{"id":7210,"date":"2012-06-28T16:18:37","date_gmt":"2012-06-28T16:18:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=7210"},"modified":"2012-06-28T16:18:37","modified_gmt":"2012-06-28T16:18:37","slug":"zulu-songs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=7210","title":{"rendered":"Zulu songs"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the Bangor Comunity Choir<\/a> we often sing songs from southern Africa in languages like Xhosa and Zulu. I don’t speak these languages, yet, and neither does anybody in the choir, so we’re never entirely sure how to pronounce the words. We usually have a rough translation of the words, so we at least know what they mean.<\/p>\n

At the moment we’re learning a Zulu song called “Sesizo Hamba Kancane” which apparently means ‘Walk Gracefully (you people of modern days)’. Here are the words we’re singing:<\/p>\n

Sesizo hamba kancane nje nge si manje
\nSizo hamba kancane nge hoshimamma<\/p>\n

This isn’t the whole song, but these are words are repeated in various combinations throughout.<\/p>\n

I thought it would be interesting to find out what they all mean and how to pronounce them.<\/p>\n

– sesizo – not sure what this means
\n– hamba [\u02c8ha\u02d0mba] = to go, walk, ride, travel – often appears in Zulu songs
\n– kancane [\u0260a\u02c8n\u0361\u01c0a\u02d0ne] = a bit; a little; slightly; softly; slowly; gradually; tenderly; barely; scarcely – not an easy word to pronounce what with the implosive g and the dental click.
\n– nje [n\u02a4e] = (suffix<\/em>) merely; only; just
\n– nge [\u014bge] = (prefix<\/em>) not
\n– si [si] = we
\n– manje [\u02c8ma\u02d0n\u02a4e] = now; at present<\/p>\n

I’m not sure about the rest of it. We were told that it’s something about driving our mother’s car carefully. Does anyone know the song, or speak Zulu?<\/p>\n

Source: http:\/\/isizulu.net\/<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This is one of the songs we’ll be singing with lots of other choirs in London on Sunday 9th September this year at Sing for Water London<\/a>. If you happen to be in London at that time, please come along a listen. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Bangor Comunity Choir we often sing songs from southern Africa in languages like Xhosa and Zulu. I don’t speak these languages, yet, and neither does anybody in the choir, so we’re never entirely sure how to pronounce the words. We usually have a rough translation of the words, so we at least know […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,29,83],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language","category-music","category-zulu-language"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}