Effects Of Language Shift In South African

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The Sociolinguistic term ‘language shift’ was coined by the renowned linguist Uriel Weinreich, he defined language shift as ‘the change from the habitual use of one language to that of another’ (Mesthrie, Rajend, Joan Swann, Ana Deumert, and William L. Leap 245). Language shift does not occur abruptly, instead, language shift in itself is a rather complex process accompanied by stages of bilingualism (Kamwangamalu 226). The process of language shift is especially hard in an extremely multilingual and historically rich country such as South Africa. In the early 90s, when Apartheid was officially abolished, a new language policy was instituted that declared that all languages, among them the indigenous ones, were to be treated equally. However, as English, together with Afrikaans, were the initial official languages of South Africa, English remained the dominant language of business, politics and media even after this new language policy was introduced (de Klerk, Bosch 353). Even though English is number four on the list of most common first languages in South Africa, it is growing rapidly and it is being implemented in ever more institutions. This essay analyses how social and economic factors in post-colonial South Africa are impacting and strengthening the language shift from the African languages such as Tswana, Venda, Xhosa and Zulu to English.

First and foremost, as touched upon in the introduction, South Africa with its 11 official languages is one of the most

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