Tag: South Africa
Ryanair Imposes Afrikaans Test on South African Passengers
Ryanair, one of Europe’s largest budget airlines is demanding that travelers who hold a South African passport must first pass an ‘Afrikaans’ language test at the boarding gates, or forfeit their seat.
Ryanair, based in...
South Africa Classifies Afrikaans as ‘Foreign’
South Africa’s government has touched off a storm after it moved to classify native Afrikaans as a “foreign language.” For clarity’s sake, here is a hypothesis: this move would be similar to the US...
South African and European Universities Form Consortium to Boost Use of Indigenous Languages
South Africa’s university system notoriously lacks instructional programs offered in the nation’s Indigenous languages, like isiXhosa and Sesotho. Currently, English and Afrikaans are the only languages widely used in university-level coursework, however even Afrikaans’...
Afrikaans Goes to Court
The University of South Africa—locally known as UNISA—the largest university system in the nation, has been working on phasing out Afrikaans as a language of instruction since 2016, a move that has been met...
South Africa’s Language Question Remains Unanswered
The governing African National Congress (ANC) held a rally in Sharpeville (suburban Johannesburg) on March 21 to celebrate Human Rights Day and to commemorate the 1960 Sharpeville massacre, widely regarded as the inaugural event in the...