New Roles for Old Languages in South Africa
Student at Mohlakano Primary School, Randfonteinon, South Africa (Photo: Daniel Munoz/Reuters)
Linguist Mark Turin reports from South Africa, whose post-Apartheid constitution designates eleven languages as official. English is more popular than ever, Afrikaans is re-inventing itself, while the government’s efforts to raise the status of languages like Xhosa and Zulu have succeeded– up to a point.
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