Northern and Southern Ndebele—Why harmonisation will not work

Abstract

The Ndebele people of South Africa comprise of two main groups known as the Southern and the Northern Ndebele people respectively. They are genealogically related by being the descendants of the same ancestral king but have separated many years ago as a result of a succession struggle. Ever since that time they occupy different parts of the country and have very little contact with each other. Some linguists regard the languages spoken by these groups as variants of the same language while others consider them to be separate languages. The actual linguistic relationship between these two Ndebele speech forms has, however, never been seriously investigated before, partly because of a lack of information regarding the Southern Ndebele language and partly because linguists believed that the Northern Ndebele language had for all practical purposes ceased to exist as its speakers had rejected it in favour of Northern Sotho, the dominant language of the surrounding tribes. Southern Ndebele has now been properly documented while this investigation has found that Northern Ndebele is still widely spoken in most, if not all the Northern Ndebele communities in the Northern Province.