Clicking with Zulu in Moscow
● The absolute confusion when people hear them clicking away in Zulu on the campus of a Russian university is a perk for learning a language from a country that is 15 hours away by plane.
Add to that a group of students chatting in Afrikaans, and you might be forgiven for thinking people are speaking in tongues.
Moscow student Lika Gorokhova is learning Afrikaans and takes Zulu as a second language. “I have chosen to learn Afrikaans on impulse because I instantly loved how it sounds,” she said.
She chose Zulu because she liked learning about South African culture.
“Making people around me stare in wonder when we utter click sounds is another perk,” she laughed.
The Institute of Asian and African Studies at Lomonosov Moscow State University has taught Afrikaans since 1986 and Zulu since 1991 in small groups of 10 students. They study for a four-year fulltime bachelor’s degree, with the option of a two-year master’s.
Associate professor Monika Urb said that “the current quick changes in Africa determine a growing demand for our graduates.
“Graduates work for governmental and public organisations, the mass media, publishing houses, the Russian Academy of Sciences, in institutions of higher education, Russian and international companies.”
But for Urb, who speaks Russian, Estonian, English, German, Afrikaans and Zulu, it’s the sound of the South African languages she loves the most.
“Language holds the key to truly understanding people and culture. I wanted to learn Zulu and I did it. I like its clicks, grammar and logic. And now I can use this language and teach it,” she said.
Student Sophie Barskaya agreed. “Zulu is my second language of choice. We only had the first lesson this week. I’ve heard the songs by Miriam Makeba, they show the beauty of the language. Zulu sounds like an endless inspirational song that I really want to study.”
Urb learned Afrikaans at the Russian State library where they kept books published before 1959 “when the Soviet Union still had diplomatic relations with the Union of SA”. She said she also has access to the Afrikaans daily newspaper Die Burger.
She said Zulu teacher Anatoly Lutskov is the country’s Zulu specialist, author of the first Zulu grammar book in Russia and pioneer of the Zulu-Russian dictionary Isichazamazwi isiZulu-IsiRashiya.