Talk:Languages of South Africa/Archive 1

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Archive 1

Nguni?

The nine official Bantu languages of South Africa aren't all Nguni. Is Nguni not only comprised of Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele and Swati? Sesotho and Northern Sotho (and maybe even Tswana, but I'm not sure) are Sotho languages, not Nguni languages. Joziboy 23 March 2006, 20:10 (UTC)

According to Ethnologue there are four Nguni languages. :) // Big Adamsky • BA's talk page 20:35, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Constitution

Where does:

The Constitution also recognises a further eight non-official "national languages":
Fanagalo, Lobedu (Khilobedu), Northern Ndebele (Sindebele), Phuthi (Siphuthi), South African Sign Language, Khoe, Nama, San (Khoisan/Khoesan) languages

come from? The 1st four are not in the version of the constititution I use. See Chapter 1, section 6. --Uxejn 21:52, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Call for merger

This page should be merged as fast as possible with Other languages of South Africa, which has a less official "feel" to it, but whose coverage of languages is wider than Languages of South Africa. There is no rationale to keep them separate. Anyone? — Sotho of the South 14:27, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I absolutely agree. Since when have these been apart? — mark ✎ 14:38, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
A quick check revealed nothing substantially different, so I have redirected Other languages of South Africa to this article and will delete the obsolete redirect in a few days. Until then, the original content can still be found in this revision. In the meantime, the scope of the current article will need to widened to include all languages spoken in South Africa, along the lines of Languages of Uganda and Languages of Mali. — mark ✎ 14:45, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Mark. Looks great. I made minor additions to the Languages_of_SA article, based on the one being scrapped. — Sotho of the South 11:00, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

See that page's discussion page for rationale. --Uxejn 21:59, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
Indeed. No good arguments to unredirect it surfaced in the discussion, so I've redirected it again to the relevant section here. — mark ✎ 10:04, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Reversions

Please do not buck the consensus we have reached regarding the spelling of the official South Africa languages. i.e. Xhosa, Zulu, etc. I have to warn ZyXoas that if he continues to undo all changes and attempts to exert 'ownership' over Wiki pages, then he will be reported for unreasonable behavior and the 3RR rule will be invoked. He may well be blocked from editing. Please behave. Thank you. 196.30.118.76 18:54, 24 April 2007 (UTC) DawnTreader

OK, I'm tired of seeing incorrect reversions. I've reported Zyxaos for his Edit War and general conduct. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/3RR 196.207.40.213 20:49, 24 April 2007 (UTC)DawnTreader

Please note that for the purposes of 3RR, there are no 'incorrect' or 'correct' reversions. The 3RR applies to you as well, so please stop the edit warring. — mark ✎ 09:50, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Mark, from what I can see this issue has been going on for a long time on several topics. (Just look at the history ...) Call it what you like, you are part of it. If you haven't the canolis to put a stop to it, then I will! It doesn't help Wiki or the article to have editors trying to 'own' pages.196.207.40.213 11:42, 25 April 2007 (UTC) DawnTreader

I'm most definitely not part of it. Sure, I have been active in debates surrounding this issue, but that's quite different from the revert warring that has been going on over the last few days. Please get your facts straight. If you think to can put a stop to it by revert warring, fine. I won't, not because I don't have 'the canolis', but because I think edit warring is pointless, especially about a minor issue like this. — mark ✎ 11:51, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Where English is spoken

I had a discussion earlier on the South Africa article regarding the map showing the distribution of the usage of the 11 official languages by magisterial district. I did not like the message the map sends out. The new map created for Sotho is a step in the right direction, but it reminds me of an old map of South Africa with all the TBVC states blanked out white. Could someone create a map from the same statistics showing iso-lingo for each of language under discussion? Where is English spoke?Gregorydavid 13:36, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm working on it. Once my program is working, I will be able to actually go down to municipality level, and produce a map showing the proportion of the population of each municipality whose home language is a specific language. I hope to be able to upload the first products tomorrow or this weekend. - htonl 13:11, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

TBVC maps? O_o ?

