The Inheritance

Languages are like good food. They leave sweet memories. Maybe not, because languages are not just food for today, but also for tomorrow in a foreign country somewhere.

Languages can be similar or poles apart. Somebody who speaks Zulu will be O.K. in Yoruba land in Nigeria because the two languages have some similarities. English, the colonizer’s language is not even close. Example.

ZULU	ENGLISH
fa	die
Uku-fa	death
i-fa	inheritance

We sometimes feature Zulu lessons in this blog. Isi-Zulu is a language whose umbilical cord is buried in South Africa, but is understood in southern Africa, because of sister languages in Swaziland and Zimbabwe.

Now let’s look at death. In Zulu, one root  -fa- describes all three stages of the human condition, while in English only two (die and death) are derived from the root.

A good example is the man called Charles 111. His mother Queen Elizabeth 11 died. Her death gave Prince Charles the inheritance to be king. In Zulu, the whole sequence is expressed in one root -fa-.

It was a smooth inheritance for the British royal family, because of set tradition. It can be divisive for ordinary families. Inheritance can break up a family, with some members feeling they were entitled to more what the will provides. It’s absolute chaos if the dead person did not leave a will.

Some people leave everything to dog shelters, just to spite family members. Some 70 year-old men leave the bulk of their wealth to 24 year-old wives. Donald Trump is an extreme example. He thought the White House was his inheritance. That’s why he told his supporters to storm Congress on 6 January, 2021. 

I-fa. You pronounce the first part like e-mail, the second like far.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.