Language contact and language change—the case of Southern Transvaal Ndebele

Abstract

Southern Transvaal Ndebele is one of the four officially recognised Nguni languages spoken in South Africa. It differs from the other Nguni languages in that it incorporates several atypical Nguni features in its lexicon, sound and grammatical system. The nature and possible origin of these changes are investigated in this paper. It is found that none of these changes resulted from any diachronic development in the language itself, but that they are foreign interferences that came about as a result of the areal contact between isiNdebele and the two neighbouring Sotho languages.