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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 303

Part of Session 123: Non-standard and youth varieties in urban Africa (Other abstracts in this session)

The S’ncamtho contribution to Ndebele idiomatic language change.

Authors: ndlovu, sambulo
Submitted by: ndlovu, sambulo (great zimbabwe university, Zimbabwe)

This paper seeks to analyse Ndebele language change with regards to idiomatic expressions emanating from S’ncamtho which is a Bulawayo urban youth variety of Ndebele like the South African Tsotsitaal. It is an analysis of the derivation of new proverbs and sayings in Ndebele by the youth, which amounts to language change, as Ndebele does not remain the same when the youth in Bulawayo through S’ncamtho bring in  new idiomatic expressions that form part of the language. Bulawayo is Zimbabwe’s second city dominated by the Ndebele but there is a lot of shone and English. Most of the youths in the city cross into south Africa where they learn the Johannesburg urban culture. The youths do not use the standard Ndebele idioms that were constructed on the old non urban Ndebele tradition, instead they use their environment to derive new idiomatic expressions that almost everyone uses or is at least aware of. The paper looks at how the youth formulate the new expressions and how they are encoded into the Ndebele language as idiomatic expressions.

The new expressions are then evaluated to establish whether they satisfy the notion and function of idiomatic expressions in Ndebele. Idiomatic expressions are part of folklore. For the purposes of this paper, these include proverbs and sayings. Languages change semantically, lexically and phonetically, these changes affect idiomatic expressions because proverbs and sayings rely on other areas of a language as they are syntagmatic in form. This paper explores language expansion and change through proverbs and sayings. It further analyses the attitude of the Ndebele purists towards these new idiomatic expressions. Language contact is almost synonymous with language change, linguistic processes of borrowing, coining and loan translating affect S’ncamtho idiomatic expressions as much as they affect other areas of the language. The paper also investigates the contribution of ‘fashion trends’ type of language change in the development of new idiomatic expressions in S’ncamtho and eventually Ndebele. The aspects that help develop new proverbs and sayings by Ndebele youths are identified, analysed and the products are evaluated using Ndebele and linguistic standards of idiomatic expressions.