A Bibliography of South African Languages, 2008-2017 (original) (raw)
Related papers
The story of South African English:A brief linguistic overview
International Journal of Language, Translation and Intercultural Communication, 2012
T his article provides a linguistic overview of the history and current status of South African English (SAfE). With respect to the history of this variety it deals with its colonial origins, subsequent development as well as diversifi cation into a number of sub-varieties, both L1 and L2 in nature. Next, the article provides a brief synchronic overview of the dialect-specifi c features of this variety, focusing mainly on phonetics and phonology, but also dealing with morphology, lexis and grammar where pertinent. The last section of the article focuses on recent developments, both in terms of the variety itself and research in the fi eld.
Languages of Sub-Saharan Africa
The production of this book has been generously sponsored by the Stichting Bibliographie Linguistique, Leiden. This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the prevailing CC-BY-NC-ND License at the time of publication, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided no alterations are made and the original author(s) and source are credited. Cover illustration: the name of the Constitutional Court building (Johannesburg) written in eleven official languages of South Africa.
Arusha Working Papers in African Linguistics, Vol. 3
2021
The objectives of this study were to (a) establish what the views of the residents of Itsoseng township in the North West province (henceforth 'North West') were regarding the state of Setswana there; and (b) analyze the non-standard lexical items prevalent in its residents' utterances. A qualitative approach (through face-to-face interviews and participant observation) was employed to gather data from twenty (20) residents who were randomly selected. Participants held positive attitudes towards the use of Setswana in Itsoseng and express their wish that the language needed to be preserved and promoted, a task that should be a responsibility of speakers supported by government. They acknowledged that 'multilingualism' was a reality in South Africa and that, in such an environment where speakers of different home languages come into contact, 'code-switching' and 'code-mixing' were inevitable. Data from participants showed that their utterances were characterized by embedding Tsotsitaal lexical items into their Setswana, and these lexical items were drawn from those published in the literature on Tsotsitaal and those unpublished. A list of both categories of lexical items was compiled and presented in two appendices. This study not only contributed to the growth of research on 'language use' among speakers of Black South African languages who reside at Black townships, it also added terms to Tsotsitaal lexicon.
Towards A Norm in South African Englishes: The Case for Xhosa English
World Englishes, 2003
Black South African English (BSAE) is generally regarded today as the variety of English commonly used by mother-tongue speakers of South Africa=s indigenous African languages in areas where English is not the language of the majority. Its roots lie in the history of the teaching of English to the black people of this country, where the role models who teach English are second language learners themselves. To date, BSAE has mainly been studied within an applied linguistic framework with emphasis on its character as a second language which is deviant from standard English. An alternative view is to see it as a variety in its own right, a new or world English (Coetsee-van Rooy and Verhoef 2000; van der Walt and van Rooy 2002). As a consequence, a new look at norms is becoming increasingly necessary, so that decisions about learners= language competence can be made in terms of this variety. This paper reports on preliminary analyses of a recently collected corpus of Xhosa English (XE) (a sub-category of BSAE) which consists of naturalistic spoken data, and comprises some 540,000 words of Xhosa English. This large database enables empirical analysis of actual patterns of use in language, making it possible to test earlier speculations which have been based on intuition, and to explore the possibility of systematic differences in the patterns of structure and use in this particular variety. The paper focusses on 20 separate linguistic characteristics, most of which have been previously identified in the literature as being features of BSAE, and analyses each of them in turn, in order to ascertain their usage patterns and frequency of occurrence in the corpus.
Contemporary Khoesan Languages of South Africa
Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies, 2019
The purpose of this paper is to discuss contemporary Khoesan languages in South Africa from a sociolinguistic perspective. In order to do so, a basic explanation of Khoesan language families and their history is provided. From this socio-historical and linguistic context, contemporary Khoesan languages are examined in relation to: orthography and literacy practices; theory of language endangerment, documentation, maintenance and preservation; community collaboration and motivation; as well as outside support and feedback. Based on this information, the following recommendations for language maintenance and preservation of Khoesan languages in South Africa are made: 1) a comprehensive language revitalisation assessment report is needed for each contemporary Khoesan language; 2) early childhood education for mother tongue speakers is required; 3) international collaboration with Namibia to share existing literacy materials at all levels to facilitate mother tongue education; 4) invitations to be extended to international specialists encouraging cooperation with African based scholars, to improve theoretical understanding and application in an African context; 5) digitisation of and open access to existing resources to be made available online; and 6) an update of the national curriculum is needed to accurately represent contemporary Khoe and San people.
Carolina Digital Repository (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), 1994
English as a supplement to SPIL (Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics), a publication of the Department of General Linguistics of the University of Stellenbosch. The SPIL PLUS series has two aims. Firstly it ser\'es as a vchicle for the distribution of new and relatively inaccessible information in the field of modern linguistics. Secondly it is used for in-depth critical discussion of, mainly, Afrikaan.s niihlirations in the field of modern linguistics. An open invitation is extended to all authors whose worli is discussed to submit their reaction for publication in a following number of SPIL PLUS. Since one of tlie aims of the SPIL PLUS series is to stimulate critical discussion in South African linguistics, Comments by readers are welcomed. The copyright of each contribution is held by its autlior. The editors also wish to emphasize that they do not necessarily subscribe to the views expressed in contributions to SPIL PLUS. Contributions and comments should be submitted to: