African Gypsy

Instead of the old Shaka Day, we now have Heritage Day on the 24 September, which is tomorrow but in the Spirit of Heritage Day, we all came to work wearing our tradition clothes. Well all expect little old me as I was slightly confused as to which culture I should dress up as because all 4 of my grandparents are from 4 different European subgroups, Scottish, Irish, German, and Dutch, ouch. You could say I am representative of the European Union.

 Anyways above is Zanele dressed all colourful Zulu garb and below is a video of Ilana who also comes from diverse European subgroups, dancing a little gypsy belly dance for me. Okay, okay, Ilana was dancing for my blog, not me.

Nou gaan ons braai!

Welcome Zanele

And finally our side expands by one. Welcome Zanele to the writer’s team. Yes I know it is Friday and we are all looking forward to the weekend but we can all do with a little help from Zanele about now.

Order, order!

Okay since we have a new writer on board, how about a question, an English question that all we first language English speakers follow but don’t know why. Who can tell me the order of adjectives?

Uhmmm, thought so, not easy but we do use it without realising it.

1. Quantity or number 
2. Quality or opinion 
3. Size 
4. Age 
5. Shape 
6. Colour 
7. Proper adjective (often nationality, other place of origin, or material) 
8. Purpose or qualifier 

Here is what the book “The Elements of Eloquence” has to say about the order of adjectives...

"adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose noun. So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order in the slightest you'll sound like a maniac. It's an odd thing that every English speaker uses that list, but almost none of us could write it out"

So with a big welcome to Zanele and an English lesson out of the way, let’s go enjoy the weekend.

Zanele

Matthew brought home a new friend today, Zanele. She is staying with family in our complex while on school holidays. Matthew and Zanele seemed to have hit it off.