learning Nama (Hottentot)

[kman1]

Please please keep us posted with your progress! I am very interested to see how you get along with it. Have fun!

[Saim]

Hi everyone, I have some questions for those of you living in South Africa. I intend to spend a month in S. Africa in two years for the 2010 World Cup that will take place there. I been told that I should learn Xhosa or Zulu since they are the languages that are spoken the most there besides English. Is that true?

No. Zulu and Xhosa are the two biggest natively spoken languages in SA, but they are both region bound, with very few second language speakers.

I've read that there are loads of second-language Zulu speakers.

[Zulu] is frequently used as a contact language giving it the status of a lingua franca. It is widely used as a second language by white as well as back South Africans.

10.3 million (2006)
Total: 26 million

The Wiki figure seems a bit optimistic but there still seems to be a fair lot. Certainly less than Afrikaans or English, but not a negligable number either. Not to mention that the Iscamtho contact language is based on Zulu.

[Shiba]

You're right - Zulu is basically the "lingua franca" among black South Africans. I've heard it spoken in North West, which is one of the most northern provinces in South Africa (Limpopo is a bit further north).

It's much too late to answer the question about which language(s) kman1 should have learnt, of course, but I'm going to do it anyway. I'd say it really depends on what you feel like if you're going on a grand tour of the country (I would recommend Afrikaans, though). If you're going to a specific area, you'll have to look closer. For example, KwaZulu-Natal is a good place to speak Zulu (and English, since it was a British colony), the Eastern Cape is the Xhosa province, the Western and Northern Cape provinces are great places for Afrikaans, Sotho and Afrikaans are useful in the Free State, and Tswana and Afrikaans are useful in Gauteng. I think Johannesburg is an English city in general, though I wouldn't really know, but Afrikaans is definitely a good language to learn for someone who's going to Pretoria.

If I'm correct, the Vendas have a presence in Limpopo, but the Zulus etc. don't really like them, so they don't get good service delivery, if they get service delivery at all. That's why some people want an independent Republic of Venda.

[kman1]

Thanks for the reply, Shiba. Yeah, I have already been working on a number of African languages for a while now and I don't think I want to add any more for now. I decided on these languages though if you didn't know yet:
Afrikaans, Zulu, Hausa, Swahili, Yoruba, and Amharic. That should enable one to be understood just about anywhere in Africa.

[Shiba]

Wow, that's quite an impressive list!

If you're focusing on Africa, you may want to learn French as well, once you're done with these (if you don't already know it). Portuguese is less common, but it's indispensable for Mozambique, and I'm pretty sure it's useful if not necessary in Angola too.

[Levo]

An old topic.

Since I just can't stop from time to time focusing on South Africa in soul, - and to Afrikaans - I must ask it again after reading your rows:

How useful Afrikaans actually is in today's South Africa?

Do white native English speakers in SA learn Afrikaans?
Do blacks learn Afrikaans or English more? (Those not having any of these as native languages)

And finally, what about the national TV broadcasts? How are languages divided there?

[Saim]

Do white native English speakers in SA learn Afrikaans?

Most of the Anglo-Africans I've met have claimed some knowledge of Afrikaans. I don't know how extended it is though.

Do blacks learn Afrikaans or English more? (Those not having any of these as native languages)

English, definitely. There was a backlash back in Apartheid times when the government tried to promote Afrikaans over English as a language of instruction in black schools, apparently.

Not many blacks have English or Afrikaans as a native language, AFAIK.

[Levo]

Thanks Saim.
So I heard too. How long did you live in South Africa?

[Saim]

Me? Never, haha. Living in Australia (I'm in Europe now but grew up in Australia) I've met a fair few South African emigrants and read a lot about it, that's where my knowledge on this comes from.