South African motto

[AAllan at AOL.COM]

This is from the Los Angeles Times. The story goes on at some length beyond
this excerpt. - Allan Metcalf


http://www.latimes.com:80/news/nation/20000521/t000048019.html

Sunday, May 21, 2000
 S. Africa's New Motto Leaves Some Flush With Chagrin
 By DEAN E. MURPHY, Times Staff Writer

  PRETORIA, South Africa--It's impossible to read. Forget about trying to
pronounce it. And the meaning? Well, it's best not to ask.
  South Africa's new national motto looks like an Internet address gone
dotty, but that's the least of its troubles. Experts say even its wacky
spelling isn't quite right. And critics suggest that it conjures up images of
the toilet.
  The inscription, as it appears on South Africa's newly redesigned coat of
arms, reads: !ke e: /xarra //ke. The phrase comes from /Xam, an extinct
language once spoken by many of the original inhabitants of southern Africa,
known as the Khoisan. The lettering is the work of a German linguist who
committed the vanishing tongue with its clicking sounds to paper more than a
century ago.
  But as an unfortunate coincidence would have it, the commonly used word
/kham--pronounced identically to /Xam, the name of the language--means in
many Khoisan dialects "to relieve oneself," or more literally, "to take a
leak."