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4 - Tsotsitaals, Urban Vernaculars and Contact Linguistics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 August 2021

By
Rajend Mesthrie
Edited by
Rajend Mesthrie ,
Ellen Hurst-Harosh  and
Heather Brookes
Rajend Mesthrie
Affiliation:
University of Cape Town
Ellen Hurst-Harosh
Affiliation:
University of Cape Town
Heather Brookes
Affiliation:
University of Cape Town
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Summary

This chapter discusses the feature pool of the different tsotsitaals in terms of not just vocabulary, but morphology and especially syntax. To answer these contact-related questions, I argue that standard language, non-standard urban varieties and youth language practices (tsotsitaals) need to be studied together as a package for their commonalities, differences and the ways in which they relate to each other. I do this partly by summarising early South African approaches and assessing how they have been improved by attention being given to the urban varieties, as spoken by a wider community than just adolescent and young males in a particular in-group or informal mode. I reanalyse two studies of isiZulu-based tsotsitaal of the Johannesburg area by Ngwenya (1995) and Gunnink (2014), concluding that this tsotsitaal does not have an independent syntax from the urban variety of isiZulu.

Keywords

language contactBantu language syntaxUrban isiZuluStandard isiZuluTsotsitaalfeature poollogical connectorslocatives
Type
Chapter
Information
Youth Language Practices and Urban Language Contact in Africa , pp. 94 - 114
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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