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IsiNdebele

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The Social and Political History of Southern Africa's Languages

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Abstract

IsiNdebele is a scantily resourced language of the Bantu group spoken in Zimbabwe. The etymology of the name of the language is steeped in both myth and certain historical language contact situations. It is in this sense that while the history of the Ndebele people is argued to a short one, the language has a long and illustrious history that is traceable to isiZulu spoken in the present-day KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. It is acknowledged that the emergence of isiNdebele as a written form came through the agency of the Christian missionaries, who remarkably chose to orthographically represent isiNdebele differently and independently from isiZulu, which had earlier been committed to writing. The linguistic proximity between the two languages has inadvertently affected the literary growth of isiNdebele in particular, which has seen an overreliance on critical isiZulu literature in the Zimbabwean education system. Consequentially, it was only at the beginning of the millennium that we saw a significant development in the growth of the isiNdebele language in terms of the creation of an isiNdebele corpus, the publication of a first monolingual dictionary Isichazamazwi SesiNdebele (2001), which was quickly followed by a dictionary of musical terms Isichazamazwi Sezomculo (2006), and two grammar books.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Bantu is a term first coined by W. H. I. Bleek, who is famed to be the Father of Bantu Philology, in his 1862 book A Comparative Grammar of South African Languages , in which he hypothesized that a vast number of languages located across central, southern, eastern and western Africa shared so many characteristics that they must be part of a single language group. Bantu is a frequently occurring plural form of the word meaning ‘person’, consisting of the plural prefix ba- and the stem -ntu. Bleek proposed the word as a designation for these languages.

  2. 2.

    One of my informants indicated to me that the term is still used, although less often, as a derogatory reference to the Zulu-speaking people.

  3. 3.

    The Rozvi Empire (1684–1834) was led by Changamire Dombo who was a Mambo (King or Ruler). The Rozvi were a fierce tribe of warriors known as the Rozvi people (christened abaLozwi by the Nguni ). The Rozvi Empire was established after the Rozvi had conquered the Kingdom of Butua (also known as Butwa) in 1683. The centre of the Rozvi Kingdom was the southwestern parts of what is today known as Zimbabwe . It spread to incorporate several Shona states that dominated the plateau of the present-day Zimbabwe . It also spread westward into Botswana and southward into northeastern South Africa . The dominant language in the Rozvi Empire was tjiKalanga. This is contrary to the belief that the Kalanga language is a variant of Shona and that it comes from Zezuru or Karanga (Mudenge 1974).

  4. 4.

    The Ndwandwe of the Mthethwa Kingdom were the Nguni-speaking people who were forcibly displaced following Shaka’s victories in Zululand. The Ndwandwe armies, led by warriors Nxaba and Zwangendaba, fought and weakened the Rozvi Empire in the early 1830s as they marched across the Zimbabwean plateau to Zambia , Malawi and Tanzania where they are still known as the Ngoni (after the ethnolinguistic name Nguni). In the early 1830s, the last Rozvi ruler was killed in his capital of Khami.

  5. 5.

    Thomas Morgan Thomas went on to produce his own version of isiNdebele orthography and in 1860 unsuccessfully attempted to publish an elementary school book using his version of the orthography.

  6. 6.

    This is because Zimbabwe has hitherto avoided conducting a population census that documents people according to ethnicity or tribe.

  7. 7.

    This term is now frowned upon by linguists and language advocates in Zimbabwe , and languages are now referred to as community language (Chimhundu et al. 1998).

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Literature

    Dictionaries

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    Grammars

    • Khumalo, L. (2003). A general introduction to Ndebele grammar. Cape Town: CASAS.

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    First Novel

    • Sithole, N. (1956–1981). Umvukela wamaNdebele. Gwelo: Mambo Press.

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    Latest Novel

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    Wikipedia

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    Author information

    Authors and Affiliations

    1. Linguistics Program, University of Kwazulu Natal, Durban, South Africa

      Langa Khumalo

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    1. Langa Khumalo
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    Editor information

    Editors and Affiliations

    1. School of History, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, United Kingdom

      Tomasz Kamusella

    2. University of New England, Armidale, New South Wales, Australia

      Finex Ndhlovu

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    Khumalo, L. (2018). IsiNdebele. In: Kamusella, T., Ndhlovu, F. (eds) The Social and Political History of Southern Africa's Languages. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-01593-8_7

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    • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-01593-8_7

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    • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-01592-1

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