AFL1501 ASSIGNMENT 6 FINAL PORTFOLIO SEM 2 SOLUTION GUIDE

What is language? Language is a system that consists of the development, acquisition, maintenance and use of complex systems of communication, particularly the human ability to do so; and a language is any specific a system or the method of human communication, either spoken or written, consisting of the use of words in a structured and conventional way or a system of communication used by a particular country or community. 1. What is your background in terms of language? 5 I was born and raised in a Tsonga (shangaan) family in Giyani, my parents are Tsonga speaking and when I am at home I speak Xitsonga, but at school I speak English with other students, because some of the students are from other countries, so it gives me advantage to speak English fluently 2. My mother tongue My mother tongue language is Tsonga, I have speaking Tsonga from the day that I was born, I enjoy Xitsonga, because what I have realize about Tsonga people they respect and they are humble everywhere they go. 3. What other languages do you know? Other than my mother tongue ‘’Tsonga’’, I know how to speak Tshivenda and Afrikaans I want to also learn how to speak other languages, I will be happy if I can know how to speak Sepedi, Setswana, isiNdebele, isiXhosa and isiZulu because these are the language that people the South Africans speaks so I am whiling to learn them. 4. How did you learn these languages? I have learn how to speak Tshivenda because when I arrived in Gauteng my friends at university where vendas and I was the only one who speak Xitsonga, so it helps me to speak Tshivenda fluently and write it. Afrikaans I have learnt it while I was doing my high school, because Afrikaans was the third additional language but I don’t speak Afrikaans fluently as Tshivenda. 5. How do you use these languages? I speak Xitsonga when I am at home with my parents and my siblings, I speak Tshivenda with my friends at school and sometimes we speak English if we are doing assignments and helping each other with school work. I speak Afrikaans when I visit my teachers in high school is where I speak Afrikaans. 6. Do you agree that the languages you know, and how you use them reflect who you are as a person? Yes, I do agree that the languages I know and how I use them reflects who I am as a person. Language determines the way a person views the world. Language is one training tool of the mind. Studying the functional relationships between language and other mental operations increases one's knowledge about the way people think. The more one knows about this in our increasingly interdependent world the better. Language is what binds us to our culture and ancestors. It’s what shaped our attitudes, beliefs, values, and understanding of what is truth. Our language is the ‘heart’ of who we are as a person. But language also depends on how your family interferes with it. How you expose yourself to it and how you observe and understand it. It can both isolate us and bring us closer together. But without our languages, would we all be with no identity? 6 MY FAMILY TREE My surname is MATHONSI meaning (RAIN) my surname is found in the Zulu tribe, Tsonga people in the kingdom of Elangeni in Kwazulu-Natal. They lived there before Shaka Zulu started to rule. Soshangane was a king of the Tsongas. The time Shaka Zulu started to rule the Zulus, Shaka was a very cold hearted king, and he abused people if you couldn’t bow to Shaka as your king you were meant to die. When Shaka started the war of killing people, Soshangane and his people fled to Mozambique and when they arrive there they called themselves shangane people and that was taken from the name of king Soshangane, they started to adopt the culture of Mozambique change their accent. After some decades since they settled in Mozambique, that country they fled to it is officially ruled by the Portuguese, so it did not sit them well to share their country with foreign people, so they started to take them abuse, made them slaves, some they were killed. And from my family tribe, my mother’s sister her daughter abducted by the Portuguese even today they don’t know if she still alive or dead. The Shangane had to flee again, running away from the war of the Portuguese war, and that is when they came back to South Africa, others hid in Mozambique and never fled that is why today there still Shangane people living in Mozambique. As king Soshangane