Publications
Publication details [#65670]
Koopman, Adrian. 2018. Zulu bird names: A progression over the decades (II) [Part two: The second hundred years, with Roberts, and Doke and Vilakazi]. South African Journal of African Languages 39 (1) : 9–15.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Keywords
Language as a subject
Place, Publisher
Routledge
Annotation
Part One of this two-part set on the history of Zulu bird name recording covered the period of the first KwaZulu-Natal explorers in the 1830s up to Samuelson’s 1923 dictionary. This second part starts with the interest lift in bird-watching as a hobby and the next publication of the first prosperous bird guide: Austin Roberts’ 1940 Birds of South Africa. Next revised editions, under diverse authors, were edited, examining the shifting face of the Zulu names in detail. As with Part One, dictionaries' role in evolving Zulu bird names is debated, with Doke and Vilakazi’s 1948 Zulu-English Dictionary playing a main role. The paper shuts with ideas on the uneven dynamics between the Zulu people whose oral tradition has given the Zulu bird names, and the near fully white missionaries, ornithologists and lexicographers who have noted these names. In about the last ten years, an interest in both bird-watching and in oral traditions relating to birds has seen these dynamics shift, with Zulu-speaking people getting directly involved in Zulu bird name recording, and in producing them for educational and tourism aims.