Hello everyone. Welcome to the Langfocus channel and my name is Paul.
Today's topic is the languages of South Africa. The Republic of South Africa
covers much of the southern tip of the African continent and is a place where
numerous native African cultures as well as former colonial populations have
converged, resulting in a state of true linguistic diversity. South Africa has 11
official languages that have been recognized in its Constitution since
1993. If that seems like a lot to you, you're probably right
South Africa is among the countries with the largest number of official languages
at the national level. Number one is actually neighbouring Zimbabwe with
sixteen official languages, some of which are also official in South Africa.
These are the 11 official languages of South Africa in order of most spoken to least
spoken, as a first language. Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaans, English, Northern Sotho, Tswana,
Southern Sotho, Tsonga, Swazi, Venda and Ndebele. Over 99% of South Africans
speak one of these languages as a first language. All of these languages are
members of the southern Bantu branch of the Niger-Congo language family with the
exception of Afrikaans and English which are Germanic languages brought to the
country by Europeans. The Dutch first arrived in what is now South Africa in
1652, establishing the Cape Colony in the
western portion of the country. Also living in this area were native Khoisan
people and other Africans who spoke Bantu languages. The British seized
control of the Cape Colony in 1815 and British settlers began to arrive. The
Boers - the descendants of the original Dutch settlers - disliked many aspects of
British rule, but one of them was the Anglicization of the Cape Colony and the
attempt to force English on the Boers as a medium of instruction in schools. They
wanted to continue to use Dutch as their medium of instruction and to continue
speaking their distinct dialect of Dutch called Cape Dutch which would later
evolve into Afrikaans. Boers began the Great Trek, migrating inland and creating
their own Boer Republics in an area more densely populated with African
tribes who spoke Bantu languages. The British later took control of the Boer
Republics and created the Union of South Africa in
1910. That eventually led to the creation of the Republic of South Africa. From
that point on there were two official languages: English and Dutch. But Dutch
as spoken by the Boers had evolved into a distinct language
called Afrikaans, which replaced Dutch as an official language in 1925. These two
colonial languages became the prestige languages of South Africa and speakers
of other languages didn't really have any say in the matter. During the
apartheid era schools were segregated not only based on race but also based on
mother tongue. Native speakers of English and Afrikaans were taught in their
native language throughout their schooling, with second language
instruction in the other official language. Black South Africans were
required to study in their mother tongue for most of their primary school years,
after which point they normally studied in English. But in 1974 the apartheid
government implemented a new policy requiring instruction in black schools
to be conducted in a 50/50 split between English and Afrikaans, with the language
of instruction depending on the course. This was implemented without consulting
the black population, and opposition to this move led to the Soweto uprising of
1976. Afrikaans was seen as the language of the oppressor since the apartheid
government was dominated by white speakers of Afrikaans, while English was
seen as a more cosmopolitan language. When apartheid ended in the early 1990s
a new constitution was written that added nine additional African languages
as official languages in order to be more inclusive of the entire population,
The education system now is based on freedom of choice with every individual
free to choose which of the 11 official languages to be educated in for the
first part of their schooling, as long as there's sufficient demand for the school
to provide it. That means that they don't have to study in their mother tongue if
they don't want to. Let's take a look at the map of South Africa. When apartheid
was abolished, the four provinces of South Africa and the homelands - enclaves
for African ethnic groups - were abolished and nine new provinces were created. This
map shows the most dominant languages in South Africa down to the local level. You
can see that the 11 official languages are clustered mainly in certain areas
and may predominate in certain provinces, but they don't correspond exactly to
provincial orders you can see that Afrikaans
predominates in the West while the Bantu languages predominate in the east and
English predominates in South Africa's major urban centers. As you can see
there's quite an intricate linguistic situation in the eastern part of the
country so let's zoom in and look at the African languages there. As I mentioned
earlier, the non-European languages of South Africa are mainly members of the
southern Bantu branch of the Niger-Congo language family and these account for
about 70% of the population, or around 40 million people. These southern Bantu
