Language is always there in the background, quietly shaping space and movement, whether people talk about it directly or not. During my first interview, I learned that Ditsong Museums (operating across Pretoria and Johannesburg) have an official language policy grounded in the South African constitution. On paper, they commit to using English, Afrikaans, isiZulu, and Sesotho. These are supposed to appear across external communication, exhibitions, and internal operations. But what’s on paper and what plays out are two different things. According to the policy, exhibits are in English and one “adopted language,” depending on the audience. Tour scripts and programs can be offered in any of the four languages, but only “visitor preference permitting,” and translation is available – again, if requested. This means the burden is on the visitor to ask. If you understand English, you’re unlikely to go out of your way to request another language, and even less likely to know that you can. So English, while officially just one of four languages in use, functions as the default – silently signaling priority and importance.
Ditsong’s marketing manager also described how the physical location and subject matter of a museum might influence what languages you see represented. For instance, a museum dealing with paleontology or meteorites (like their Museum of Natural History, which I visited) is less concerned with cultural-linguistic representation than one focused on ethnography or material history (like their Museum of Cultural History or Kruger Museum). Some museums have limited audio content, mostly in response to accessibility concerns – visitors who struggle to read small text or who are visually impaired have given Ditsong this feedback. But, for the most part, English dominates both signage and the website. There’s an effort underway to make the site multilingual, but English’s reach – especially with international visitors – keeps it at the center.
I was fascinated by how this interview turned toward the role of museums as community hubs. My interlocutor emphasized that Ditsong doesn’t want their museums to be purely academic or didactic spaces. Many of their museums have beautiful courtyards, gardens, and even overnight accommodation for visitors at more remote sites. One museum site hosts weddings; another holds community fun runs followed by music and food. These choices aren’t just about generating revenue (though that’s certainly part of it); they’re about redefining what a museum is for – making it a lived and loved part of the community. This desire to create accessible, social, and healing spaces is also what motivated them to expand into programming about indigenous knowledge and medicinal plants. I was told that at Tswaing Meteorite Crater, their meteorite site museum, there’s a strong focus on this connection between land, memory, and wellness. It’s an entirely different kind of “knowledge production” than what museums are traditionally known for.
In the same conversation, I also learned something I hadn’t expected: a short history of how some Southern Bantu languages were standardized. Sesotho, Setswana, and Sepedi all originated from a common linguistic ancestor. The names of countries like Lesotho and Botswana literally mean “land of the Sotho/Tswana people.” But what really struck me was the story behind the orthography of these languages – how they came to be written and not just spoken. In the 1830s, French missionaries arrived in what is now Lesotho. They learned the spoken language and began teaching literacy using French spelling rules. That’s why, for instance, the /wa/ sound in Setswana is spelled “wa,” but in Sesotho, it’s “oa” – a quirk that reflects the French use of o + vowel to make the sound /w/ (oiseau, for example). Similarly, where Setswana uses “we,” Sesotho might use “oe.” It’s a small detail that tells a big story: colonial powers didn’t just document languages – they shaped them, embedding their own phonetic habits into structures that still exist today.
Another conversation that shifted how I think about language was with a sociolinguist who studies what he calls the “semiotic landscape.” It’s not just about words on signs, he explained, but about anything visual that communicates meaning. One example he shared was of a trilingual road sign in English, Afrikaans, and Tswana. The English was printed at the top, easily visible to drivers; Afrikaans and Tswana were lower down – eye-level for pedestrians. The sign wasn’t just multilingual, but also encoded assumptions about who was driving, who was walking, and who needed which language. The conversation made me rethink my photography method. I have of course been photographing signs themselves, but now I find myself stepping back, noticing how and where the signs are placed and the context that surrounds them, not just what they say. In touristy areas or places trying to seem “authentic,” language can also function more symbolically. He pointed out that certain languages get used to signal cultural credibility, used because it “feels local” to consumers. It’s a performance of authenticity, typically more about trendiness or branding than communication. That theme came up again with a young tour guide I talked to, who leads walking tours around Soweto and the inner city. He lives in Soweto and speaks ten of South Africa’s official languages. When I asked which one he didn’t speak, he smiled and said, “South African Sign Language – but I want to learn.” He told me that in Soweto, unlike the city center, there are hardly any visible street signs – no overhead posts, and the street curb labels that are commonplace across South African cities have mostly faded or crumbled away. People navigate more by memory and landmarks than by written names.
He described an area near the Mzimhlope station that locals reference as the ‘herd of elephants,’ apparently because of the way the tightly packed houses look – language as metaphor, drawn from landscape and familiarity rather than street maps. Walking around Soweto, I kept noticing how place names themselves hold layers of meaning. Mzimhlophe means “white houses” in isiZulu, referring to the standardized color of the homes in that area. Jabulani means “rejoice” in Zulu. Naledi means “star” in Sotho. Orlando, I learned, was named after a former mayor – Edwin Orlando Leake – who chaired the Native Affairs Committee in the 1920s. These names are more than administrative; they carry memory, pride, and resistance.
Then there’s Tsotsi Taal, or Isicamtho – a township slang that blends Zulu, Sotho, Tswana, English, Afrikaans, and more. It began as a sort of street argot but grew into a full-fledged youth language, especially after the 1976 uprisings, when Afrikaans became associated with the apartheid regime. Isicamtho became a form of defiance – reclaiming voice, rejecting the language of power, and building a shared identity in its place. It’s still evolving, still alive in Soweto, especially among younger speakers. Some of these themes echoed in an interview with a restaurant manager in Parkhurst, one of Johannesburg’s more gentrified neighborhoods. He runs an Indian restaurant, staffed mostly by South Africans of other backgrounds (he himself is Indian). The menu was in English, naturally – it’s a trendy area, and English performs a particular kind of cosmopolitanism in spaces like that. Nothing out of place, just another small clue about how language meets audience, geography, and economic aspiration. Of course, there are the food words that survive and thrive: kota, for example. A township classic made from a quarter loaf of bread filled with fries, sausage, cheese, egg, and sauce. The name itself – kota – comes from that quarter-loaf. It’s a delicious little reminder that language, like food, is always evolving in the street, in homes, in the everyday.