Cápa

Cápa
Kabo, isiKapa, Cape Creole
isiKápa
Flag of Cape State, where Cápa is natively and primarily spoken.
Pronunciation	[isi.kʰɐ́pɐ]
Created by	Jukethatbox
Date	2023
Setting	Cape State, Alt-history Africa
Ethnicity	Nguni, Caper
Native speakers	13,637,500 (2023)
Language family	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
Writing system	Latin
Sources	Afrikaans, Portuguese, Zulu, Xhosa, English
Official status
Official language in	Cape State
Recognised minority language in	Lesotho, Orange-Transvaal
Regulated by	Ministêrio iisiKápa
Map of Cápa speakers.   Majority Cápa speaker community.   Minority Cápa speaker community.

Cápa, also known as Kabo, isiKapa and/or Cape Creole(isiKápa; Cápa: [isi.kʰɐ́pɐ]), 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

Aspiration

Non-click consonants do not differentiate pronunciation on aspiration, unlike in Zulu and Xhosa, where ⟨kh⟩ and ⟨k⟩ can change the meaning of a word. In Cápa, different dialects aspirate different consonants in different positions within lemmas, but the meaning of the word does not change. For example, in Stellenbosch, just east of Cape Town, all plosives are aspirated, no matter their position in a lemma(e.g. [pʰɛ́ʃʰ]). In Coffee Bay, consonants are only aspirated at the beginning of a lemma, e.g. in bantu("person", [bʱɐntu]), where /b/ is aspirated but /t/ is not. Additionally, in bantu's accusative form, ibantu, no plosive is aspirated.

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).

Prosody

Stress

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

Examples

• shíxher(cup)
• sháfna(glass)
• garáfa(bottle)
• péshe(fish)
• ixhésha(time)
• inja(dog)
• shoxoláti(chocolate)

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/, which is sometimes pronounced [ʝ] in some dialects, namely in East London.
Examples:

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

Morphology

Nouns

Bagcô

Bagcô is a word that is often used in everyday use of Cápa. It can mean many things, and it originally meant "stick", possibly from Portuguese bastão. However, inexplicably, it is now often used to indicate focus in a sentence(like in Singlish/Manglish lah), but it is also used to mean "so", "also", "as well as" or even "to be fair", "to be honest" or "in [my] defense".

Although the word was originally considered slang, mainly by the upper classes in Cape Town, the word eventually seeped into their speech as well, and it is now an integral part of the language.

Pronouns

Pronouns in Cápa are prefixes to verbs, similar to grammatical structure in Zulu and Xhosa. However, the pronouns themselves are mostly based on Portuguese personal pronouns.

Cápa personal pronouns

Person		Personal		Post-diphthong
		Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
1		Iu-	Noz-	-yu-	-yoz-
2		Vu-	Thvu-	-fu-	-thfu-
3.M		E-	Ele-	-è-	-èli-
3.F		Sa-	Ilà-	-sà-	-là-

Syntax

Constituent order

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

Noun phrase

Inja en kat

dog and cat

Alternatively, the above sentence can be spelt inja enkat.

Example texts

Example sentences

Vufawa iisiPogcugéza?

Do you speak Portuguese?

Hi, Ayufawa iisiPogcugéza.

No, I do not speak Portuguese.

Bagcô, vufawa iisiXhosa?

So/Well then, do you speak Xhosa?

Ebo, Iufawa iisiXhosa. Bagcô isiZulu.

Yes, I speak Xhosa. Zulu as well/also.