From Languages to Language: The Comparative Philologist in South Africa

Decolonisation through Digitalisation? African Languages at South African Universities

“…It is generally problematic to speak of ‘African languages’ due to their provenance in colonialism and ongoing negative effects into contemporary social structures, and not only in South Africa. African languages have been “invented” (Makoni & Mashiri, 2007 ) by colonisers who put perceived linguistic idiosyncrasies and semantics into grammar constructs based on Western models (Gilmour, 2006 ). The linguistic study of “indigenous” African languages was part of a colonial project that violently ostracised and “othered” Africans (Makoni & Meinhof, 2004 ).…”

“…Strikingly, the #FeesMustFall discourses of 2015/2016, for instance, which called for decolonisation of the university space, did not feature African languages as a primary objective (Luckett & Hurst-Harosh, 2021 ). This is partly due to the historically grounded baggage of African languages as colonial constructs (Gilmour, 2006 ), which puts home language speakers of non-colonial languages in an uncomfortable and seemingly unresolvable predicament: asserting African identity by reiterating colonially grounded categories or resorting to English in the hope for social and economic equity (Rudwick, 2021 ). The language question is, nevertheless, not a side-line aspect of social justice, because “the way languages are constructed has an impact on the material circumstances of Africans” (Makoni & Mashiri, 2007 , p. 81).…”

Dimensions of sociolinguistic distinction in postcolonial ethnic diversity: Folk perceptions of language across Namibia's rural/urban divide

“…To that end, authorities involved themselves in standardizing indigenous languages, building on legacies of missionary linguistics, and in some cases taking advantage of the social distinctions that it had already created or reinforced. In the case of SWA, this resulted in two standard varieties of Oshiwambo being used at Ovamboland schools, namely, Oshikwanyama and Oshindonga, which had been developed by Anglicans and Lutheran missionaries in their respective spheres of influence within Ovamboland (Maho, 1998; see further Gilmour, 2006). As post-independence censuses no longer provide information on ethnicity, it is no longer possible to demographically track specific ethnic categories --acknowledged under the apartheid regime --that historically share the same language, such as, chiefly, the Basters, Coloureds, and Afrikaners, who historically share Afrikaans, and the Namas and Damaras, who historically share Khoekhoegowab (hereafter 'KH') 2 .…”