Why we must take pride in our language

South African education specialist Daryl Braam notes that there is “widespread prejudice against African languages”. Not only that, but black South Africans have been made to feel that their own languages are ugly or inferior, because (for example) IsiZulu, IsiXhosa or SeTswana are viewed as not in the same league as the languages used in institutions such as Stellenbosch, where Afrikaans and English have been the languages of instruction. In some form this has caused linguistic insecurity – even, as it is called, “linguistic self-hatred”.

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