Cápa: Difference between revisions

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===Consonants===
===Consonants===
Cápa, like the contemporary East Bantu languages, uses click consonants, however it only uses about half as many click consonants as Xhosa, with 9 in total, compared to Xhosa's 18 click consonants
Cápa, like its contemporary East Bantu languages, uses click consonants, however it only uses about half as many click consonants as Xhosa, with 9 in total, compared to Xhosa's 18 click consonants and Zulu's 15.
====Click consonants====
====Click consonants====
{| class="wikitable" style=text-align:center
|-
!colspan=2 rowspan=2|
!colspan=2|[[w:Dental consonant|Dental]]/[[Alveolar consonant|Alveolar]]
!rowspan=2|[[Postalveolar consonant|Post-<br>alveolar]]
|- class=small
![[w:Central consonant|central]]
![[w:Lateral consonant|lateral]]
|-
!rowspan=6|[[w:Click consonant|Click]]
!<small>[[w:Tenuis consonant|tenuis]]/[[w:Ejective consonant|ejective]]</small>
|{{IPA|ᵏǀʼ}} {{grapheme|c}}
|{{IPA|ᵏǁʼ}} {{grapheme|x}}
|{{IPA|ᵏǃʼ}} {{grapheme|q}}
|-
!<small>[[w:Aspiration (phonetics)|aspirated]]</small>
|{{IPA|ᵏǀʰ}} {{grapheme|ch}}
|{{IPA|ᵏǁʰ}} {{grapheme|xh}}
|{{IPA|ᵏǃʰ}} {{grapheme|qh}}
|-
!<small>nasal</small>
|{{IPA|ᵑǀ}} {{grapheme|nc}}
|{{IPA|ᵑǁ}} {{grapheme|nx}}
|{{IPA|ᵑǃ}} {{grapheme|nq}}
|}


===Vowels===
===Vowels===

Revision as of 21:43, 13 November 2023

Cápa
Cápo, Cábo, Kabo, Kabosje, isiKapa, Cape [of Good Hope] Creole
isiKápa
Pronunciation[isi.kʰɐ́pɐ]
Created byJukethatbox
Date2023
Native speakers14,000,000 (2023)
Cape Creole
  • Cápa
Dialects
  • Cape dialect
  • Durban(KwaZulu-Natal) dialect
  • Emonti(East London) dialect
SourcesAfrikaans, Portuguese, Zulu, Xhosa, English
Official status
Official language in
Cape State
Recognised minority
language in
Lesotho, Orange, Eswatini
Regulated byMinistêrio iisiKápa
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Cápa, also known as Cápo, Cábo, Kabo, Kabosje, isiKapa and/or Cape [of Good Hope] Creole, is an Afrikaans-Portuguese-English-Zulu-Xhosa creole language spoken in the area between the Orange River and the south African coast, commonly known as the Cape of Good Hope(cabo da boa esperança in Portuguese). The morphology is a mixture of primarily Portuguese and Dutch(later Afrikaans), whereas the grammar is heavily influenced by Zulu and Xhosa and the East Bantu language family as a whole.

The creole developed through the various colonisers of the South African region, and indeed, the language borrows elements from all the colonisers' languages(English, Dutch(Afrikaans), Portuguese) as well as native indigenous African languages in the area(Zulu, Xhosa).

Some more modern Portuguese loanwords derive from Brazilian Portuguese rather than European Portuguese, although in some cases both variations can be used, e.g. BP xícara and EP chávena, both meaning "cup", become shíxher(Cápa: [ʃík‖ʼɛɾ]), "cup" and sháfna(Cápa: [ʃɐ́ɸnɐ]), "glass(container)".

Phonology

Orthography

Cápa uses the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, with tone, stress and length(of a sound) marked by diacritics. These diacritics are mostly based on the Portuguese alphabet, with ⟨á⟩ and ⟨à⟩ indicating rising and falling tone respectively, and ⟨â⟩ indicating high tone, ⟨ǎ⟩ indicating low tone and ⟨ā⟩ indicating a lengthened allophone.

Diacritics
Length ā · ē · ī · ō · ū
High â · ê · î · ô · û
Low ǎ · ě · ǐ · ǒ · ǔ
Rising á · é · í · ó · ú
Falling à · è · ì · ò · ù

Consonants

Cápa, like its contemporary East Bantu languages, uses click consonants, however it only uses about half as many click consonants as Xhosa, with 9 in total, compared to Xhosa's 18 click consonants and Zulu's 15.

Click consonants

Dental/Alveolar Post-
alveolar
central lateral
Click tenuis/ejective ᵏǀʼ ⟨c⟩ ᵏǁʼ ⟨x⟩ ᵏǃʼ ⟨q⟩
aspirated ᵏǀʰ ⟨ch⟩ ᵏǁʰ ⟨xh⟩ ᵏǃʰ ⟨qh⟩
nasal ᵑǀ ⟨nc⟩ ᵑǁ ⟨nx⟩ ᵑǃ ⟨nq⟩

Vowels

Prosody

Stress

Stress in Cápa is generally paroxytonic, where primary stress is placed on the penultimate syllable of a word.

Examples

Tone

Cápa, like its contemporary languages of Zulu and Xhosa, is a tonal language, with four tones- high, low, rising and falling.

High Low Falling Rising
˥ ˩ ˥˩ ˩˥

Phonotactics

Morphophonology

Morphology

Syntax

Constituent order

Like in English, Xhosa and Zulu, Cápa uses an SVO(subject-verb-object) constituent order structure.

Noun phrase

Verb phrase

Sentence phrase

Dependent clauses

Example texts

Other resources