The meaning of Alimadzi
I’m sure you’re curious, so I guess I can let you in on the secret of what Alimadzi means. OK, it’s not actually a secret. I just haven’t taken the time to explain it to very many people.
Alimadzi is a phrase in Chichewa, the national language of Malawi. In case you’re not aware, I lived in Malawi from 1997 to 1999 while working as a Peace Corps Volunteer teacher. Anyway, it’s actually two words so it’s usually written “ali madzi“. The literal translation is “he is in water“. Most of the time it’s yelled from the sidelines of a football (soccer) match after one player is so outmaneuvered by another that he literally appears to be playing underwater. Seeing as how barefoot six-year-old kids played football much better than I did and would blow by me like I was standing still, I heard this A LOT.
I thought it was pretty funny and liked the sound of the words so much that I decided to adopt it as my standard username. I registered this domain about two years ago to use for e-mail and now (finally) I’m starting the website. I guess the name really fits, doesn’t it?
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Alimadzi is a very unique sounding name, actually I need to see some pronunciation symbols. What makes it even better is that there is meaning behind it, but you knew that.
Pronunciation, eh? Here is the IPA transcription: /a.li.’mad.zi/ Confused? Chichewa is phonetic, so in general words are spelled the way they sound. Maybe this layman’s transcription will help more: “ah-lee-MAHD-zee”. If you bug me about it enough, I might post a wav file for you.
[...] Being an “under the hood” type of guy, I plan to tweak this theme over the next several weeks. I might even add a custom logo. In the meantime, I hope everyone enjoys a speedier Alimadzi. This is actually quite ironic considering the meaning of Alimadzi. Heh. [...]