HLONIPHA—THE WOMEN'S LANGUAGE OF AVOIDANCE AMONG THE XHOSA

Abstract

In order to meaningfully illustrate some of the mechanics relating to the use of hlonipha among the Xhosa women of the family groups selected, the structure of one particular Xhosa family is described in some depth, i.e. Nokhonza, who is married to Bonisile, the son of Nina and Dike. Examples of the avoidance patterns of Nokhonza's great grandfather-in-law Saki, her grandfather-in-law, Ntlokwana, as well as her father- and mother-in-law are given. Thereafter the categorisation of avoidance rules which occur regularly in the core vocabulary are discussed. These categories include: 1. Phonological features, where clicks, glide consonants, consonant deletion and palatal plosives are mentioned.2. The retention of common forms, which are divided into three sections: a. Common Bantu; b. Common Southern Bantu; c. Common Nguni.3. Association of ideas could be divided into four sections: a. Shift in meaning; b. synonyms; c. descriptive phrases; and d. verbal derivatives.4. Coinage of new words which is indicative of the creativity of the Xhosa women's speech is discussed, and finally5. borrowings from English, Afrikaans, Khoi and San are considered. The paper concludes with a number of observations deriving from the analysis undertaken in the research project.

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