Template talk:Languages of South Africa

message: Should the name be "Sepedi", "Northern Sotho", or "Sesotho sa Leboa"?
Currently, the template matches the Constitution, but it's a fairly well known fact that the inclusion of "Sepedi" in the final Constitution was a huge blunder (the draft more correctly says "Northern Sotho"). IIRC the Pan South African Language Board uses "Northern Sotho" instead. Yet the SABC broadcasts news in "Sepedi", not "Sesotho sa Leboa"!
Should we, as Wikipedia, correct the Government's somewhat acknowledged error or should we stay true to the Constitution?
Indeed, a while ago I believe I read something about some body wanting to go to court to have the Constitution changed to correct this mistake, so it might still change in future.
Any thoughts? Zyxoas (talk to me - I'll listen) 11:16, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: After talking to the previous president of the Sesotho sa Leboa National Language Board (NLB) he confirms that the constitution is wrong.  We don't need to go into the details of how this happened.  But suffice to say that the previous language board for Northern Sotho, abolished in 1995 to make way for boards created by PanSALB (the body created through the constitutions to protect language rights), had an adhoc comittee on the naming of the language that voted in the majority to keep the name as Sesotho sa Leboa.  The reason why Sepedi is incorrect linguistically is that it is one of abotu 30-40 dialects within the meta language known as Northern Sotho.  Thus any calling the language Sepedi essentially all people who are not Bapedi are excluded.  The interim constition in fact had Sesotho sa Leboa which simply changed in the final constitution to Sepedi.  On a whim it seems as their is no linguistic logic behind this change.  It must be noted that both PanSALB and the Northern Sotho National Language Board both refer to the language as Sesotho sa Leboa.  I would recommend that it be changed accordingly.  A constitutional ammendment will come but my guess is that this will take a very very long time.  In the mean time lets try include all Nothern Sotho speakers not just hte Bapedi when we talk of their language. I wouldn't weigh in on the side of the SABC or in fact Arts and Culture as they are simply slaves to the constitutional rendering.  I'd weigh in on the side of the people tasked with promoting, developing and protecting the language, i.e. the NLB and PanSALB. Dwayne Bailey 41.241.155.70 09:36, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Southern Ndebele is a Sotho-Tswana language?  That's news to me, its an Nguni language.  I guess they lost me from there on. -The preceding unsigned comment was added by 41.242.218.21 (talk) 07:34, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sepedi vs Sesotho sa Leboa 

message: What is the correct spelling of Venda in the mother-tongue?  Is it Tshivenda or Tshivenḓa?  Translators I speak to seem to support Tshivenḓa, but since they and PanSALB don't seem to be able to type any of ḓṱḽṋṅ they are tehmselves not consistent.  Anyone have ideas and a pointer to something definitive or helpful?  Dwayne Baile 41.241.155.70 13:33, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The one with the weird d is the correct one. The sound is dental (where the sound in English "that" is a dental fricative, that weird Tshivenda d is a dental plosive). Obviously the n is dental too, due to nasal homogeneity (however it's spelt). Zyxoas (talk to me - I'll listen) 14:44, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Added the ḓ - if you want to be PC you have to be fully PC, not this slapstick I can't type a d with circumflex below rubbish (like in the constitution) :) Dwayne 41.242.220.232 12:40, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The spelling of Venda: Tshivenda or Tshivenḓa