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PRESS REVIEWS
Eastern Cape
Herald - Newspaper
Multimedia was made for
this! The course, designed by programmers and language teachers at the University of Cape Town (why them and not us, I ask), takes pupils right from the basics through to what I am assured is pretty advanced Xhosa. What makes multimedia different from any other medium is that it has the power to be interactive. That means that if you want to check on the pronunciation of uqhoqhoqho, all you do is to click on the word and one of your tutors who learnt the language at his or her mother's knee says it for you. A little later in the course you can even speak into your computer to compare your own pronunciation with the real thing. Learning from a mother tongue speaker of any language clearly has its advantages, in that you hear how the language should be spoken right from the start. But that can also be more than a little intimidating, so author Tessa Dowling introduced a neat concept, which is a group of fellow pupils who struggle and stumble as much as you do, so you needn't feel alone. You really know you've arrived when you can correct their mistakes. (So I've heard. My Xhosa is still in its infancy, unfortunately, which is where the tenacity bit comes in). What I am saying is that if I spent a few hours a night with my fellow virtual pupils learning my vocabulary, classes, copulative concords and those other bits that throw me every time, I'd probably be able to hold a fair conversation in Xhosa already. Please, don't let me frighten you off. If you work through the course thoroughly you'll learn all those things the way you should have done in the first place, by speaking and using the language. The theoretical bits are for the more advanced souls and those who want to know why things are the way they are, instead of just accepting that languages have little logic. Unit 1 is divided into five lessons. It will teach you how to greet others and hold the first part of the usual daily conversation. You're then ready for Unit 2, which deals with Ifemeli Nabahlobo, that's family and friends to you and me. By Unit 4 you're working and enjoying yourself. You'll even find out how to Ukucela umsebenzi (apply for a job). One of the nice things about talking to your computer and to your virtual class is that you don't have to be all shy about getting it wrong. You can practice to your heart's content in the privacy of your own study or office until you've pretty much got it right. The handbook closely follows the CD, but complements rather than being a simple printed version of the computer-based course (and minus, of course, the videos, sounds, tests which are marked instantly). Where it does follow the spirit of the CD is that it has plenty of illustrations. The different scenes all relate to the relevant part of the multimedia course, but they'll stand alone if you're swatting up while on a plane, on the beach or in bed. There are, it must be said, one or two niggles. The first is relatively easy to fix, from most pages there is no obvious quick link back to the main menu. All they need to do there is to add a few bookmarks. The second, and I raised this with the publishers, is the absence of a dictionary. There is a very good reason for this, in that Xhosa is constructed in such a way that a dictionary is virtually useless unless you can already speak it with some fluency, which means you probably don't need the dictionary anyway. All the more reason to harness the power of the computer to allow the likes of me to look up words that are so buried in prefixes and other bits that they're unrecognisable. There's no excuse for waiting until the next version comes out. If you want to learn Xhosa from home, this is streets ahead of any tapes or books you're going to get. Speak Xhosa With Us costs around R425 for a single copy (it gets cheaper the more you buy) and it is available from African Voices at P O Box 365, Noordhoek, 7985 |