Past, Present, and Future

     Xhosa was a little bit more complicated than just vocab today.  We talked about turning verbs into past and future and how to make them negative.  It actually wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be.  Hopefully my notes will make sense to everyone.

Present

-Verb: funda (study/read)

-Ndifunda isiXhosa means I study Xhosa.  Ndi pretty much just means I or recognizes that you are talking about yourself.

-If we want to say I do not study Xhosa we have to negate it by replacing the "a" at the end with an "i" and adding an a to the beginning of the word.

-Andifundi isiXhosa --> I do not study Xhosa.

-Thina sifunda isiXhosa means We study Xhosa.  Si obviously is the prefix for we.

-We do the same thing to it in order to make it negative.  Thina asifundi ixi Xhosa --> We do not study Xhosa.

Past

-Verb: babhala (write)

-We will start with the sentence Abafunda (students) babhala(writes) uviwo (exam).

-To take something from the present and turn it into the past all you do is replace the last letter of the verb (I think it's always "a") with an "e".

-Abafunda babhale uviwo --> Students wrote exam.

-To make it negative we still add an "a" to the beginning of the word, but instead of ending with an "i" we end the verb with an "anga".

-Abafunda ababhalanga uviwo --> Students did not write exam.

Future

-Verb: thetha (speak)

-Thina sithetha isiXhosa means We speak Xhosa.

-For the future tense it's a little more complicated.  We add an "oz" after the part of the word that shows who/whom the verb is about such as I, you, we, she...etc.

-In this sentence "si" means we, so we would put "oz" after it.

-Thina sizothetha isiXhosa --> We will speak Xhosa.

-To make it negative we replace the "zo" with "zu" and add an "a" to the beginning.

-Thina asizuthetha isiXhosa --> We will not speak Xhosa.

Third Person

-Third person is the only exception to these rules because the prefix for third person is "u".

-This is a problem because in the Xhosa language vowels do not go next to each other.  They change the spelling if they are ever found next to each other.

-This is a problem because as you have noticed we put an "a" at the beginning of the verbs to make it negative.

-The way they get past this problem is by changing "au" to "aka"

-I am going to do a present, past, and future negative example of this exception.

Present:

-uJulia uhlala eUtah (Julia lives in Utah)

-The negative form of this would be, "uJulia akahlali eUtah" which obviously means Julia does not live in Utah. (I personally like the negative form better..sorry Jules =])

Past:

-uGarrett utya isidudu. (Garrett eats the porridge)

-First, we change this to the past tense: uGarrett utye isidudu. (Garrett ate the porridge)

-The negative form of this is going to be, "uGarrett akatyanga isidudu" which means Garrett did not eat the porridge which is far more likely because our professor says that porridge is super gross.

Future:

-uAndrew uhamba eNorth Carolina. (Andrew goes/take a trip to North Carolina)

-Once again, we have to make this in future tense: uAndrew uzohamba eNorth Carolina. (Andrew is going to go to North Carolina)

-The negative form of this is going to be, "uAndrew akazuhamba eNorth Carolina" which means Andrew will not go to North Carolina which better not be true.

     If it's hard to understand, you can comment and I can try to explain it better.  After Xhosa my group met today to discuss what we are going to do in class on Monday and how we are going to do thank you cards for the people who helped us out with our project.  We got some posters and are going to have the kids sign them and put a big class picture on it.  After this class we only have one more class with the kids. =[  We are going to divide the students among us and write them each a goodbye letter.  We also have a presentation next week and two papers due pretty soon, but after that there really isn't a lot left to do for the class.

     When I got home I started the reading for our presentation, but it was so boring I had to stop after 5 pages.  I guess I will have to read it a little at a time.  Tyler went to class and I forgot to ask him to write something about it, but I am sure he doesn't mind.  He did tell me that he has another test Thursday which is good and bad.  It's bad because they JUST had a test, so now he gets to stress for another week, but it's good because it's a difficult class and more grades means more opportunities to improve the final grade.

     I am going to talk about cooking again, so for the people who don't really care about it can skip this part.  I have this weird obsession with talking about the stuff I make, so sorry, haha.  A while back I made chik-fil-a sandwiches and they were fine, but it was really difficult to fry them because they took a very long time and didn't fry evenly.  Tyler asked me to make them again, so this time I pounded the chicken to about 1/2 of an inch so that it would cook faster and more evenly.  I double breaded it so it wouldn't be so thin and popped it in the hot oil.  It worked SO MUCH BETTER!!!  Yes, I did take pictures of it because I am weird like that. =]

Right out of the oil.  They ended up being a lot thicker than when I put them in.  The little pieces are parts that I cut off because they made the chicken too big.

I was pretty happy that they were about the same thickness because when I made them before one end was super thick and the other was super thin.

     Tyler is at his group meeting right now which is super lame.  They had to start the meeting at 7pm because one of his group members was doing something all day er something like that.  He probably wont' be home for awhile because he said they have to plan their class on Monday and create their presentation that they are doing tomorrow.  This means I am just chillin' by myself....kinda bored...really bored.  Well, that's about it for today.  Hamba Kakuhle.