The history and development of Zulu as a literary medium

Abstract

This article examines the developmental history of Zulu as literary medium, starting from the time missionaries first reduced it to writing approximately 150 years ago up to 1993 when its current orthography was finalised. An orthography specifies a number of things about the writing of a language, notably how the speech sounds should be written and where the boundaries of words occur. In this article the focus primarily falls on the developmental history of the alphabetic system of Zulu. Contributions made by different language pioneers to the orthographic development of Zulu are highlighted. So too are the changes that from time to time were made to its alphabet. Only limited attention is given to word division in Zulu, not because it is regarded as a minor orthographic matter, but because it was a far less controversial issue among the scholars who were involved in the orthographic development of this language than what it later became in academic circles. Ever since Doke's theory on word identification in the African languages was accepted as an orthographic principle in Zulu, a certain uniformity in the writing of Zulu words was achieved so that when the orthography of this language first became standardized in 1934 (and in its subsequent revisions), the orthographic committees concerned found it necessary to regulate the writing of only a small number of words m this language - something which is borne out by the relatively small number of word division rules Zulu has. In conclusion a number of problems that writers have with some of the capitalisation rules in Zulu are pointed out.