Correct me if I'm wrong here, but this seems to be more about the ethnic group than the language itself. Maybe it should go under Ndebele!
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This article seems awfully confused. Is the language described here a "Sotho-Tswana language" or is it from the "Nguni group of the Bantu languages"??
Also, is this the isiNdebele that's listed in the Constitution, or a different language with the same name? If not then the Languages of South Africa template should be removed.
Zyxoas (talk to me - I'll listen) 20:47, 28 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It seems to be talking about 3 different languages. One is a Sesotho language, another is an Nguni language belonging to the same sub-family ("Tekela"?) as SiSwati, and the last is an official South African language (which, as personal experience from watching the SABC 1 news at 18:00 proves, does not sound like SiSwati or a Sesotho language, but rather isiZulu with a few extra words and sounds and mispronounced click consonants).
Zyxoas (talk to me - I'll listen) 21:00, 28 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
WHEW!! I can't find any references in the article and there is a lot of detail. The genealogies look quite unnecessary in their present format and in any case have no sources. Most of the information is well outside the level of an encyclopedia article and belongs in a monograph or someone's personal homepage anyway. Can we prune this down so that it can retain the interest of a casual as well as close observer????--AssegaiAli 20:09, 21 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
After http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=nbl Southern Ndebele belongs to Sotho-Tswana_languages and not to Nguni languages as do in opposite Northern Ndebele (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=nde ) . Zyxoas already said it in a post of 28 December 2006, but it has not yet been corrected !!! Arno Lagrange ✉ 06:28, 30 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If you are a native speaker of Southern Ndebele then you can help translate this template into your own language:
--Amazonien (talk) 23:15, 21 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I can't say for sure, because I still don't know what this article is supposed to be about, but it is my understanding that the official language that's called "isiNdebele" in the constitution is the Northern language that's more popular in Zimbabwe, possibly because of the confusion with the myriad of languages that bear the Southern Ndebele label.
Also, if that's true, then the statistic detailing the number of speakers can't be true, because the census would've been formulated with the understanding that it was counting speakers of constitutional languages, which Southern Ndebele, whatever its meaning, is not.
Tebello TheWHAT!!?? 21:25, 27 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The article was renamed from Southern Ndebele to "Transvaal Ndebele". I have reverted, as I can see no justification for the move. Please discuss if you wish to rename again. Greenman (talk) 18:56, 23 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
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The article, like the world in general it seems, is quite confused about the relationship Southern Ndebele vs Northern Ndebele (let alone the Sumayela Ndebele briefly discussed there). Most confusingly but more clearly incorrectly, the dictionary and websites cited here are for Zimbabwean (Northern) Ndebele, and so to avoid further confusion I am deleting the references to those here.
The official language of South Africa has no clear specification of *which* Ndebele is official. Southern Ndebele may be the largest within South Africa, but the constitution only says 'isiNdebele'.
There is only vague discussion of the reason for the similarity there, and some sources seem to contradict:
1. Elsewhere including in Wikipedia, Zimbabwean Ndebele is seen as *extremely* close to Zulu within the Zunda Nguni group, while Southern Ndebele is another Zunda language but somewhat more different. Sumayela Ndebele is more different. This seems to agree with the languages I have heard them and L1 speakers' assessments. However, South Africa's Ikwekwezi FM and the Ndebele TV news seem almost indistinguishable from Zulu to me even compared to Xhosa (though their website uses some Ndebele spelling apparently influenced by Sotho, such as -tjh-), so I'd be curious to know to what extent it shows Tekela features, since I haven't come across them, or if there is some other confusion of definitions at play.
2. This source just puts the Northern and Southern Ndebele and descendants of Mzilikazi, but seems to be referring to Sumayela in the case of 'Northern' Ndebele, rather than Zimbabwean Ndebele: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02572117.2001.10587480
3. There seem to be even more theories, discussed here, but to add more confusion 'Northern Ndebele', contrary to other sources including Wikipedia, is used to mean the Sumayela (Northern Transvaal) Ndebele:
https://repository.up.ac.za/bitstream/handle/2263/28563/Complete.pdf?sequence=8
Ultimately they are all related but have common names rather than being a united language, and each is at least as closely related to a well-recognised 'non-Ndebele' language as the others, so they do not form a single valid 'node'.
I genuinely wish that if there are over 1 million Southern Ndebele speakers, and the status of Ndebele as an official language, that there'd be more study on it. There seems not to be much on the issue: to what extent each is related to Zulu, their relationships with each other, interactions with Sotho, their internal diversity, the extent to which e.g. S Ndebele may be influenced by Zulu or speakers may be merging and transitioning to it today, confusing the first issue.
