Mzansi Taal


Honours

Best Digital Humanities Collection: Community Engagement at the HSS Awards 2022

HSS Awards 2022

Pan South African Language Board Multilingualism Awards 2021 – 2022 Technology and Business Category.

What is Mzansi Taal?

Mzansi (n) – means South Africa.

Taal (n) – means language.

Mzansi Taal is a South African general lingo dictionary for Tsotsi Taal, Spitori, Ringas, Scamtho, Afrikaaps, Gayle and more. New words and phrases are researched and published as they arise.

“We do not create words/phrases, but rather capture language in the way that it is being spoken or written by the users.”

Mission and Objectives

  • To educate the user about the various lingo terms and phrases which are widely used in South Africa which do not directly fit into a traditional indigenous language dictionary.
  • To contribute to research in language.
  • To remain as recent, accurate and as credible as possible.
  • To make our data freely accessible to the end-user as a public good.

Why We Do What We Do?

“Multilingualism, Code-switching, Digital and Social Media is shaping a new vehicular language.”

Language is developing at a rapid rate because of multilingualism and new age technology such as digital and social media. This has brought about a large vocabulary of thousands of words and phrases used everyday by millions of South Africans in various communities across the country. A large number of these words and phrases have not yet been captured.

In order to stay ahead it is essential for language research to keep track of these changes as they arise.

Mzansi Taal exists to close that gap.

How To Use Mzansi Taal?

 

How You Can Contribute

You can sign-up, log-in and start suggesting terms and phrases that you think should be published on the dictionary. Our editors will moderate the terms and publish it if it meets the criteria.

You may also share and post comments on various words/phrases.

Contact Details

If you would like to talk to us for any suggestions, marketing related stuff or more feel free to send us an email to the address below and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

Email: Info@mzansitaal.co.za

Location

Somewhere in Mzansi

Official documents: