Tune Xhosa with Ian

I’m learning Xhosa. Those who know me may may roll their eyes – another flavour of the day from Ian. How long will this one last?

Using only the infinitesimal fraction of my life represented by my blog, witness Learning Mandarin Chinese, and some insight into my brain’s inner workings as a failed attempt at a language, leaving me with only knee how, said with a bow, probably to avoid seeing the rolling of eyes by the unfortunately Mandarin-speaking listener.

But perhaps there’s hope for Xhosa. Looking at the other languages I, to some degree, speak, there’s Afrikaans, which I was reluctantly forced to learn, and now regret not learning as well as I could have, even more than I regret the black mamba used to violently encourage memorising lists of atonieme. Since I come across Afrikaans fairly often, I’ve managed to retain a woordtjie of twee. Even if I’ve probably spelled that wrong.

Then there’s French, which I learnt for 2 years at university, mainly because I thought it was sexy. Good reason that, and it even kind of worked, once. Oh no wait, she laughed at my French, but it was OK because she didn’t speak French (or English) either. I live in hope of starring in my own mini-French movie (preferably sans dramatic ending where embittered lover throws my laptop off the ocean liner as she sails away forever). I managed to get around Madagascar for a month too, even managing a reasonable conversation on a park bench on the last day, the glorious epoch my French-speaking career.

Spanish I learnt for a month before I went to Peru, and I managed to bumble around reasonably successfully, although I don’t tell most people that almost everyone spoke passable English.

And Mandarin? Well, I was planning to go to Taiwan for a month, but instead I moved house, so my motivation dried up. The locals don’t speak much Mandarin, even though on a Friday or Saturday evening, you’d be forgiving for thinking so.

So, what about Xhosa? I remember a friend from Germany once saying that if she ever lived in Cape Town, she’d learn Xhosa. And felt the stinging rebuke that I, who’d lived here all my life, didn’t. I don’t feel much better even now that said friend does live in Cape Town, and barely speaks a word. I live in Cape Town. My favourite part of the country is the Eastern Cape. Not speaking Xhosa is like… like not speaking Gaelic in England. No wait, I mean like not speaking Flemish in Belgium. I can’t be freed of all these Anglo-linguistic prejudices. No… what I mean to say is it’s my loss, and a gap between me and large number of my neighbours.

I have two CD’s – Eurotalk’s Learn Xhosa, and African Voices’ Speak Xhosa with us.

Much as I’d like to prefer the African Voices offering – it’s by local UCT academics after all, as opposed to the templated offering from Eurotalk, rolled out in over 100 languages, unfortunately, I far prefer Learn Xhosa. It’s simple, addictive, visually attractive and I’m actually learning something. None of those apply to Speak Xhosa with us, although I admit I’m using version 1, and version 2 exists.

It’s almost enough to get me working on Tune Xhosa with Ian – Ewe, though perhaps I should try finish some of my other projects first. And work on the title…

Related posts:

• Learning Mandarin Chinese, and some insight into my brain’s inner workings
• First Wikipedia Academy in Africa

Tags: xhosa eurotalk african+voices