The Musanda variety: the language of the ‘ruling community’ among the Venda people

Abstract

This article addresses the occurrence of certain lexical items and phrases which are used by the Venda royalty in and around the chief's palace. Past studies have primarily referred to these forms as being representative of the so-called Musanda language. This article will motivate the need to recognise social ‘language varieties’ within a standard language, (as opposed to dialects), and will substantiate the viewpoint that the lexical items and phrases as listed, represent the Musanda ‘language variety’, which is indeed a social variety of Venda, that is restricted to the environment of the chief's palace.