Born a Crime

Of the African languages, Zulu
has the largest number of native
speakers, but we couldn’t keep that
without also having Xhosa and
Tswana and Ndebele. Then there’s
Swazi, Tsonga, Venda, Sotho, and
Pedi. We tried to keep all the major
groups happy, so the next thing we
knew we’d made eleven languages
official languages. And those are
just the languages big enough to
demand recognition; there are
dozens more.
It’s the Tower of Babel in South
Africa. Every single day. Every day
you see people completely lost,
trying to have conversations and
having no idea what the other
person is saying. Zulu and Tswana
are fairly common. Tsonga and
Pedi are pretty fringe. The more