Language Vitality in South Africa E-Book

Anika Kehl

• Herausgeber: GRIN Verlag
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Pedagogy, Literature Studies, grade: 1,3, Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald (Anglistik/Amerikanistik), course: Hauptseminar: English in Contact, language: English, abstract: There are 24 languages which are regularly used by more than 44.8 million South Africans and almost 80 % of the South African population use one of the African languages at home. “The most commonly spoken home language is isiZulu, which is spoken by 23.8 % of the population, followed by isiXhosa (17.6 %) and Afrikaans (13.3 %)” Although English is the home language of only 8.2 % of the South African population it is still used as a lingua franca throughout the nation. The eleven official languages are used by 99% of the country’s population and those languages are all supposed to have equal rights. Belonging to these languages are English and Afrikaans, and nine other African languages: “Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda, Xitsonga, isiNdebele, isiXhosa, and isiZulu”. There are also many other languages spoken in South Africa like for example Arabic, German, Greek, Hindi, Tamil, Hebrew and many more. Some European languages like French, German, and Portuguese are used in South Africa but they are not nearly as influential as English. The historical development of South Africa has brought the question of language forward. The country became aware of its unique language situation and the chances and problems which are connected to it. After Mandela many people developed a greater interest in smaller languages. The paper is going to explore the language vitality of some of the 11 official South African languages, dealing with the problem of language endangerment/death and language reviltalisation. It is going to be seen whether the multilingualism which is propagandized by the government is or can be realised in real life. Due to the lack of valid information for many of the smaller indigenous Afrcian langugeas the paper will mostly look at the situation of Afrikaans and English, only rarely concidering the other languages in much detail.

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Language Vitality

2.1 Different attitudes

2.1.1 Language policy – Official attitudes towards the 11 official languages

2.1.2 Personal attitudes towards the languages

2.2 Absolute number of speakers

2.3 Proportion of speakers within the total population

2.4 Trends in existing domains

2.4.1 Current situation in South African language domains

2. 4. 2 Example of an army camp

2.5 Response to new domains and media

2.6 Language in Education

2.7 Intergenerational Language Transmission

2.7.1 Categorising South Africa’s official languages

2.7.2 Southern Khoisan in South Africa – An Example of language death and its aftermath

2.8 How to use the nine factors of language vitality

3. A project

4. Conclusion

Bibliography

Addendum

1. Introduction

The rapid endangerment and death of many minority languages across the world is a matter of widespread concern, not only among linguists and anthropologists but among all concerned with issues of cultural identity in an increasingly globalized culture. […] By some counts, only 600 of the 6,000 or so languages in the world are ‘safe’ from the threat of extinction. On some reckonings, the world will, by the end of the twenty-first century, be dominated by a small number of major languages (Crystal 2000: II).

Statistics say that almost every fourteen days a language dies and that more than half of the languages that are spoken on earth today will have disappeared by the turn of the century (cf. National Geographic).[1] Today there might be about 6,800 “living” languages around the world. The majority of these languages, about 90%, are only spoken by less than 100,000 people and many tongues have even fewer speakers. There are supposedly even 46 languages which have only one speaker left. (cf. Connor 2003)[2] If we let the languages keep on disappearing like that there will only be a dozen or less languages left in the end (cf. Ostler 2000)[3].

Language is an important part of a person’s identity. It stands for diversity, freedom, history, and culture. Language death is not just a theoretical bereavement of language data but it is also a loss of human knowledge, of people’s stories and identities and of priceless diversity. Therefore it is very important that the countries and the people are able to get reliable information about their minority languages.

African languages are the simplest, fairest, most democratic, economic and achievable way to improve African lives and livelihood through the application of knowledge, education, science and technology. African languages are the most important African source of traditional and future social change, economic development and individual self-realization. (Cantalupo)[4]

South Africa is very often known as the “rainbow nation”, a metaphor which was renewed by Nelson Mandela who used it to describe the countries cultural diversity (cf. SomaliPress)[5]. With Nelson Mandela a new South African democracy was born on April the 27 in 1994 (cf. Beukes 2004: 1)[6]. The country officially became a multilingual society and still today it is experiencing a unique language situation (cf. Fernand de Varennes, Claire Murray, 2001: 58). South Africa is an immensely diverse country, not only home to many different cultures and people but also home to many different indigenous and modern languages. People know that the South African way of life is very much connected to their language diversity and the country is trying to protect this diversity against all odds. With 11 official languages the country has a very special language situation and it can be a role model for many other countries. There are seven indigenous African languages which have gotten an official status in recent years but the country also promotes the use of English as a lingua franca. Therfore they are trying to link their past with the future. Ethnologue lists 31 languages in South Africa. For four of those languages there is no speaker known anymore and 24 of them are still alive and spoken in the country. The remaining three languages do not have any mother-tongue speaker left. (cf. Ethnologue)[7] Therefore South Africa has already lost some of its language potential and is now trying to safe as many indigenous languages as possible.

There are 24 languages which are regularly used by more than 44.8 million South Africans and almost 80 % of the South African population use one of the African languages at home. (cf. Beukes 2004: 3)[8] “The most commonly- spoken home language is isiZulu, which is spoken by 23.8 % of the population, followed by isiXhosa (17.6 %) and Afrikaans (13.3 %)” (Beukes 2004: 4)[9] Although English is the home language of only 8.2 % of the South African population it is still used as a lingua franca throughout the nation. (cf. Beukes 2004: 4)[10] The eleven official languages are used by 99% of the country’s population and those languages are all supposed to have equal rights. Belonging to these languages are English and Afrikaans, and nine other African languages: “Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda, Xitsonga, isiNdebele, isiXhosa, and isiZulu”. (cf. Beukes 2004: 5)[11] There are also many other languages spoken in South Africa like for example Arabic, German, Greek, Hindi, Tamil, Hebrew and many more. (cf. Henrard 2001: 80)[12] Some European languages like French, German, and Portuguese are used in South Africa but they are not nearly as influential as English. (cf. Mesthrie 2002: 38)

The historical development of South Africa has brought the question of language forward. The country became aware of its unique language situation and the chances and problems which are connected to it. After Mandela many people developed a greater interest in smaller languages. The paper is going to explore the language vitality of some of the 11 official South African languages, dealing with the problem of language endangerment/death and language reviltalisation. It is going to be seen whether the multilingualism which is propagandized by the government is or can be realised in real life. Due to the lack of valid information for many of the smaller indigenous Afrcian langugeas the paper will mostly look at the situation of Afrikaans and English, only rarely concidering the other languages in much detail.

2. Language Vitality