Cápa

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Cápa
Cápo, Cábo, Kabo, Kabosje, isiKapa, Cape [of Good Hope] Creole
isiKápa
Pronunciation[isi.kʰɐ́pɐ]
Created byJukethatbox
Date2023
SettingAlt-history Africa
EthnicityNguni, Caper
Native speakers14,000,000 (2023)
Niger-Congo-Indo-European Creole
  • East Bantu-Portuguese Creole
    • Cápa
Early forms
Xhosa-Portuguese
  • Portuzulu
    • Afrikaans
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-Transvaal
Regulated byMinistêrio iisiKápa
Capaspeakers.jpeg
Map of Cápa speakers.
  Majority Cápa speaker community.
  Minority Cápa speaker community.
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.

Orthography for click consonants follows Xhosa orthographic convention for click consonants.

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

Click consonants

Cápa, like its contemporary East Bantu languages, uses click consonants, however it only uses about two-thirds as many click consonants as Xhosa, with 12 in total, compared to Xhosa's 18 click consonants and Zulu's 15.

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

/ᵏǀʼ/ is pronounced like "tut-tut" or "tsk-tsk" in English.
/ᵏǁʼ/ is pronounced like /ᵏǀʼ/ except in the same tongue position as when you pronounce /l/.
/ᵏǃʼ/ is pronounced a bit like the sound that occurs when popping a cork from a bottle, or like /ᵏǁʼ/ but in the same tongue position as /ʃ/(sh) or /ʒ/(zh).

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

The general syllable structure of Cápa is (C)V(V)(C), and most words, like in Zulu, end in a vowel(with the exception of some Portuguese loanwords like shíxher).

If the dipthong ⟨ai⟩, ⟨ei⟩ or ⟨oi⟩ are succeeded by a vowel, then the /i/ is palatalised and becomes /j/.
Examples:

  • /ai/ + /u/ → /aju/
    • A-(negative prefix) + Iubaba(I have) → AiubabaAyubaba(I do not have)
  • /ei/ + /e/ → /e/
    • Ei-(near future prefix) + Eswéla(He drinks) → EieswélaEyèswéla(I will drink)

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

Example sentences

Vufawa iisiPogcugéza?
Do you speak Portuguese?
Hi, Ayufawa iisiPogcugéza.
No, I do not speak Portuguese.

Other resources