This item from the South African paper The Star
raises a question that others have also raised in different ways concerning how
to refer to minority languages in Africa and elsewhere. (Ref. seen on a
Google alert)... DZO
Why call it IsiZulu in English?
May 12, 2006 Edition 1
http://www.thestar.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3241555
The box under the article "Poetic judge paints the
true picture" (The Star, May 9) reports that Judge Willem van der Merwe "began
his address in fluent isiZulu".
Speakers of English are currently rebuked for
referring to other South African languages as Xhosa, Tswana or Venda, on the
grounds that they are not even words in their respective languages.
The correct terms, some say, should be isiXhosa,
Setswana or TshiVenda (though my African language informants were not sure of
all such terms).
However, "French" isn't a word in French, nor
"German" in German, but I am not required to say "I can't speak either Francais
or Deutsch."
When a word from one language is borrowed by the
community of another, speakers of the first language can't dictate how the word
must be spelt, pronounced or indeed made to mean in its new home.
I can't tell speakers of Zulu that they must refer
to my language as "English" when they have chosen to refer to it as isingisi.
A rebuke for saying "He speaks Zulu" is political
intolerance, not linguistic sense.
Norman Blight
Parkview, Johannesburg
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