Stability and Change in Language Contact: The Case of Southern Ndebele (South Africa)

Research summary

Compared to other official languages of South Africa, with 700,000 speakers S. Ndebele is a small language. Its speakers live close to major cities like Pretoria and Johannesburg and commonly use various other languages. Still, S. Ndebele speakers have been able to maintain their language. We want to find out how this works, and whether we can learn from this as a model for increasingly multilingual everyday lives that we live as Europeans.

Description

Stability and change in language contact. The case of Southern Ndebele (South Africa). Compared to other official languages of South Africa, with 700,000 speakers S. Ndebele is a small language. Its speakers live close to major cities like Pretoria and Johannesburg and commonly use various other languages. Still, S. Ndebele speakers have been able to maintain their language. We want to find out how this works, and whether we can learn from this as a model for increasingly multilingual everyday lives that we live as Europeans. Therefore we conduct interviews, record texts and elicit linguistic data which allow us to analyse contact processes, evidence for change due to contact, and persistent language patterns that resist the influence of neighbouring languages.Our team consists of four researchers based in Helsinki, in addition to three external specialists based in Sweden and South Africa.

Research info

Research title
Stability and Change in Language Contact: The Case of Southern Ndebele (South Africa)

Research timeline
1.9.2014 - 1.8.2018

Keywords
Bantu languages language contact Southern Ndebele

Region
Africa

Countries
Finland, South Africa

Institution
University of Helsinki
Department of World Cultures/Faculty of Humanities
Helsinki, Finland

Funding instrument
Academy of Finland

Project budget
500,000 - 1 million euros

Head of research
Prof. Axel Fleisch

Research team
PhD Lotta Aunio, PhD Thera Crane, MA Stephan Schulz

Partners
University of South Africa, University of Gothenburg

Contact information
Lotta Aunio
050-5679322
lotta.aunio@helsinki.fi
Open link

Record last updated
4.11.2015