Mebala – Colours and Patterns in Setswana

Mebala – Colours and Patterns in Setswana

The Setswana word for colours is mebala. However, mebala does not directly translate to colours, as it also means colour patterns. In particular, when talking about animal hides.

Mebala is the plural for mmala (contracted from mobala – see discussion under Class 1 and Class 3 of Noun Classes). Most names of colours and colour patterns are gender-specific in Setswana. The masculine form is the default version, and is also used to refer to genderless objects, such as soil, trees, and water. However, in poetic settings, or as an expression of endearment, the same genderless objects are often referred to using the feminine version of the colour/pattern’s name.

By the way, the feminine version of the names is just the diminutive of the male ones. This is obtained by adding the diminutive suffix –ana to the word. However, this may not always be obvious and apparent, as a lot of the times, the resulting word goes through a sound-change, and takes a form that is not easily identifiable to learners of the language. For instance, the feminine of “phatshwa’ (black and white patches) is phatshwana, while for tilodi (black and white stripes) is tilotswana. Less obvious ones include kwebu (grey with white spots), whose feminine version is kotswana. But my most favourite are ntsho (black) and tshweu (white), whose feminine versions are tshwana and tshwaana, respectively.

Tshwana and tshwaana, although on opposite sides of the colour spectrum, have spellings so similar that a person cannot be blamed for assuming one is a typing error. And it is these two words, again, that are attributed the possibility of the origins of the word “Batswana”. Because Batswana are generally a light-brown skinned people, both theories are plausible. The first being Ba-tshwaana (from white), referring to how much lighter Batswana were compared to most of their neighbouring nations. The other being Ba-tshwana (from black), referring to how our ancestors perceived themselves in comparison to the very light Khoisan people in the West, and the European and Arab traders to the East.

At this point, it may be necessary to point out that Batswana are not an actual single nation, but a cultural and linguistic conglomeration of different similar ethnicities (Barolong, Bakwena, Bakgatla, etc). As such, it is not inconceivable that this grouping name may be relatively new.
Of cause, there is another theory about the etymology of “Batswana”, which is from ‘ba a tswana’ (they break-away to form smaller tribes), as this was a typical recurring theme throughout Tswana history.

Solid colours have their own names, yet, when the same solid colours combine with others to form a pattern that too has a different name. In fact, as is the case with phatshwa and tilodi above (which both mean black-and-white), the nature of the pattern the colours form, determines the name. Another black-and-white combination is nkgwe (female kgwana), which is when the pattern is of small spots. Similar to the case with tshwana and tshwaana, there also exists kgwaana, the feminine version of kgwasi, which is a spotted brown-and-white pattern.

Brown is another interesting colour, in the context of Setswana. Setswana does not have a generic word for brown, but instead has more specific ones like tshetlha (khakhi-like), thokwa (mid-brown), thupatsamaretlwa (dark brown), and khibidu (reddish). Khibidu also means red.
Green also has the same base name as blue, which is “tala”. This is because tala actually refers to cyan/turquoise. To specify, you add an identifier “jwa loapi” (sky-like) for blue, or “jwa matlhare” (leaf-like) for green.

Another thing about names of colours in Setswana is that the same colour may have different names when applied to different animals. We all remember black as ntsho and tshwana, right? However, for sheep, black is pirwa (male) and pirwana (female).

Setswana has suffered from a long lack of neologies, and as such, most Setswana nouns are names of things that were present in the lives of our pre-colonial ancestors. By the same token, colour names are only for naturally-occurring hues, such as red (khibidu), grey (tuba), orange (lephutshe), yellow (serolwana), etc.

“Imported” colours do not have Setswana names, and instead are just referred to using a Tswanalised pronunciation of the English name, such as phephole (purple), pinki (pink), merune (maroon), and selefera (silver); or Afrikaans names like gauta/gouta (goud – the Afrikaans word for gold). Although we refer to is simply as gauta/gouta, the original Setswana name for gold, which was mined by our pre-colonial ancestors, is the less easy-on-the-tongue “botlepethepe”.

 

Featured image source: 
By Shnatsel – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17323196

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *