The implications of culture for dictionaries of the African languages

Abstract

This article attempts to show how culture or aspects thereof can be used to comple-ment linguistic and other information in the compilation of dictionaries of African languages. Some obstacles in the way of achieving this goal are identified and proposals made on how to deal with them. Although only some cultural aspects of a single language are examined, the conclusions are valid for cultural aspects of all African languages.

Keywords: context, culture, corpus, euphemism, figurative language, hlonipha, kinship terms, lexical borrowing, multilingualism, speech com-munity, standard zulu, taboo