Template talk:Ethnic groups in South Africa
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Any logic in the ordering of the groups? It sure escapes me... Perhaps we can do
- By estimated number - a bit difficult
- Alphabetically
- Geographical roundtrip - also a bit difficult
- I sorted it alphabetically. Just the Shangaan/Tsonga issue remain. --168.209.98.35 21:10, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
I am wondering where the necessity for the use of this template comes from - it smacks so much of apartheid and the kind of teaching South Africans received in school in those times - can we not chooose to not use this template?
[edit] Self-delusional
Actually, this template is inherently problematic and I can't think of any elegant way of fixing this.
The list of ethnic groups is not exhaustive, although the implication is that it is. For example, Nelson Mandela is a well-known (that's an understatement) native South African, yet his ethnic group is not in the list. He is NOT umXhosa, but rather umThembu -- one of the many ethnic groups which speak isiXhosa.
Unfortunately, far too few people realise that:
- There are only 11 OFFICIAL languages in the country -- the number of actual languages is far higher than that
- Not every language is spoken by a single ethnic group, and not every group speaks a single language.
No one cannot deny that, although they do speak Afrikaans, "Coloureds" and the Griqua people (among others) are NOT Afrikaners. Additionally, Malay and Indian South Africans speak numerous home languages, is it truly difficult to appreciate that similar complications could be true of the rest of the population of the country?
I'll appreciate any input other editors may have regarding this problem.
Tebello TheWHAT!!?? 21:12, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
