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3 unusual facts about Zulu language


Dennis Lota

Upon leaving FC Sion, Lota joined Orlando Pirates where his prowess in front of the goal and particularly his celebration (rubbing his palms against each other), earned him the nickname "Chesa Mpama" (loosely translated as "hot slap" in Zulu, one of the 11 official languages in South Africa.

Zulu language

In January 2005 the first full length feature film in Zulu, Yesterday was nominated for an Oscar.

In the 1994 film The Lion King, in the "Circle of Life" song, the phrases Ingonyama nengw' enamabala (English: A lion and a leopard come to this open place), Nants ingonyama baghiti Baba (English: Here comes a lion, Father) and Siyonqoba (English: We will conquer) were used.


Erythrina lysistemon

Common names include Common Coral Tree, Lucky Bean Tree, Umsintsi (Xhosa), Muvhale (Venda), Mophete (Tswana), Kanniedood (Afrikaans), Mokhungwane (Sotho) and Umsinsi (Zulu).

Ipi Tombi

Ipi Tombi (also produced as Ipi N'tombi, both corrupted transliterations of the Zulu iphi intombi, or "where is the girl?"), is a 1974 musical by South African writers Bertha Egnos Godfrey and her daughter Gail Lakier, telling the story of a young black man leaving his village and young wife to work in the mines of Johannesburg.

Neil Aggett

Aggett worked as a physician in Black hospitals (under apartheid hospitals were segregated) in Umtata, Tembisa and later at Baragwanath hospital in Soweto, working in Casualty and learning to speak basic Zulu.

Nguni people

In Malawi and Zambia, they speak a mixture of languages of the people they conquered such as Chewa, Nsenga and Tumbuka and their original language, Zulu.

Paul Steinitz

Commissions and First Performances were established in the 1950s and 1960s and included works by Stravinsky (Canticum Sacrum, guest conducted by Robert Craft, in 1956), Bruno Maderna, Luigi Dallapiccola, Peter Maxwell Davies, John Tavener, Anthony Milner, Stanley Glasser (sung in Zulu), Christopher Brown, Geoffrey Burgon and his own pupil Nicholas Maw.

Takalani Sesame

It incorporates all of South Africa's 11 national languages, including Afrikaans, English, Zulu, Xhosa, Swazi, Ndebele, Sesotho, Northern Sotho, Tsonga, Tswana and Venda.


see also

Nathaniel Isaacs

Most of what has been written about Shaka comes from the accounts of Henry Francis Fynn and Isaacs who learned to speak the Zulu language fluently.