Users, user-friendliness and projected uses of isichazamazwi sesindebele: an analysis

Abstract

This article discusses the first-ever monolingual general Ndebele dictionary, Isicha-zamazwi SesiNdebele (henceforth the ISN) within the context of the history of lexicography and the compilation of dictionaries in Ndebele. It further assesses the scope of the dictionary with regard to its structure. It also discusses decisions taken by the editors during the writing of the ISN in an at-tempt to compile a user-friendly dictionary primarily aimed at secondary schools and the general Ndebele population. The assumptions of the editors, coming from a non-existing lexicographic tradition, were mainly based on their experiences and intuitions as Ndebele mother-tongue speak-ers, educators and language practitioners. The article also accounts for four major uses of the dic-tionary.

Keywords: target user, user-friendly, corpus, front matter, back matter