Browsing by Author "Mathiesen, Kim Brereton"

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    Learning South African languages : the historical origins of standard Xhosa , and the uses to which the written form of the language was put c. 1770-1935
    (2000) Mathiesen, Kim Brereton; Harries, Patrick
    This dissertation centres on the social history of the Xhosa language as it became codified into writing during the nineteenth century. My particular is interest is in why efforts were made to learn written Xhosa, and how the written form of the languages was used variously by travel writers, missionaries, converts, interpreters, indigenous speakers, the educated African elite, and professional philologists between the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries. The outcome of the uses to which the language was put was the construction of a standard form of the language.