Patrick Cox

Patrick Cox

Patrick Cox runs The World's language desk. He reports and edits stories about the globalization of English, the bilingual brain, translation technology and more. He also hosts The World's podcast on language, The World in Words.

New Roles for Old Languages in South Africa

January 11, 2013 ⋅ Post a comment
Student at Mohlakano Primary School, Randfonteinon, South Africa (Photo: Daniel Munoz/Reuters)

Student at Mohlakano Primary School, Randfonteinon, South Africa (Photo: Daniel Munoz/Reuters)

Linguist Mark Turin reports from South Africa, whose post-Apartheid constitution designates eleven languages as official. Since that constitution came into effect in 1997, English has become more popular than ever, Afrikaans has re-invented itself, while the government’s efforts to raise the status of languages like Xhosa and Zulu have succeeded– up to a point.

This is the second of a three-part series Turin did for the BBC. Part one, on the changing linguistic landscape in Nepal, is here.

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