Term Creation: Strategies and Challenges for Sustaining the IsiNdebele Language among Speakers in Bulawayo Metropolitan Province, Zimbabwe

Abstract

IsiNdebele, a language spoken in Zimbabwe and South Africa, is often marginalised in official settings, leading to a lack of standardised terminology. This results in a myriad of language vocabulary-related challenges, which range from sociolinguistics to pure linguistics. Emanating from the above background, this paper focuses on term creation in Bulawayo province of Zimbabwe. The thesis is on the strategies in term creation and challenges faced by IsiNdebele speakers in Bulawayo Metropolitan Province. Thus, this paper uses mixed methods to gather and analyse data. Observation, semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, and focus group discussions were mainly used to collect data. Preliminary research findings have shown that IsiNdebele speakers face challenges when communicating technological aspects, which calls for term creation. This paper takes a step further and unravels the strategies used to create the terms and the challenges encountered during the process.  The findings suggest that IsiNdebele speakers often borrow from other languages when creating terms, primarily from the official language, English, due to the limited existing vocabulary in IsiNdebele. The challenges IsiNdebele speakers face include a lack of recognition for their work and the pressure to maintain language integrity while translating complex technical and academic texts.