SiPhuthi Language Documentation and Analysis
SiPhuthi (S404) is an endangered Tekela language of the Nguni branch of the South-Eastern Bantu languages. It is spoken by baPhuthi communities who live in southern Lesotho and in the northern part of the Eastern Cape province of South Africa.
I started working on siPhuthi in 2016 and have to date conducted four months of fieldwork in the siPhuthi-speaking areas of Lesotho. Little documentation on the language exists and I am therefore particularly interested in creating a digital audio-video corpus of the language. I am also interested in exploring the hybrid Nguni-Sotho nature of the language.
More information about the SiPhuthi Language Project.
I started working on siPhuthi in 2016 and have to date conducted four months of fieldwork in the siPhuthi-speaking areas of Lesotho. Little documentation on the language exists and I am therefore particularly interested in creating a digital audio-video corpus of the language. I am also interested in exploring the hybrid Nguni-Sotho nature of the language.
More information about the SiPhuthi Language Project.
N/uu Language Documentation and Revitalisation
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N/uu is an indigenous click language spoken in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. Today, only two elderly speakers of the language remain.
From 2013-2016, I directed the N/uu Language Project at CALDi, UCT. The project focused on the documentation of N/uu and on community support towards language revitalisation. Already existing community teaching efforts were the starting point for establishing a practical N/uu orthography as well as for developing educational materials. Alphabet charts, posters and a N/uu reader are outcomes of the joint efforts of members of the ǂKhomani community and CALDi scholars. More information about the N/uu Language Project. |
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Click on the images on the right to listen to N/uu !
More sounds |
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Gujarati in the diaspora
Gujarati is an Indo-European language, spoken in the state of Gujarat on the west coast of India. While the majority of Gujarati speakers still resides in India, significant migration over the last 200 years have led to well-established diaspora communities in various parts of the world.
I study Gujarati language maintenance and shift patterns among second and subsequent generation Gujaratis in the diaspora. As part of my PhD, I worked with Gujarati speaking communities in the UK, Singapore and South Africa. I focused on identifying factors that affect language proficiency among students and recent graduates of Gujarati language schools in these three countries. More recently, my work has expanded to the Gujarati speaking community in Kenya, where I am specifically interested in the use of Swahili loanwords in East African Gujarati.
I study Gujarati language maintenance and shift patterns among second and subsequent generation Gujaratis in the diaspora. As part of my PhD, I worked with Gujarati speaking communities in the UK, Singapore and South Africa. I focused on identifying factors that affect language proficiency among students and recent graduates of Gujarati language schools in these three countries. More recently, my work has expanded to the Gujarati speaking community in Kenya, where I am specifically interested in the use of Swahili loanwords in East African Gujarati.
German in Namibia and South Africa
My interest in overseas varieties of German began when I spent 14 months in Namibia during my year abroad as an undergraduate student (2005-2006). My undergraduate dissertation focused on the linguistic characteristics of Namibian German. I have since continued to investigate this variety of German, and more recently, began to work on Kroondal German, spoken in the North West Province of South Africa.
