Identity is mobile these days, just as people are. This makes it much easier to lose contact with our Zimbabwean heritage than we immediately perceive.
The bond of a shared language can help to maintain a sense of community amongst Zimbabweans abroad – no matter how long ago we left, or how far weve travelled.
Since Shona is spoken by over 90% of Zimbabweans, learning and retaining it is also a good way to solidify ones ties with people in Zimbabwe. As such, we present over the coming weeks, lessons in Shona to help those of you who want to learn it for the first time, or who want to recap some concepts.
Week 1
These lessons are focused on simple conversations. The basic language skills are often enough to break down conversational barriers, to identify with others, and to pass on heritage by signalling to children who have been brought up abroad that Zimbabwe, too, is an important part of their identity.
Shona is a relatively easy language to pronounce because vowel sounds do not alter from word to word. All words end in a vowel. Shona is a phonetic language – spelling easily indicates how the word sounds.
Vowel Pronunciation
a as in army
e as in egg
I as in big
o as in hot
u as in who
All vowels are pronounced e.g. roora (marry) pronounced as ro-o-ra, and kuuya ( to come) pronounced as ku-u-ya. Note that Shona has no l,q,x,c except the combination of ch-.
Pronouns
In Shona, as in many other languages, there are different forms of addressing people depending on the familiarity of the relationship and the relative ages. Peers can be addressed casually, whilst elders, regardless of how old you are, are addressed with respect, or in the more formal way. As such, the pronouns for you, and he or she change depending on how senior the person is.
I – Ini
You Iwe (singular, to a peer)
You – Imi/mu (This applies for all plural forms of you, and is also the form for addressing a single, senior person)
She/He – Iye
It – icho
We – ti
Us – isu
They – va/ivo (note that they remains the same for peers and seniors)
Their – avo
Well use these expressions in the next lesson, but for now just familiarise yourself with the variations. Remember that a language is not learned by memorising grammar, but by speaking the words. The audio for this lesson can be obtained from http://www.learnshona.com in an mp3 format that can be played on the computer, on many phones and music players.
Next weeks topics include possessives, greetings and the verb to know. Well also have a set of common phrases that follow on from the concepts in this lesson. – Nyasha Madavo is founder of LearnShona.com.
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