Ingxoxo nelungu:Nomden

Welcome

Molo. Is Xhosa your native language? PiRSquared17 (talk) 01:14, 11 Eyo Kwindla 2014 (UTC)

Ewe. Yes I am a Xhosa speaker. --Nomden (talk) 13:33, 11 Eyo Kwindla 2014 (UTC)

Enkosi

For all your work on this Wikipedia :) Victorgrigas (talk) 19:44, 16 Eyo Kwindla 2014 (UTC)

Ndiyabulela!! I thank you very much.

Hey so when you reply on a talk page use this -->: like I just did :) and then if you type four of these: ~ it will automatically sign your name. Thanks again for all the additions you made and the improvements you made to the very crude articles I started! I found an online Xhosa dictionary and then said to myself that I can start a page and add a photo and mark it as a stub, that could help. Do you know any good Xhosa-English Dictionaries that are online? I'd love to continue collaborating in this way, even though I don't speak Xhosa. Vgrigas (talk) 23:21, 20 Eyo Kwindla 2014 (UTC)

Enkosi kakhulu ngokundibonisa (thank you for showing me). I also thank you for adding information on our young wikipedian Ntsiki. To be honest with you, I have not seen a good Xhosa on-line dictionary. But I am sure there are some. My problem is what I believe to be a good dictionary is what is a corpus-based dictionary. To my understanding I believe that an additional, or second or a foreign language learner requires a dictionary or language learning material with authentic language information and I believe that such infomation can be obtained from corpus. It is important though to note that, dictionary provides a clue or guidelines about a language you are learning. You seem like you are want to understand Xhosa, in the meantime, whilst I am searching for the online Xhosa dictionary for you, if you don't mind I can assist you a bit with few and features that look nonsensical but important in speaking Xhosa. Let me give you an example of what I have said to you concerning authenticity. Let us look at the Xhosa word 'ndi' for instance. What does the word 'ndi' mean in your dictionary? The word 'ndi' means 'I' in English.

At school, I was taught that in most cases 'I' goes with 'am' e.g I am hungry, I am tired, I am lazy. But in these instances the Xhosa word 'ndi' goes only with verb, Xhosa equivalent for 'am' does not exist, e.g. I would say: (ndi+lambile) = ndilambile (Today, when we talk spontaneously we can code switch and say 'ndihungry'. I think this can be very helpful to learn isixhosa.

So if you want to get used to the use of 'ndi' start by code switching and say for instance 'nditired' In a sentence you can say 'you know what? nditired today'. By just using 'ndi' in this utterance, a Xhosa speaker who is listening from you talking, will think that you are the speaker, even though you have used more English words than Xhosa in your utterance. Now do the same with the following words 'tired' and 'lazy' 'worried'. (tired means 'diniwe'; lazy means 'yonqena'; worried means 'khathazekile').

That does not mean 'ndi' is only used in this manner. But for a start I think it can help.

Next time I will not translate the meaning of 'means' or 'meaning' as in 'the word tired means ...) I will say 'i(the)gama(word) e(which)lithi(says)tired li(it)thetha(means) ukuthi(to say)...).

I hope this is not borring--Nomden (talk) 14:43, 24 Eyo Kwindla 2014 (UTC).