndebele live in Zimbabwe.

Since taking power in the 1994 election, the ANC has promoted English as the main language of government, even if South Africans often take pride in using indigenous languages for any purpose. Afrikaans also features prominently in commerce together with English, as the languages with the highest number of fluent speakers are Afrikaans and English.

In terms of linguistic classification, the official languages include two West Germanic languages (English and Afrikaans) and nine Bantu languages. Four of these are Nguni languages (Zulu, Xhosa, Swati and Ndebele) and three are Sotho–Tswana languages (Northern Sotho, Southern Sotho and Tswana). Tsonga is a Tswa–Ronga language.

South African Sign Language is understood across the country, though sometimes sign-language interpreters use manually coded language.
-snip-
Click https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrikaans for information about Afrikaans.

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NAMES FOR DAYS OF THE WEEK IN FIVE SOUTH AFRICAN LANGUAGES
(This list is given in alphabetical order.)

NDEBELE
Excerpt #1:
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Ndebele_language
"The Transvaal Ndebele language (Southern Ndebele, isiNdebele or Nrebele) is an African language belonging to the Nguni group of Bantu languages, and spoken by the amaNdebele (the Ndebele people of South Africa).
There is also another language called Zimbabwean Ndebele, or Matabele, spoken in Zimbabwe, which is closer to Zulu than other Nguni dialects.[5]

Language
Ndebele is one of the eleven official languages in the Republic of South Africa. The language is a Nguni or Zunda classification (UN) spoken mostly in the Mpumalanga Province, Gauteng, Limpopo and the Northwest.
The expression "isikhethu" can be loosely translated to mean 'the Ndebele way of doing or saying'. Isikhethu means Ndebele the same way that sikitsi will mean Swazi and se harona will mean Sotho. The language has been severely marginalised over the years. Until the formation of the apartheid Ndebele homeland (KwaNdebele), speaking the language publicly was discouraged. Most Ndebele speakers preferred Zulu especially because the latter was learned at school. Today the Ndebele speakers, mostly those who are educated still prefer to use Ndebele as home language for their children and will use Ndebele as a language to communicate with other Ndebele speakers."...

****
Excerpt #2
From https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5893219718076521675#editor/target=post;postID=2065514550286778671
"Days of the week
Sunday - uSonto
Monday - uMvulo
Tuesday - uLesibili
Wednesday - uLesithathu
Thursday - uLesine
Friday - uLesihlanu
Saturday - uMgqibelo"

****
SESOTHO sa LEBOA (Northern Sotho),
Excerpt #1
From https:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Sotho_language
"Northern Sotho (Sesotho sa Leboa, also known by the name of its standardised dialect Sepedi or Pedi) is a Bantu language spoken primarily in South Africa, where it is one of the 11 official languages. According to the 2011 census it was the first language of 4,618,576 people in South Africa, principally in the provinces of Limpopo, Gauteng and Mpumalanga.[5]

Urban varieties of Northern Sotho, such as Pretoria Sotho (actually a derivative of Tswana), have acquired clicks in an ongoing process of such sounds spreading from Nguni languages.[6]

[...]

Confusion of nomenclature with Sepedi
Northern Sotho has often been equated with its major component Sepedi, and continued to be known as Pedi or Sepedi for some years after the new South African constitution appeared. However, the Pan South African Language Board and the Northern Sotho National Lexicography Unit now specifically prefer and endorse the names Northern Sotho or Sesotho sa Leboa.

The original confusion arose from the fact that the (now official) Northern Sotho written language was based largely on Sepedi (for which missionaries first developed the orthography), but has subsequently provided a common writing system for 20 or more varieties of the Sotho-Tswana languages spoken in the former Transvaal (including dialects of Sepedi). The name "Sepedi" thus refers specifically to the language of the Pedi people, while "Northern Sotho" refers to the official language of that name and to all the speech varieties it has been taken to cover. (It should be noted that the ethnic name "Pedi" also refers to a ruling group that established its dominance over other communities in the 18th century and to the culture and lifestyle of that group and of those over whom it ruled.)"...