languages display some features typical of the Bantu languages in general. They
follow an SVO word order; like almost all Bantu languages their tonal; and they are
largely agglutinative and feature a large number of a fixes to nouns and
verbs. Most Bantu languages do not have click sounds but many of these southern
Bantu languages do as a result of contact with the Khoisan languages. The
nine main southern Bantu languages of South Africa can be further categorized
into three smaller subdivisions: the Nguni languages; the Sotho-Tswana
languages; and the Tswa-Ronga or Tsonga group. Venda forms its own group, so there
are actually four subdivisions including this one. The Nguni branch of the
southern Bantu tree contains four of South Africa's official languages: Zulu,
Xhosa, Swazi, and Ndebele. The first two are the two most spoken languages
within South Africa as a first language, with Zulu representing 23% of the
population and Xhosa representing 16% of it. The other two on the other hand are
spoken by only 2.5 percent in 2.1 percent, respectively. Zulu is mainly
spoken in Kwazulu-Natal and most of Mpumalanga, where Swazi and Ndebele
are spoken as well. Xhosa is the majority language of the Eastern Cape but has
communities of speakers in other provinces as well, as other official
languages do. The Nguni languages feature click consonants. You can hear
one of them in the name of the language Xhosa. Actually, this is the first time
I've tried to pronounce a click consonant so I may be pronouncing the
name of the language wrong from the point of view of a native speaker. But I
guess it's something like that: Xhosa. All of the Nguni languages are mutually
intelligible to a large extent.
Sotho-Tswana. The second largest of the southern
Bantu branches is the Sotho-Tswana branch which has three languages within
it: Northern Sotho - representing 9.1% of South Africa's population; Tswana, with 8%;
and Southern Sotho - or simply Sotho - with 7.6%. Altogether they represent just
under a quarter of the population of South Africa: around 13.6
million people. Each of these three languages serves as the majority
language in the province that it's most widely spoken in. Southern Sotho in the
Free State; Tswana in the northwest province, and there is also a significant
population of speakers in the Northern Cape with which it shares a border; and
Northern Sotho in Limpopo. Southern Sotho contains click consonants due to
contact with Nguni languages, while some urban varieties of Northern Sotho
have in recent times been acquiring clicks as well. Tswana uses some click
sounds, but only in interjections and ideophones (onomatopoeia, for example). And
like the Nguni languages, the Sotho-Tswana languages are generally
mutually intelligible as well. Tsonga or Tswa-Ronga. Although there are other
languages within this branch, the only one that has official status is Tsonga.
Other languages of this group are mutually intelligible and are oftentimes
considered part of the Tsonga language. Found in the Northeast,
most of the Sangha speaking people live in Limpopo or Mpumalanga. Tsonga
features click sounds in just a few words.
Another interesting phonological feature is whistled sibilant consonants. I
haven't been able to find a sample from Tsonga, but here's a sample of a similar
sound in the Shona language.
Venda. One of the less spoken of the official languages in South Africa, Venda
comprises 2.4 percent of the population, or 1.3 million speakers who are almost
all concentrated on the northern border of Limpopo, near zimbabwe where its
closest linguistic relatives live. Venda has no click sounds.
Afrikaans and English
The two Germanic languages of South Africa, Afrikaans and English, are
the third and fourth most spoken languages in the country, with 13.5
percent and 9.6 percent of citizens speaking them as their first language
respectively. People outside of South Africa might assume that native speakers
of Afrikaans are all white, but that's not the case. It's the majority language
in the Northern Cape and Western Cape provinces where most of the nation's
colored population, or mixed-race population, lives and more than 75
percent of coloured South Africans speak Afrikaans as their first language.
Why is that?
It's because they were part of the languages development. The origin of the
coloured community lies in the early days of the Cape Colony when Dutch
settlers intermarried with indigenous Khoisan women or slaves from Africa,
India, and Southeast Asia. But they also interacted linguistically, and by
learning Dutch imperfectly as a second language they influenced the direction
of the Dutch dialect that would evolve into Afrikaans. It's also spoken as a
native language by smaller numbers of the South Asian and black South African
populations, and it's spoken by over 60% of the white population as a native
language. In total it's the first language of about 13.5 percent of the
population and it's spoken by an even larger number as a second language. If
you haven't seen my language profile on Afrikaans from a couple of years ago, you
can check it out right here (click link at the top). English is spoken as a native language
mainly in the Western Cape Gauteng and Kwazulu-Natal, as these are where the
major cities can be found. Plus it's widely spoken as a second language.
