Language has such euphony
dbeckett@global.co.za THE radio traffic chap was warning us of delays in Rooihuiskraal and Randjieslaagte, two of the older slabs of urban carpet filling the gaps to our northernmost suburb, Pretoria-Tshwane. In saying those names, he made music.
His home tongue might be Zulu, Sotho, Venda. He was not factory fitted for Afrikaans syllables to swirl in his mouth, but he recited them par excellence, r-r-r-rolling the consonants and drinking deep vowels, reverberant and resonant.
The sound alone was lovely to hear, but just as lovely – at least to my ear, a little bit hypersensitive in this respect – was the sense of wholeness, a Whole South Africa, where everybody’s languages belong to everybody else.
How mature, to rejoice in the tone and timbre of tongues that our parents saw as Other, not as Us. Where we weren’t made a nation by origins or commonality, we make ourselves one by rising to our times.
Eleven official languages gives us velocity. Add the long-standing unofficial contributors à la Malay, Korana, Gujerat. Contemplate the French, Congolese, Shona, Chichewa et al that must be slipping into the brew. For a vibrant linguistic regime, we might be world champ.
Not that it’s a “merging”, exactly. Only one language is truly growing, the one that you and I share (or how would you be reading this?) But before we come to unilingualism, we have a long innings of stretching local wordpower. So let’s make our language more euphonious as we go.
Much euphony awaits. Last month in Limpopo and Mpumalanga, I bumped into a bunch of euphonious villages – places with populations outstripping towns, but no downtown, no industry, no jobs.
“Limpopo” and “Mpumalanga” are pretty euphonious, I’d say, way up on dreary “North West”. But the villages are something else – Huntington, Cordingley, Agincourt. At first jolt those names may feel misplaced when 0.1% of the population speak English at home (and fewer speak French). But that is stunted thinking. Should the householders of Illovo or Kyalami worry they’re out of place? Not a damn, roll those words around your tongue and revel in belonging.
It’s true that different words roll best in different mouths. That’s as subjective as what is an attractive painting or who is an attractive person. But there are areas of broad agreement. Wouldn’t most people find Idlewild a highly euphonious word, and Canaveral too, and feel a small regret, perhaps subconscious, that America chose those two names to kill in respecting a slain president?
We here are spoiled. Contemplate euphonious Lusikisiki, eManzimtoti, Empangeni, Mtunzini, many more. We get blasé, from familiarity. It takes the lesser-known to knock our eyes out; Ntabayikhonjwa, aka Giant’s Castle, “mountain at which you don’t point”.
As to what’s not euphonious, that’s another story for another time but it prompts me right now to change tack.
Here’s a story about Max du Preez’s sister, I think it was, driving south from Windhoek with her small children.
They passed sign after sign giving the names of rivers, Tsondap River, Grieb River, Fischfluss River, Gaap River, Komchab River… Finally they come to the Orange, and the kids’ jaws hang open.
“Mom, mom”, they say, “what’s that!?”
“That’s a river”, says mom. “Naah”, they say, “you’re joking, it can’t be. There’s a whole lot of water in it”.