But what colour were they? They were most likely Red, just like the planet Mars. The clue is in the name “Ngama”, a reddish antelope in Southern Africa, whose English name I unfortunately do not know. The animal is called “Kgama” in the Setswana language. I strongly suspect it is the antelope that knocked down a cyclist in a video that went viral on the internet. Some people think (wrongfully, I think) that our President’s surname is a corruption of that word.
Well, the Kalanga name for that animal seems to be a combination of two words, which unpack as follows:
KU NGA: a verb, meaning TO RESEMBLE.
KU MA: a verb, meaning TO STAND (UPRIGHT); from which the full name CHIMA meaning a ROCKET, together with its short form MA, were derived.
And so the Kalanga name of that animal “ngama” translates to “resembling a rocket”. Since we already know what the shape of the rockets resembled, the new resemblance must be a colour resemblance, i.e. reddish.
No comments:
Post a Comment