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At least thirty-five languages are spoken in South Africa, twelve of which are official languages of South Africa: Ndebele, Pedi, Sotho, South African Sign Language, Swazi, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Afrikaans, Xhosa, Zulu, and English, which is the primary language used in parliamentary and state discourse, though all official languages are equal in legal status.
The Hlubi (AmaHlubi) dialect is endangered and most Hlubi speakers are elderly and illiterate. There are attempts by Hlubi intellectuals to revive the language and make it one of the eleven recognized languages in South Africa. [2]
Khoisan (/ ˈ k ɔɪ s ɑː n / KOY-sahn) or Khoe-Sān (pronounced [kxʰoesaːn]) is a catch-all term for the indigenous peoples of Southern Africa who traditionally speak non-Bantu languages, combining the Khoekhoen and the Sān peoples.
Venḓa or Tshivenḓa is a Bantu language and an official language of South Africa and Zimbabwe. It is mainly spoken by the Venda people (or Vhavenḓa) in the northern part of South Africa's Limpopo province, as well as by some Lemba people in South Africa. The Tshivenda language is related to the Kalanga language which is spoken in Southern ...
[W]hose language, culture, or story can be said to have authority in South Africa when the end of apartheid has raised challenging questions as to what it is to be a South African, what it is to live in, whether South Africa is mlg, and, if so, what its mythos is, what requires to be forgotten and what remembered as we scour the past in order ...
Xhosa (/ ˈ k ɔː s ə / KAW-sə or / ˈ k oʊ s ə / ⓘ KOH-sə, [5] [6] [7] Xhosa: [ᵏǁʰôːsa] ⓘ), formerly spelled Xosa and also known by its local name isiXhosa, is a Bantu language, indigenous to Southern Africa and one of the official languages of South Africa and Zimbabwe. [8]
[2] [3] John Lyons notes that "any standard of evaluation applied to language-change must be based upon a recognition of the various functions a language 'is called upon' to fulfil in the society which uses it". [4] Over enough time, changes in a language can accumulate to such an extent that it is no longer recognizable as the same language.
The Pedi / p ɛ d i / or Bapedi / b æ ˈ p ɛ d i / - also known as the Northern Sotho, [2] Basotho ba Lebowa, bakgatla ba dithebe, [3] Transvaal Sotho, [4] Marota, or Dikgoshi [5] - are a Sotho-Tswana ethnic group native to South Africa, Botswana, and Lesotho that speak Pedi or Sepedi, [6] which is one of the 12 official languages in South Africa. [7]