What language is it in? Turbo Pascal? Tebello TheWHAT!!?? 15:58, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

While we're talking about this, do you think it would be better for the map to show the population of X-speakers (for X a language) relative to the total population of the municipality, or for it to show the population of X-speakers relative to the geographical area of the municipality? I can do either. - htonl 17:16, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

New distribution maps

I've generated some maps of language distribution in South Africa. There are two types: "density" - geographical density of home-language speakers of the language - and "proportion" - the proportion of speakers of the language to the total population. The data is from Census 2001. I have produced maps for each official language, for the Nguni, Sotho-Tswana and West Germanic groups, and one for non-official languages.

Take a look, tell me what you think, tell me what I should change; and this weekend I'll start uploading to Commons. (I'll upload SVG versions to Commons; I've used PNG at the link above for smaller size and ease of viewing.) Oh, Gregorydavid, to answer your question "Where is English spoke?": Gauteng, Cape Town, Durban and Port Elizabeth. - htonl 00:52, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

English is an endangered language.

The maps look really nice, but I have a few points I'd like to raise:

1. I love the detail with the municipalities, but I have no idea where the provinces are. I'm thinking you could use a thick, non-black border to show the provinces too? Eg. I know that many people in Tshwane speak Sesotho sa Leboa but I can't really see where Gauteng is on your map.

2. Lesotho still looks like a weird province. I was thinking you could draw thick black national borders too?

3. Could it also be possible to make:

a. Sesotho maps including Lesotho?

b. Setswana maps including Botswana?

c. SiSwati maps including Swaziland?

4. I couldn't exactly make out what they were (technical difficulties on my side), but those squigles beneath the picture titles look like English text. Might it not be better if the pictures included as little English text as possible? Or perhaps you could create another language-neutral set?

Tebello TheWHAT!!?? 08:29, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

1 & 2. Good idea. I'll work on that this weekend. (I could also put in a grey background so that Lesotho doesn't just look like a province with zero population.)
3. might be a bit more tricky. I did in fact look around the Lesotho Bureau of Statistics website to see if I could find language distribution statistics, but I couldn't find any. I'll keep looking, but if you know where I can get statistics like that (at district level, ideally) I could probably work something out. Similarly for Botswana and Swaziland.
4. Yes. The versions I upload to Commons will be language-neutral. (At the moment, the density maps have the key labelled in "sq.km"; presumably I should change that to "km2" to be more general.)
Glad you like them! - htonl 09:22, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Oops! I forgot:

d. A Xitsonga map including Mozambique.

e. An isiNdebele (and Tshivenda) map including Zimbabwe.

Yeah, this sounds like way too much trouble. The statistics would also be rather unreliable since not every country has as many official languages as we do. Eg. Botswana virtually ignores all the numerous Khoisan, non-Sotho-Tswana, and non-Setswana Sotho-Tswana languages (such as Sekgalagadi, which as a result is usually treated as a dialect of Setswana) and so the values might not be detailed enough.

Additionally, for the same reasons, I'm not even sure if anyone knows exactly how many people speak Tshivenda in southern Zimbabwe. This would really be a nightmare.

Tebello TheWHAT!!?? 10:23, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

OK, I've made new maps (at the same location) with provincial and national borders added and the municipal borders removed. I've removed the titles and the English text in brackets below the titles. (I feel these elements are more appropriately placed in a caption). - htonl 20:24, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, they look stunning. Brilliant work, dude! I find them a bit confusing (eg. the stark contrast between the 2 Afrikaans maps) but that's just my own problem... Tebello TheWHAT!!?? 23:40, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi, you have done a sterling job, like Dr Higgins and Mr Spock. I have seen the earlier and your most recent versions of the maps. On the issue of line type for boundaries I like the concept of a range of types, from no line, ie zero thickness particularly when the space is filled with conditional colours, to increasing line thickness in general from suburbs, local municipalities etc through to national boundaries. I see no problem indicating the weather on the other side of the border, in that way you get rid of the white holes - provided you have some data.

