Why does Xhosa have a word for "tiger?" In his memoir…
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Why does Xhosa have a word for "tiger?"
In his memoir _Long Walk to Freedom_, Nelson Mandela recounts that one of the topics he and his fellow political prisoners debated most often during their ~20 years in prison is whether there are/were tigers in Africa. Mandela says that he argued there were, because the Xhosa language has a word for "tiger," which is hard to explain if there were no such animals to discuss.
I think he does not say which Xhosa word he had in mind.
I looked it up and apparently there have never been tigers in Africa. So, why _does_ Xhosa have a word for tiger?
#science
In his memoir _Long Walk to Freedom_, Nelson Mandela recounts that one of the topics he and his fellow political prisoners debated most often during their ~20 years in prison is whether there are/were tigers in Africa. Mandela says that he argued there were, because the Xhosa language has a word for "tiger," which is hard to explain if there were no such animals to discuss.
I think he does not say which Xhosa word he had in mind.
I looked it up and apparently there have never been tigers in Africa. So, why _does_ Xhosa have a word for tiger?
#science
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