From owner-freebsd-chat Fri Apr 7 14: 1:41 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from ns1.sunesi.net (ns1.sunesi.net [196.15.192.194]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 55BAC37BDD5 for ; Fri, 7 Apr 2000 14:01:12 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from nbm@sunesi.net) Received: from nbm by ns1.sunesi.net with local (Exim 3.03 #1) id 12dfs1-000Eyt-00; Fri, 07 Apr 2000 23:00:49 +0200 Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2000 23:00:49 +0200 From: Neil Blakey-Milner To: Marco Molteni Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: BSDCon East Message-ID: <20000407230049.B57071@mithrandr.moria.org> References: <8cgj1a$313f$1@bigeye.rhein-neckar.de> <8cj1cg$1gse$1@bigeye.rhein-neckar.de> <20000407102159.B8417@sofia.csl.sri.com> <20000407223946.A57071@mithrandr.moria.org> <20000407134927.A9405@sofia.csl.sri.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0pre2i In-Reply-To: <20000407134927.A9405@sofia.csl.sri.com> Organization: Sunesi Clinical Systems X-Operating-System: FreeBSD 3.3-RELEASE i386 X-URL: http://rucus.ru.ac.za/~nbm/ Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Fri 2000-04-07 (13:49), Marco Molteni wrote: > > syllable, and some obvious modifiers. While the "h" in "hl" is > > pronounced differently than the "h" in "kh", "hl" is always pronounced > > the same. > > > > Ndifuna ukuba ndisaze isiXhosa kakuhle. > > are those languages using the latin alphabet as their own alphabet, or > are you "mapping" the original alphabet to the latin one (as you may > do with, eg, russian)? > > (sorry for my imprecisions but I am not a linguist ;-) Yes, the commonly used written form of Xhosa is a mapping to the latin alphabet with occasional modifiers (such as 'h' after consonants). Three utterly unpronouncable-to-the-English-tongue clicks replace 'c', 'q', and 'x' (since 'c' is either 'k' or 's', and 'q' is usually 'k', and 'x' is usually 'ks'). 'h' is either a guttural scottish 'ch' sound, or a modifier which indicates more "air" in the pronunciation. It's actually a very beautiful language, but the curriculum I learnt at school wasn't very good, and I haven't been able to find another way to learn it. Neil -- Neil Blakey-Milner nbm@rucus.ru.ac.za To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message