Considering printer friendliness etc I wondered whether colours including white increasing in intensity with blue is as effective as shades of grey would be.

On proportions, if you still have so much energy, one could produce a map where the intensity of the fill colour for a particular language map at a particular point could be selected on the basis of the number of speakers at that point relative to the total population of speakers of the language..Gregorydavid 02:11, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

I didn't do anything. HungaryToNetherlands is the one who painstakingly used charcoal, blueberries, cat's milk, and a thorn to draw the maps pixel by pixel (well, at least, that's the way I usually do it)... Tebello TheWHAT!!?? 08:36, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
(By the way, that is the most interesting interpretation of my username that I have seen thus far; and I laughed out loud at your hilarious though not entirely accurate description of the methods of mapmaking.) As to the stark contrast between the two Afrikaans maps, they reflect the singular distinction between the answers to the questions "Where are most of the people Afrikaans-speaking?" and "Where are most of the Afrikaans-speaking people?".
As to printer-friendliness, it may be true that shades of grey would be better for b&w printers; but for screen display using blue and varying the saturation produces a better-looking map. (It doesn't have to be blue; the general idea is to use the HSV color space, setting the hue to some fixed value - 240 in the case of blue - the value to 100%, and vary the saturation proportional to the data.) - htonl 16:03, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
I assume you are refering to TheWHAT!!??'s suggested rock-art like map, as I was only refering to what the maps look like. Anyway, on the density issue you range from zero to greater than 100 speakers per km^2. I was suggesting basing the shading on a count. Say we are dealing with a minority language then your method may show up a very pale map?Gregorydavid 12:08, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
You interpret correctly. I can certainly generate maps proportional to the total speakers of the language, as you suggest. The advantage of the density ones as they are now is that you can compare the maps for the different languages knowing that the same color represents the same density. I will create both. - htonl 07:48, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

OK, the maps will be in commons:Category:Demographic maps of South Africa when they are uploaded. So far I have uploaded the density maps for each language. - htonl 20:03, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Extra nice! I'm not sure but I think that you've changed the blue colours ever so slightly (looks like a non-linear transfer function, like gamma adjustment or gradual amplification and soft saturation; you know, like tanh) but the legend at the bottom still looks the same (still the same scale). It's not a problem really, since the maps are only meant to give a rough idea and the legend is not meant to be extra accurate (personally, I feal that a few notches with values would look rad though useless, like glowing vacuum tubes in guitar amplifiers). Tebello TheWHAT!!?? 21:22, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Nope, I haven't changed the color mapping at all. In theory, the key at the bottom and the colors on the map should correspond exactly. In practise, the vagaries of SVG renderers and color temperature probably means that it might vary a bit. - htonl 15:58, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Okay. I guess that it's just a difference in the way SVG and GIF are rendered on my side.

So when and how will they be added to the relevant articles? I imagine you can just replace the old pictures with their new alternatives, and add pictures to articles that didn't have them. Tebello TheWHAT!!?? 21:32, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, of course, once the maps are on Commons, I'm not the only one who can add them to articles. Right now I'm rather busy with university work, so I probably won't be adding them immediately. I agree, though, that the maps can just replace the old ones or be added to articles without them. I haven't yet uploaded the maps that show the language speakers as a proportion of the population - the maps that would correspond to Joziboy's old ones - yet, though. - htonl 08:14, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Hi, maybe there are some of us who can incorporate the latest distribution maps into the relevant articles. Before you take a break to do other work, please create a map with same format etc showing population density of all language speakers where they reside, so that the reader can acertain how sparsely populated some areas of South Africa are. Next I shall start quizzing you on the nuts and bolts of converting the census data into maps..Gregorydavid 09:09, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Done! See Image:Population density ZA.svg. - htonl 18:12, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

History and relations of the South African Bantu languages.

