Nabu ke ubuncwane nobuteketeke belifa lethu- A discussion
Language as a living archive
I make a firm claim that language is THE ultimate archive of all time. Language is the first record of a people’s history. Without language you have never existed, you have never attempted to understand the human condition and the complexity of human emotions, you have never been curious and explore the world, its creation and the vast universe. Without language you have never had political, judicial and social systems. In fact, without language you have never had family and other ways people relate. Without a language, you have never existed.
DISCLAIMER: LANGUAGE HERE MEANS AND EFFECTIVE VERBAL MANNER IN WHICH PEOPLE COMMUNICATE WITHOUT BEING NECESSARILY GOVERNED BY THE IMPOSED “GRMAMAR RULES”.
Our perception of our languages
We are victims of our colonizer and champions of our colonisers:
In this section I will speak about our alienation from our languages, touch on the relationship between language and culture. I will also speak of language and struggle in the context of South Africa and how in turn that has come to bite us and our language in the context of the socially, politically and economically powerful English (how we anthropologise ourselves through anthropologising our languages e.g., Trevor Noah). This point will be a way into speaking about my Honours topic- The Emergence of a new System through the merge of two different systems.
A bit of technicalities
I will briefly discuss the merge of noun classes (specifically noun class 1 and noun class 3), the relationship of some noun classes and what they tell us at a semantic level (isi- vs ubu-), the politics of standardisation. Finally, the work I do in the language development space, specifically queer theory and concepts language development.
Watch and engage with this discussion here:
