Chapter · South Africa · Language
Eleven languages, one of them dead
Section 6 of the Constitution, four clicks, and a stitched anthem
South Africa has eleven official languages, a motto in a language nobody speaks any more, and an anthem that changes language five times. This path reads the texts: section 6 of the 1996 Constitution, the notebooks where the language of the motto was written down, and the two songs the anthem is made of.
Context first
A lesson to read before the others, to set the scene.
- The place
- The era
- The people
The lessons in this chapter
- 1Four marks for four clicksTo write a language of clicks, Bleek invented nothing: he took the missionaries’ four marks, added thirteen signs for tones and croaks, and those marks are on the country’s coat of arms today.10 min
- 2A motto nobody says out loudSouth Africa took as its motto five words of ǀxam, a language with no speakers, drawn from notebooks dictated by prisoners, and copied onto its shield two figures from a painted wall.10 min
- 3An anthem in five languagesThe South African anthem is made of two enemy songs stitched together in 1997: a Xhosa hymn of 1897 that became a song of resistance, and an Afrikaans poem of 1918 that became the anthem of the regime.10 min
How these lessons are written
Each lesson starts from first-hand sources: Wikisource, Gallica, Persée, archives, museums and institutes. A fact without a source does not get written, and every lesson lists its own as direct links.
The rhythm
A lesson is five minutes of cards and four questions. Those questions then come back the next day, then at 3, 7, 21 and 60 days, and that return is what makes it stick. One a day is enough, and you can do several in a row.