The Political Economy of the Harmonisation of the Nguni and the Sotho Languages

Neville Alexander

doi:10.5788/8-1-957

Abstract

The author believes that it is essential to revisit the issue of the harmonisation of the African languages of South Africa. He maintains that most people who have been writing on the subject locally have not understood the kernel of the original Nhlapo-Alexander proposal and restates the economic and political arguments for it. Because there are no "linguistic" barriers to the realisation of this proposal, he concludes that the main obstacle is the lack of political will and appeals to the relevant academics and political/cultural leadership of the country to reconsider the issue against the background of a similar movement in the rest of the continent.

Highlights

Opsomming: Die polities-ekonomiese aspekte van die harmonisering van die Nguni- en die Sothotale
In view of the erroneous and misleading opinions expressed by Louwrens (1997: 248-250) and because the question of the harmonisation of the Nguni and the Sotho languages of South Africa is bound to become more, not less, relevant in the near future, it is appropriate that this still contentious matter be looked at Lexikos 8 (AFRILEX-reeks/series 8: 1998): 269-275
In the first version of the proposal, I wrote: The development of a written Standard Nguni and a Standard Sotho, as an initial phase of a very long-term process of "uniformation", need not and will not lead to the disappearance of Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele, Siswati Sipedi and Tswana and their dialects '" subject to the availabil~ ity of resources, they will be encouraged in print in literature of all kinds

Summary

Introduction

Opsomming: Die polities-ekonomiese aspekte van die harmonisering van die Nguni- en die Sothotale. In view of the erroneous and misleading opinions expressed by Louwrens (1997: 248-250) and because the question of the harmonisation of the Nguni and the Sotho languages of South Africa is bound to become more, not less, relevant in the near future, it is appropriate that this still contentious matter be looked at Lexikos 8 (AFRILEX-reeks/series 8: 1998): 269-275

Results

Conclusion