+ I've read about the similarity of North-Sotho and South-Sotho.

  • The two Ndebele languages (the South African and the Zimbabwean) have developped out of other Nguni and Sotho-Tswana languages since 1800.

-> These facts make me ask, which of the various Bantu languages of South Africa are so similar, that their speakers ca communicate by them without a dictionary. --Ulamm (talk) 14:31, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

The Sotho-Tswana languages sound fairly similar to each other, and the same is true for the Nguni languages. In turn, most people living in Gauteng can understand all the Sotho-Tswana and Nguni languages to a degree. Tshivenda and Xitsonga are a tad more exotic, with fewer speakers nationally. No, people don't walk around with bilingual dictionaries. Tebello TheWHAT!!?? 18:02, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Sign language

This article states that South African Sign Language is recognised in the constitution in the section establishing the Pan South African language Board and its functions. This is not strictly correct. The text of the consitution talks of "sign language" in the generic sense and not of the specific language known as South African Sign Language. Roger (talk) 11:59, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I believe you're 100% correct. Be italic and change it...
Tebello TheWHAT!!?? 13:19, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

2nd languages

Can we do something about second languages? A map for it. Afrikaans has more 2nd than 1st language speakers. If not do a graph or table showing second langages , maybe do a map for each language? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bezuidenhout (talk • contribs) 16:13, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Demographic information on second languages in SA is not collected in the official census. English also has more second than first language speakers. I have never seen any reliable statistics. If anyone knows of a source please point it out to us. Roger (talk) 20:53, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

National languages

In the blurb it says there are eight '"National languages"'. Further down in the paragraph about these eight '"National languages"' it says that there are nine. Can someone please clear this up? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.90.79.205 (talk) 20:17, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

The statement that
is just plain wrong. The Constitution doesn't even mention Fanagalo, Khilobedu, Sindebele or Siphuthi, and lists Tamil as one of "all languages commonly used by communities in South Africa, including German, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Portuguese, Tamil, Telegu and Urdu". So I have absolutely no idea where that comes from, and it seems like the whole thing should be removed. - htonl (talk) 16:41, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
I agree. In fact, there is no mention of "fanagalo"/"fanakalo"+"national language" anywhere on GOV.ZA except in humorous contexts. -- ~~ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.177.9.15 (talk) 18:03, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Map removed

I removed a map. Here it is, preserved. The three existing maps give a much better picture of where languages are spoken.

Map showing principal South African languages by municipality. Lighter shades indicate a non-majority plurality.

Bite me. -- leuce (talk) 19:22, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

2001 Census

Is the 2001 census really the freshest official data available? Roger (talk) 07:30, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, essentially. The Community Survey 2007 didn't ask about language. There are probably other surveys with data about language, but none that can give the geographical detail of the Census. (I'm really looking forward to Census 2011 to see what has changed. But it'll be several years before any data gets released from that.) - htonl (talk) 09:37, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks! A side by side comparison of ten years of change would be really interesting. BTW do you have any idea who we have to hassle/beg/bitch at/bribe to get them to include data about second languages in the next census? How much time is there between census day and publication? I imagine it would be around 1-2 years. Roger (talk) 11:22, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
I'm afraid it's probably too late to get them to add any questions - according to the Census 2011 planning website they held workshops to design the questionnaires in 2008 already - by now they're probably well into preparation/printing. For Census 2001, most of the data came out in 2003 and 2004; but I have heard talk that this time they may be replacing paper questionnaires with electronic devices, which would greatly speed up the capturing of data. - htonl (talk) 14:01, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
The census table listed names of peoples and territories rather than languages, which is like saying people from India speak Indian, or the peoples of North America speak Canadian, American, and Mexican. I've substituted the actual language names. --UnicornTapestry (talk) 06:05, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

"language of the oppressor"