English is the native language of 9.6 percent of the population, including
around 36% of the white population. It's also the native language of most Indian
South Africans. they speak with an accent distinct from white South African
speakers of English. During the apartheid era interaction with whites was limited,
which allowed their own distinct variety of English to develop in isolation, with
some phonological influences from Indian languages.
I've mentioned the Khoisan languages a few times and you may be wondering why they aren't on the list of
official languages. Well, the Khoisan were the first
indigenous people of much of South Africa before the migration of Bantu
peoples and later Europeans. through conflict with Bantu and
Europeans, Khoisan were driven into a much smaller area and now most Khoisan
live in the Kalahari Desert. Some Khoisan intermarried with Europeans and became
part of the colored population, while others died from conflict and disease.
The end result of all this is that only a very small population of Khoisan
remain in South Africa and their Khoisan languages are therefore not
widely spoken and are not official languages.
Khoisan languages do not forma single language family and are not accepted as being related to each other
but all of them feature extensive use of click consonants. As I stated before the
click sounds used in Bantu languages come from contact with Khoisan languages.
The most widely spoken Khoisan language in South Africa is Khoekhoe, or Nama,
with around 50,000 speakers. This language has an additional 250,000
speakers in neighbouring Namibia. There are other Khoisan languages in South
Africa that are severely endangered like Griqua, with only a few dozen speakers remaining.
Language in society.
In a society with such linguistic diversity, it's inevitable that the majority of the population will be bilingual or
multilingual. Most white and coloured South Africans are bilingual in English
and Afrikaans, and a smaller number speak one of the African languages as well.
Indian South Africans speak English and usually some Afrikaans and some speak an
Indian language as well, typically older people. Many black South Africans speak 3,
4, 5 or even more languages. It's common for them to speak their native African
language, English, and Afrikaans and one or more other African languages. They're
often able to speak the other languages of the same subgroup as their native
language because they're closely related and in many cases mutually intelligible.
You may be wondering: "If the languages within each subgroup are mutually
intelligible, why are they considered separate languages?"
Well, what is a language versus what is a dialect is a murky issue as always. But I
think it's partly because they each have their own standardized variety, and it's
partly because each one is associated with a distinct ethnic group.
These days business and politics are mostly conducted in English,
and English is the most common language of broadcast and media. For a long time,,
English and Afrikaans had equal status as dual lingua francas of South Africa
but Afrikaans has been declining in that regard. That's partly due to the stigma
attached to Afrikaans as it's seen as the language of apartheid. In addition to
that, education in South Africa tends to lean towards English. In typical South
African schools, the first three grades are taught in the students mother tongue
but after that, school work is conducted in either Afrikaans or English. Schools
can teach in the native language longer, but since secondary school matriculation
exams are only conducted in English and Afrikaans, there's a strong motivation to
switch to one of those languages early on. But rather than Afrikaans,
most choose English due to its utility and prestige. And in many cases, families
will forego students being taught in their first language and go straight
into English to jumpstart their proficiency. But whether this is a help
or a hindrance is a source of much debate.
The emphasis on English and Afrikaans after the first three or four years of initial schooling is a lasting
influence of the colonial era. Today there are 11 official languages, and in
theory and in law they are equal, but in practice English and Afrikaans are still
the most influential languages at the national level. And this is still the
case for now despite the fact that Afrikaans has lost some of its prestige.
The question of the day for South Africans: Which languages do you speak
and in what situations do you use them? And for other people: How many official
languages are there in your country? Do you think that system works well for
your country? Be sure to follow Langfocus on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
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these ones on the screen who are my top tier Patreon supporters. Many thanks to
them as always. And to everyone thank you for watching and
have a nice day.
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