Languages in South Africa and Singapore

Like Singapore, South Africa is a multilingual country. Besides the 11 officially recognized languages with equal status to cater for the country’s diverse people and their cultures as the country lies at the crossroads of southern Africa where there are Africans, Europeans and Asians etc. can be found.

The 11 official languages in South Africa are- Afrikaans, English,isiNdebele, isiXhosa isiZulu, Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda and Xitsonga.

This is similar to Singapore, which is located in Southeast Asia comprising of Chinese, Malays and Indians where the 4 official languages English, Chinese, Malay ans Tamil are also given equal status in the constitution.

School children at Imperial Primary School in Eastridge, Mitchell's Plain (Cape Town, South Africa). Picture taken by Henry Trotter, 2006.

It is imperative to acknowledge the various utterances of these migrants who eventually become citizens in South Africa and Singapore where both have a migrant population, which eventually become citizens of the countries. Having a culturally diverse background makes language an important issue to be handled carefully on a political level since it is not only an emblem of an individual’s heritage, it can also act as boundary markers among the races. This has to be handled carefully at a political level and thus it is imperative to acknowledge the various languages to be equal to prevent discontent.

A trio of Malay, Indian and Chinese women at a bus stop. Courtesy of http://www.entersingapore.info

Other than the official languages, many white South Africans also speak other European languages, such as Portuguese (also spoken by Angolan and Mozambican blacks), German, and Greek, while many Asians and Indians in South Africa speak South Asian languages, such as Telugu, Hindi, Gujarati and Tamil, there are also Khoi, Nama and San languages, Gujarati, Hebrew, Telegu and Urdu. There are also a few indigenous creoles and pidgins. This is similar to Singapore where the Chinese have their dialects such as Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Hakka, Hainanese, while the Malay may speak Javanese and Indians may speak Hindi and Malayalam too.

South Africa's linguistic diversity means the 11 languages have had a profound effect on each other. South African English, for example, is littered with words and phrases from Afrikaans, isiZulu, Nama and other African languages; also, African-language speakers often pepper their speech with English and Afrikaans. In Singapore, this phenomenon is commonly found in the colloquial English used in our everyday lives which is often referred to as Singlish- Singaporean English littered with a mix of Chinese dialect, Malay words, most of the times ending with a ‘lor’. ‘lah’, ‘leh’, for different emphasis.

http://www.wikipedia.org/

One major difference is, in Singapore, despite Malay being the national language of the country, English is widely used to link the different ethnic groups and is the language adopted by the educational system. This is different in South Africa, while English is generally understood across the country, and the country's lingua franca, it only ranks joint fifth out of 11 as a home language. (http://www.southafrica.info/ess_info/sa_glance/demographics/language.htm)
According to the 2001 National Census, the three most spoken first home languages are Zulu (23.8%), Xhosa (17.6%) and Afrikaans (13.3%).
(http://www.statssa.gov.za/census01/html/default.asp)

We learn that language can act as boundary markers, now, in Singapore, one's socioeconomic status can be judged from the way he speaks, from a white collar worker to a blue collar worker, to the most obvious group we know as the 'bengs' and 'lians', the teens now that people differentiate from other teens through their dressings and speech (often in Singlish).

This video is taken from a national television channel which aptly describes this phenomenon:


This can also be seen in the South African's case, in this case, other 'whites' from other countries are making fun of their 'white' counterparts in South Africa:


This form of racism may be posted for humour but it is pertinent to note the differentiation of oneself from 'the other' through such portrayals in the form of speech. One's accent can tell in itself the person's hometown and background, and distinguish oneself from another in terms of social status and nationality.