KalahariLog
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Why are there so many important words in African languages that begin with the letter "u"? Uhuru, is the official name for Mt. Kilimanjaro and in Swahili means "freedom". I knew vaguely about uhuru from the reggae band Black Uhuru, but the book "A Grain of Wheat" by Ngugi reminded me about it. By the way, the book is quite good, about the difficult times before Kenyan independence. I've continued trying to catch up a little bit on African literature but I haven't read as many books lately.
Ubuntu is described as a "humanist ideology from Sub-Saharan Africa" and is summarized by Desmond Tutu as follows: "A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed." The concept is central in a movie we watched today, "The Country of My Skull", about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It was a bit too predictable and bit too Hollywood but it probably couldn't have been any other way given that it starred Juliette Binoche and Samuel L. Jackson.
Ubuntu is, of course, also a popular distribution of Linux, based on Debian. What makes this a fascinating story is that the company behind Ubuntu Linux is South African. The founder, Mark Shuttleworth, is a white 34 year-old, who gained celebrity status less because of his successful businesses but for being the second space tourist. He made a killing in his early 20's with a company that specialized in digital certificates which he sold to VeriSign for over $500 million. In his old age, he turned altruistic and donated several millions to jump-start the Ubuntu Linux cause.
Given that there seem to be so many words starting with U and Z in this part of the word, I've been wondering what would be the statistics for the most common letters (or sounds) in different parts of the world. I know that in English the most common written letters are "e,t,a,o,i,n,s,..." and that in slavic languages we have "o,e,a,i,n,t,s,..." The two lists are quite similar and I'd be willing to bet a large nickel that most Indo-European languages have similar letter frequency counts. But I wonder what these counts are for African languages. Could it be just a coincidence or are words with the letters Z and U more common in Bantu languages?
Ubuntu is described as a "humanist ideology from Sub-Saharan Africa" and is summarized by Desmond Tutu as follows: "A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed." The concept is central in a movie we watched today, "The Country of My Skull", about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It was a bit too predictable and bit too Hollywood but it probably couldn't have been any other way given that it starred Juliette Binoche and Samuel L. Jackson.
Ubuntu is, of course, also a popular distribution of Linux, based on Debian. What makes this a fascinating story is that the company behind Ubuntu Linux is South African. The founder, Mark Shuttleworth, is a white 34 year-old, who gained celebrity status less because of his successful businesses but for being the second space tourist. He made a killing in his early 20's with a company that specialized in digital certificates which he sold to VeriSign for over $500 million. In his old age, he turned altruistic and donated several millions to jump-start the Ubuntu Linux cause.
Given that there seem to be so many words starting with U and Z in this part of the word, I've been wondering what would be the statistics for the most common letters (or sounds) in different parts of the world. I know that in English the most common written letters are "e,t,a,o,i,n,s,..." and that in slavic languages we have "o,e,a,i,n,t,s,..." The two lists are quite similar and I'd be willing to bet a large nickel that most Indo-European languages have similar letter frequency counts. But I wonder what these counts are for African languages. Could it be just a coincidence or are words with the letters Z and U more common in Bantu languages?
posted by Stephen Kobourov # 9:14 AM 
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