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Excerpt #2
From http://iitranslation.com/resources/English-Sesotho-sa-Leboa.html Sesotho sa Leboa (Northern Sotho)
"Days of the week
Sunday - Lamorena / Sôntaga
Monday -Mošupologô
Tuesday -Labobêdi
Wednesday-Laboraro
Thursday-Labonê
Friday-Labohlano
Saturday-Mokibêlô"

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SESOTHO (Sotho)
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sotho_language
"The Sotho language, Sesotho (/ˈsuːtuː/;,[5] also known as Southern Sotho, or Southern Sesotho[6]) is a Southern Bantu language of the Sotho-Tswana (S.30) group, spoken primarily in South Africa, where it is one of the 11 official languages, and in Lesotho, where it is the national language...

Classification
Sesotho is a Southern Bantu language, belonging to the Niger–Congo language family within the Sotho-Tswana branch of Zone S (S.30)...

The Sotho-Tswana group is in turn closely related to the other Southern Bantu languages, including the Venḓa, Tsonga, Tonga, and Nguni languages, and possibly [clarification needed] also the Makua (zone P) languages of Tanzania and Mozambique.
Sotho is a tribal suffix, i.e. the name of the Sotho people or Basotho, while Sesotho is the term for the "language of the Basotho". Use of Sesotho rather than "Sotho language" in English has seen increasing use since the 1980s, especially in South African English and in Lesotho….
Geographic distribution
According to the South African National Census of 2011, there were almost four million first language Sesotho speakers recorded in South Africa – approximately eight per cent of the population. Sesotho is also the main language spoken by the people of Lesotho, where, according to 1993 data, it was spoken by about 1,493,000 people, or 85% of the population. The census fails, to record other South Africans for whom Sesotho is a second or third language. Such speakers are found in all major residential areas of Metropolitan Municipalities - such as Johannesburg, and Tshwane - where multilingualism and polylectalism are very high.

Official status
Sesotho is one of the eleven official languages of South Africa, and one of the two official languages of Lesotho.

[...]

Derived languages
Sesotho is one of the many languages from which the pseudo-language Tsotsitaal is derived. Tsotsitaal is not a proper language, as it is primarily a unique vocabulary and a set of idioms but used with the grammar and inflexion rules of another language (usually Sesotho or Zulu). It is a part of the youth culture in most Southern Gauteng "townships" and is the primary language used in Kwaito music."

****
Excerpt #2
From http://www.omniglot.com/language/time/days.htm
"Days of the week [in] Sesotho:
Mantaha [Monday]
Labobedi [Tuesday]
Laboraro [Wednesdday]
Labone [Thursday]
Labohlano [Friday]
Moqebelo [Saturday]
Sontaha [Sunday]

****
siSWATI (Swazi)
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swazi_language
"The Swazi or Swati language (Swazi: siSwati [siswatʼi]) is a Bantu language of the Nguni group spoken in Swaziland and South Africa by the Swazi people. The number of speakers is estimated to be in the region of 3 million. The language is taught in Swaziland and some South African schools in Mpumalanga, particularly former KaNgwane areas. Swazi is an official language of Swaziland (along with English), and is also one of the eleven official languages of South Africa.

Although the preferred term is "Swati" among native speakers, in English it is generally referred to as Swazi. Swazi is most closely related to the other "Tekela" Nguni languages, like Phuthi and Northern Transvaal (Sumayela) Ndebele, but is also very close to the "Zunda" Nguni languages: Zulu, Southern Ndebele, Northern Ndebele, and Xhosa."...

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Excerpt #2
From http://www.salanguages.com/siswati/words.htm
"SISWATI
Days of the week
Sunday - LiSontfo
Monday - uMsombuluko
Tuesday - Lesibili
Wednesday - Lesitsatfu
Thursday - Lesine
Friday - Lesihlanu
Saturday – uMgcibelo"

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This concludes Part I of this two part series on names of days of the week in nine South African languages.

Thanks for visiting pancocojams.

Visitor comments are welcome.