The statement "At various times in South Africa's history, either English or Afrikaans was labelled as the "language of the oppressor"" is not appropriately npov. The viewpoint is not attributed to those who hold it. The scare quotes alone should bring to the editor's attention that we are dealing with a value judgment, not a "fact." One could just as easily that "At various times in South Africa's history, Bantu and Khoisan languages were labelled as the language of the primitives and savages." The fact that one could find references to such loaded viewpoints doesn't make them objective statements. As it stands the comment is totally unacceptable. It would need to be attributed, such as "Karl Marx has described English and Afrikaans as the languages of capitalist oppression" and it would have to be set within the text where it could be balanced, not the introdcution, where one could simply say that language is a politically loaded isuue" so as not to amount to undue weight.μηδείς (talk) 15:09, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

From WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV:

A biased statement violates this policy when it is presented as a fact or the truth. It does not necessarily violate this policy when it is presented as an identifiable point of view. It is therefore important to verify it and make every effort possible to add an appropriate citation.
For instance, "John Doe is the best baseball player" expresses an opinion; it cannot be included in Wikipedia as if it were a fact. One way to make it suitable for Wikipedia is to change it into a statement about someone whose opinion it is: "John Doe's baseball skills have been praised by baseball insiders such as Al Kaline and Joe Torre," as long as those statements are correct and can be verified. The goal here is to attribute the opinion to some subject-matter expert, rather than to merely state it as true.
There is a temptation to rephrase biased or opinion statements with weasel words: "Many people think John Doe is the best baseball player." But statements of this form are subject to obvious attacks: "Yes, many people think so, but only ignorant people"; and "Just how many is 'many'? I think it's only 'a few' who think that!" By attributing the claim to a known authority, or substantiating the facts behind it, you can avoid these problems.

I'm sorry, you're barking up the wrong tree here. If you are a South African older than thirty or so, the phrase would be as familiar to you as "the land of the free" is to Americans. So let's see if I can find a few cites for you - BTW those are not "scare quotes" - they are genuine quotes marking a common knowlege slogan that was very widely used in exactly that form by people opposed to apartheid.
Google has over thirty thousand hits for the phrase, here are just a few of them:
http://www.culturalsurvival.org%2Fourpublications%2Fcsq%2Farticle%2Flanguage-policy-and-oppression-south-africa
http://www.dieuniversitaet-online.at%2Fdossiers%2Fbeitrag%2Fnews%2Fthe-image-of-afrikaans-in-south-africa-part-2
http://blogs.dispatch.co.za%2Fdialogues%2F2010%2F06%2F29%2Fthe-language-of-nostalgia
http://everything2.com%2Ftitle%2FAfrikaans
http://web.uct.ac.za/depts/praesa/OPaper14.PDF
http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-10072004-100304/
http://www.timeslive.co.za/opinion/columnists/article274227.ece
http://www.sosyalarastirmalar.com/cilt1/sayi1/sayi1pdf/dyers_charlyn.pdf
http://book.co.za%2Fblog%2F2010%2F01%2F14%2Fafrikaans-writers-against-apartheid
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3820344
http://ilze.org/semio/001.htm
http://www.mg.co.za/uploads/2010/08/16/jansen-lecture.doc
http://www.vocfm.co.za/index.php?&section=news&category=&heritagenews=&article=35456
http://sun025.sun.ac.za/portal/page/portal/Arts/Departemente1/Joernalistiek/Global%20Media%20Journal/Global%20Media%20Journal%20-%20Files/Diederichs_0.doc
http://narratingchange.blogspot.com%2F2007%2F08%2Fafrikaans-gets-boost-from-black-ten.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/foreigndesk/detail?entry_id=6202
Roger (talk) 16:13, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

So it shouldn't be hard to find a quote of the sort that, according to "Archbishop Tutu...", or according to "Winnie Mandela....", or "According to the ANC charter..." and to put that attributed statement in the text. That would be perfectly NPOV.μηδείς (talk) 16:27, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

