Advertisements in African languages are generally confined to radio, and in that medium are factual, dialogic and direct. When used in television advertising, however, South Africa’s indigenous languages, particularly those spoken by the largest number of people in South Africa (Nguni languages), play a less informative role, being employed rather to index a concre...

This article examines the significance of the vocation to divinership (ukuthwasa) for a contemporary Xhosa Afro-soul artist. We explore the singer's calling and the way in which she blurs the boundaries between what it means to be a traditional Xhosa healer and what it means to be a contemporary singer who chooses to sing in Xhosa about Xhosa cultural practices. Th...

While there has been research on the partial or complete merger of Noun Classes 5 and 11 in a number of Bantu languages, no study has focused specifically on the acquisition of Cl. 11 by Xhosa-speaking children. In this paper we test our hypothesis that Xhosa-speaking children in both urban and rural areas no longer, or very seldom, use Cl. 11 prefixes. We use a nu...