SOUTH NDEBELE AND ITS ASSIMILATION TO THE PEDI LANGUAGE

Abstract

This article reiterates the sociolinguistic fact that: Any language left alienated and surrounded by foreign languages, will adopt certain linguistic features from those languages. Due to historical circumstances. South Ndebele, which is a Nguni language, has been surrounded by a Pedi-speaking community. As a result, some linguistic features foreign to Nguni, are to be found in South Ndebele. These linguistic features mostly concern the vocabulary of South Ndebele, which tends to share certain vocabulary items with Pedi, which are not found in the other Nguni languages. This contact has also permeated other areas of South Ndebele culture as is evident from the fact that, for instance, initiation school poem recitals which ought to be rendered in pure Ndebele, are for no apparent reason performed in pure Pedi by the South Ndebele people themselves.