Transcending the Meinhof-Lepsius’ system: a theoretical analysis of challenges of the word division in Tshivenḓa literary texts

Abstract

With the history of Dutch and German missionaries in South Africa, as well as with the history of the National Party government, the history of Tshivenḓa orthography is intertwined. The Meinhof-Lepsius’ alphabet was utilized by the White missionaries to construct Tshivenḓa orthography, which is still in use today. The purpose of this study is to examine the role played by literary texts in the evolution of orthography (spelling rules) in the Tshivenḓa language, as well as the difficulties that arise because of the employment of the Meinhof-Lepsius’ system of spelling. The goal of the study is to resolve the issues that have arisen because of the Meinhof-Lepsius’ writing system and to make the writing system more accessible to all language speakers and users. When it comes to spelling regulations, hyphens, apostrophes, capital letters, and word division all play a role in the language. Qualitative research method was used for investigation. To acquire data from writings between 1970 and 2013, the researchers used this approach. These texts were chosen because they were often consulted by researchers, teachers, and students in high schools and universities across the country. Novels, plays, and poetry were all included, and from each text was extracted and analysed for the occurrence of hyphens, apostrophes, and capital letters. The current study highlights the difficulties that hyphens, apostrophes, and capital letters present in word division and makes recommendations for how to overcome these difficulties.