The problem with trying to nail it down to one or two individual people is that, that would be absurdly POV. Literally millions of people have held that opinion. It is almost as absurd as trying to restrict the attribution of the statement "Jesus is the son of God" to only the Pope. I don't see anything wrong with citing some of the sources I have provided - or indeed those that were in the article already - that clearly say that the opinon that "Afrikaans is the language of the oppressor" was very widely held by many people. Roger (talk) 17:00, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
You are missing the point of WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV. A controversial statement on its own is made NPOV by saying who made it. All that is needed to make it NPOV is something like, "According to John Smith of the Ann Arbor Trotsky Institute, 'It is widely believed that Broccoli is devilspawn'." Or, "People such as Noam Chomsky and Robert Mugabe have called English the 'language of oppression'." Buit simply saying that many people think of Afrikaans as the languiage of the oppressor neither specifies who those people are or who it is that is telling us what those people believe. If we accept the "many people think" criteria as valid, then why would it be invalid to say, for instance, "many people think that bushmen are primitives, and Zulus are savages"? Our personal moral opinion of such statements is not relevant. What we have to do is make the statement objective by saying specifically who holds such a view, or, who says such views are held.
This does not mean that the quoted person is the only one to hold such views. It simply changes from the subjective focus of implying the validity of an opinion to the objective focus of saying who actually does hold such an opinion.
I don't have the time to track down and read all your sources looking for an appropriate quote. But if you can quote one or three of what you think are the best statements and provide the links, I am sure I can formulate the statement so as to make it acceptable according to the policy.μηδείς (talk) 17:31, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
Ok, I'll give it a shot, but tomorrow. It's Friday night of a long weekend here in SA - my immediate objectives are dinner a movie and bed. Roger (talk) 17:41, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Ideas to improve this article

  1. A History section.
    How did South Africa end up with so many languages and how did the demographics change over the years?
    A paragraph about the use of French by the Huguenots in South Africa
  2. Endangered Languages and Extinct languages
    What languages have been lost and what are in danger of being lost. Why is this happening? Examples may be Cape Khoekhoe, N|uu, Korana, |Xam and more

--NJR_ZA (talk) 09:46, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

language names

I see the article uses Zulu and Xhosa, but those are the peoples. The actual language names are isiZulu and isiXhosa. 197.87.87.137 (talk) 09:02, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

In English we refer to Zulu people as "Zulu People" and the language as the "Zulu Language". The same way we refer to the people who speak the "French Language" as "French People". Since this is English wikipedia we use what people call the language and even in South Africa, English speakers refer to the languages as simply "Zulu" and "Xhosa". Bezuidenhout (talk) 09:22, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
In the English Wikipedia we use the English names of languages: Italian language, not Italiano; Russian language, not русский язык; German language, not Deutch, Telugu language, not తెలుగు. The same applies to this article as well as Xhosa language and Zulu language too. Roger (talk) 09:34, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

In South African English in South African English dictionaries, we use isiZulu, isiXhosa, etc. We don't say "We speak England," we say "We speak English." Look it up. The article is wrong. We only use "Zulu" as a shortcut. 197.87.87.137 (talk) 12:14, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Not true, but it doesn't matter anyway. The English Wikipedia's consensus is that on the English Wikipedia we use the names of languages in English. It looks like you didn't even bother to read the earlier replies - look at the articles about various languages I linked in my previous reply. BTW "England" is the name of a place, not a language. Roger (talk) 12:40, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm not very experienced here (or apparently welcome), but, because you denigrated my point with русский язык and తెలుగు, I deliberately used "England/English" to explain how you're misusing South African English. Attitudes that consensus trumps correctness is beyond me, but I suppose you Americans and British know better than us poor ignorant South African savages how we use our language and dictionaries. Next time tell intruders to piss off and be done with it. 197.87.87.137 (talk) 13:44, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Roger is South African. - htonl (talk) 13:47, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
So now we are the ignorant ones? My parents are South African and I still speak Afrikaans at home here in the UK to my parents, Roger and Htonl are both still living in South Africa. You are just embarrassing yourself (again). Bezuidenhout (talk) 13:52, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
Anyway, let's move away from the personal attacks. I don't think it's at all clear that South African English does use the endonym ("isiXhosa", "Sesotho") rather than the exonym ("Xhosa", "Sotho"). I work at an organisation that conducts national surveys across SA, and language is a frequent issue - when we visit or phone people we have to make sure that we have someone who speaks the appropriate language, and so on - and even the employees whose first language is an indigenous language use the exonym when speaking English. - htonl (talk) 13:56, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
Actually I believe my point about "русский язык" and "తెలుగు" is in fact a pretty good reductio ad absurdum illustration of the flaw in your argument. I can assure you there was/is no intention to denigrate you or your idea. I'm just explaining how we deal with language names here on the English Wikipedia. Keep in mind that all those British and American readers have no idea about the Nguni languages noun class system and their prefixes. If I may end with a little bit of advice for your Wiki-happiness: "Don't sweat the small stuff". Welcome to Wikipedia! Roger (talk) 14:06, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
Wow, so much for welcoming new users (above). Do any of you happen to have a South African English dictionary? I do and mine lists isiZulu. Part of the problem may be those of us in the English province of Natal (as opposed to Dutch, Cape Indian provinces, etc.) are taught something different from the rest of you, and I have to say I understand the offence felt by someone told he/her is wrong when a person here can see it in black and white. (<- There's probably a Nando's joke here, but I'm not sure what it is… You have to be SA to understand.) Bezuidenhout, I'm not sure how Afrikaans helps here. Even if you're convinced you're right, don't be so rough on noobs. I'm using an IP so you can see I'm in KZN -> 41.135.33.130 (talk) 16:36, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
I think if you reread the conversation above, everyone was civil and polite until 197.87.87.137 (not sure if you are the same person) made the comment dated 13:44, 27 June 2012 and said "I suppose you Americans and British know better than us poor ignorant South African savages how we use our language and dictionaries," which was ironic given that everone in this conversation is South African.
If we can return to the topic at hand, it's to be expected that a South African English dictionary includes "isiZulu"; it is certainly not wrong to use that word (and the other endonyms) in SA English. I'm sure, however, you'd also find the word "Zulu" in that dictionary. I don't think that the endonyms are more commonly used than the exonyms in English. I've tried to find references to languages in recent IOL articles, as an indicator of contemporary usage, and found these:
"Rajend Mesthrie in his book Language and Social History cites the example: “My father’s home language was Swazi and my mother’s was Tswana. But as I grew up in a Zulu-speaking area we used mainly Zulu and Swazi at home. But from my mother’s side I also learnt Tswana well. In my high school I came in contact with lots of Sotho and Tswana students so I can speak these two languages well. And of course I know English and Afrikaans. With my friends I also use Tsotsitaal.”
"“If your learnt Northern Sotho (Pedi), for instance, you will be able to understand Southern Sotho (Sotho) and Tswana without much additional effort. Learning Zulu will enable you to understand Xhosa, Ndebele – also applicable to Zimbabwe – and Swati, applicable to Swaziland,” Dikotla said."
Also - though this should not be the primary concern - titles like "Zulu language" are probably more useful to non-South African readers. - htonl (talk) 18:51, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
Not the same user, no, I'm in PMG, but it seemed like some (not so much you) fostered a hostile environment, which 197 reacted poorly to. I'm not a language expert nor do I know who's right or wrong, but (a) several programs recognize SA English as a legitimate subset of British English and (b) when I checked, our dictionaries do indeed show isiZulu as the name of the Zulu language. I didn't check Zulu, but I'm sure you're right. It seems hard to explain to a SA resident why SA dictionaries show one thing and Wikipedia claims something different. I don't want to get between two users, but my concern is chasing off a potential contributor. It happens but shouldn't. usala kahle --41.135.33.130 (talk) 20:31, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
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